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monosyllables, and gruffly. Athwart the southern sky the beams of
searchlights waved noiseless passes; the sole strange evidences of life
they seemed in all that derelict world about the hurrying machine.
The road was presently bordered on either side by gigantic blackthorn
shoots that made it very dark, and by tail grass and big campions, huge
giant dead-nettles as high as trees, flickering past darkly in
silhouette overhead. Beyond Keston they came to a rising hill, and the
driver went slow. At the crest he stopped. The engine throbbed and
became still. "There," he said, and his big gloved finger pointed, a
black misshapen thing before Redwood's eyes.
Far away as it seemed, the great embankment, crested by the blaze from
which the searchlights sprang, rose up against the sky. Those beams went
and came among the clouds and the hilly land about them as if they
traced mysterious incantations.
"
I don't know," said the driver at last, and it was clear he was afraid
to go on.
Presently a searchlight swept down the sky to them, stopped as it were
with a start, scrutinised them, a blinding stare confused rather than
mitigated by an intervening monstrous weed stem or so. They sat with
their gloves held over their eyes, trying to look under them and meet
that light.
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