these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to
convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of
sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the
background of our lives all that was over. As the darkness thickened,
the eddying flakes grew more abundant, dancing before my eyes; and the
cold of the air more intense. At last, one by one, swiftly, one after
the other, the white peaks of the distant hills vanished into
blackness. The breeze rose to a moaning wind. I saw the black central
shadow of the eclipse sweeping towards me. In another moment the pale
stars alone were visible. All else was rayless obscurity. The sky was
absolutely black.
A horror of this great darkness came on me. The cold, that smote to my
marrow, and the pain I felt in breathing, overcame me. I shivered, and
a deadly nausea seized me. Then like a red-hot bow in the sky appeared
the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to recover myself. I felt
giddy and incapable of facing the return journey. As I stood sick and
confused I saw again the moving thing upon the shoal there was no
mistake now that it was a moving thing against the red water of the
sea. It was a round thing, the size of a football perhaps, or, it may
be, bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it; it seemed black against
the weltering blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully about. Then
I felt I was fainting. But a terrible dread of lying helpless in that
remote and awful twilight sustained me while I clambered upon the
saddle.
XV.
The Time Traveller s Return
So I came back. For a long time I must have been insensible upon the
machine. The blinking succession of the days and nights was resumed,
the sun got golden again, the sky blue. I breathed with greater
freedom. The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and flowed. The
hands spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw again the dim shadows
of houses, the evidences of decadent humanity. These, too, changed and
passed, and others came. Presently, when the million dial was at zero,
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