re white flakes ever and again
came eddying down. To the north-eastward, the glare of snow lay
under the starlight of the sable sky and I could see an undulating
crest of hillocks pinkish white. There were fringes of ice along the
sea margin, with drifting masses further out; but the main expanse
of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset, was still
unfrozen.

'I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A
certain indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the
machine. But I saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea. The green
slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. A
shallow sandbank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded
from the beach. I fancied I saw some black object flopping about
upon this bank, but it became motionless as I looked at it, and I
judged that my eye had been deceived, and that the black object was
merely a rock. The stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed
to me to twinkle very little.

'Suddenly I noticed that the circular westward outline of the sun
had changed; that a concavity, a bay, had appeared in the curve. I
saw this grow larger. For a minute perhaps I stared aghast at this
blackness that was creeping over the day, and then I realized that
an eclipse was beginning. Either the moon or the planet Mercury was
passing across the sun's disk. Naturally, at first I took it to be
the moon, but there is much to incline me to believe that what I
really saw was the transit of an inner planet passing very near to
the earth.

'The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening
gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air
increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and
whisper. Beyond 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