The sky became more and more
densely overcast until at last it blotted out the light of day and left
nothing but a dull red glare 'extraordinarily depressing to the spirit.'
In this dull glare, great numbers of people were still living, clinging
to their houses and in many cases subsisting in a state of partial
famine upon the produce in their gardens and the stores in the shops of
the provision dealers.
Coming in still closer, the investigator would have reached the police
cordon, which was trying to check the desperate enterprise of those who
would return to their homes or rescue their more valuable possessions
within the 'zone of imminent danger.'
That zone was rather arbitrarily defined. If our spectator could have
got permission to enter it, he would have entered also a zone of uproar,
a zone of perpetual thunderings, lit by a strange purplish-red
light, and quivering and swaying with the incessant explosion of the
radio-active substance. Whole blocks of buildings were alight and
burning fiercely, the trembling, ragged flames looking pale and ghastly
and attenuated in comparison with the full-bodied crimson glare beyond.
The shells of other edifices already burnt rose, pierced by rows of
window sockets against the red-lit mist.
Every step farther would have been as dangerous as a descent within the
crater of an active volcano.
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