It was evident that the earth's rotatory movement was departing,
steadily.
The end came, all at once. The night had been the longest yet; and
when the dying sun showed, at last, above the world's edge, I had grown
so wearied of the dark, that I greeted it as a friend. It rose steadily,
until about twenty degrees above the horizon. Then, it stopped suddenly,
and, after a strange retrograde movement, hung motionless--a great
shield in the sky[9]. Only the circular rim of the sun showed
bright--only this, and one thin streak of light near the equator.
Gradually, even this thread of light died out; and now, all that was
left of our great and glorious sun, was a vast dead disk, rimmed with a
thin circle of bronze-red light.
_XVIII_
THE GREEN STAR
The world was held in a savage gloom--cold and intolerable. Outside,
all was quiet--quiet! From the dark room behind me, came the occasional,
soft thud[10] of falling matter--fragments of rotting stone. So time
passed, and night grasped the world, wrapping it in wrappings of
impenetrable blackness.
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