shrivelled world was touched with sombre bronze; westward, and the sun, robbed now by a thickening white mist of half its heat and splendour, was touching the crater rim, was sinking out of sight, and all the shrubs and jagged and tumbled rocks stood out against it in a bristling disorder of black shapes. Into the great lake of darkness westward, a vast wreath of mist was sinking. A cold wind set all the crater shivering. Suddenly, for a moment, I was in a puff of falling snow, and all the world about me grey and dim.
And then it was I heard, not loud and penetrating as at first, but faint and dim like a dying voice, that tolling, that same tolling that had welcomed the coming of the day: Boom! . . . Boom! . . . Boom! . . .
It echoed about the crater, it seemed to throb with the throbbing of the greater stars, the blood-red crescent of the sun's disk sank as it tolled out: Boom! . . . Boom! . . . Boom! . . .
What had happened to Cavor? All through that tolling I stood there stupidly, and at last the tolling ceased.
And suddenly the open mouth of the tunnel down below there, shut like an eye and vanished out of sight.
