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 went about the crater; it seemed to throb with the throbbing of the greater stars; the blood-red crescent of the sun's disc 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.
Then indeed was I alone.
Over me, about me, closing in on me, embracing me ever nearer, was the Eternal, that which was before the beginning and that which triumphs over the end; that enormous void in which all light and life and being is but the thin and vanishing splendour of a falling star, the cold, the stillness, the silence,—the infinite and final Night of space.
The sense of solitude and desolation became the sense of an overwhelming Presence, that stooped towards me, that almost touched me.
"No," I cried, "no! Not yet! not yet! Wait.
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