We paused and stood close together upon the immediate edge of the vacant plot, now several feet deep in snow, our figures throwing long shadows upon the ghostly purity of the covering. And we became aware that we were not watching so much as listening, for on the freshening easterly wind there was borne such a rumour as men are not often permitted to make or to hear. It could scarcely be called a noise; it was rather a terrible and confusing _presence_ translated into sound. So enormous was it, and so distant, that it enfolded us like a foreboding of disaster. It was as though one were listening to the cheering of innumerable myriads on another planet. There was neither cessation to it nor paroxysm, neither surging up nor dying away. It was a continuous and prodigious drone. And the wonder of it was driven, if possible, a notch higher when it was known that this uproar was caused, not by the moans of a lost world falling down through inconceivable spaces to Gehenna, but by the million tin horns which the people of New York deemed a fitting tribute to the New Year. It was a fan-fare _in excelsis_, defying criticism and distance. It was the apotheosis of Manhattan, a sky-scraper of dizzy sound. It was, moreover, the expression of a primal and singularly innocent joy, the joy of a young nation on beholding a New Year. It was almost as though, in the cataclysm of hideous and unlooked-for calamities, in the vanishing of cities and kingdoms, in the irruption of mountains and the sinking of titanic ships beneath the waves, even the recurrence of the seasons had become an adventure and a matter of supreme wonder. A million tin horns! I suppose it was our preoccupation with the solemnity of the hour and the stupendous accompaniment of it that prevented our seeing at first a strange and disquieting signal. My friend suddenly grasped my arm and pointed to a black bank of cloud over Newark, where there shone a tiny constellation of three green lights. And the sound of New York's jubilation was forgotten. With murmured exclamations we stood with our faces raised towards this new yet familiar portent. And as we gazed the green rays were borne beyond the cloud bank and were seen moving more and more rapidly against the dark blue of the star-lit heavens. Moved as by one impulse, we plunged into the snow and took a few steps, as though to gain a nearer view of this strangely beautiful object. Almost immediately it was above us and the thuttering roar of its machinery came dully to our ears in waves and sharp gusts of sound. And we cried "Oh!" involuntarily, for we could see the dark spread of the vans plunging frantically in the air. I remember I stretched out my arms in an impotent gesture of aid, for with the speed of a bird of prey the dark mass lurched in a flat swaying parabola towards the earth, spinning the while upon itself, and striking the deep bed of snow, burst into a mass of blinding flame.