All at once, a glow lit up the end window, which protrudes far out from
the side of the house, so that, from it, one may look both East and
West. I felt puzzled, and, after a moment's hesitation, walked across
the room, and pulled aside the blind. As I did so, I saw the Sun rise,
from behind the horizon. It rose with a steady, perceptible movement. I
could see it travel upward. In a minute, it seemed, it had reached the
tops of the trees, through which I had watched it. Up, up--It was broad
daylight now. Behind me, I was conscious of a sharp, mosquito-like
buzzing. I glanced 'round, and knew that it came from the clock. Even as
I looked, it marked off an hour. The minute hand was moving 'round the
dial, faster than an ordinary second-hand. The hour hand moved quickly
from space to space. I had a numb sense of astonishment. A moment later,
so it seemed, the two candles went out, almost together. I turned
swiftly back to the window; for I had seen the shadow of the
window-frames, traveling along the floor toward me, as though a great
lamp had been carried up past the window.
I saw now, that the sun had risen high into the heavens, and was still
visibly moving. It passed above the house, with an extraordinary sailing
kind of motion. As the window came into shadow, I saw another
extraordinary thing. The fine-weather clouds were not passing, easily,
across the sky--they were scampering, as though a hundred-mile-an-hour
wind blew. As they passed, they changed their shapes a thousand times a
minute, as though writhing with a strange life; and so were gone. And,
presently, others came, and whisked away likewise.
To the West, I saw the sun, drop with an incredible, smooth, swift
motion. Eastward, the shadows of every seen thing crept toward the
coming greyness. And the movement of the shadows was visible to me--a
stealthy, writhing creep of the shadows of the wind-stirred trees. It
was a strange sight.
Quickly, the room began to darken. The sun slid down to the horizon,
and seemed, as it were, to disappear from my sight, almost with a jerk.
Through the greyness of the swift evening, I saw the silver crescent of
the moon, falling out of the Southern sky, toward the West. The evening
seemed to merge into an almost instant night. Above me, the many
constellations passed in a strange, 'noiseless' circling, Westward. The
moon fell through that last thousand fathoms of the night-gulf, and
there was only the starlight....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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