§ 4
And that was not all, that was not the only strange thing about the disappearance of that battered trumpet. There was something else, even more difficult to describe, an effect as though for one instant something opened….
The young men who worked with Hoskin and Briggs had that clearness of mind which comes of dealing with machinery, and they all felt this indescribable something else, as if for an instant the world wasn’t the world, but something lit and wonderful, larger——
This is what one of them said of it.
“I felt,” he said, “just for a minute—as though I was blown to Kingdom Come.”
“It is just how it took me,” said another. “‘Lord,’ I says, ‘here’s Judgement Day!’ and then there I was sprawling among the flies….”
But none of the others felt that they could say anything more definite than that.