Boon, The Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil, and The Last Trump; / Being a First Selection from the Literary Remains of George Boon, Appropriate to the Times

by H. G. Wells

§ 5

Moreover, there was a storm. All over the world there was a storm that puzzled meteorology, a moment’s gale that left the atmosphere in a state of wild swaygog, rains, tornadoes, depressions, irregularities for weeks. News came of it from all the quarters of the earth.

All over China, for example, that land of cherished graves, there was a dust-storm, dust leaped into the air. A kind of earthquake shook Europe—an earthquake that seemed to have at heart the peculiar interests of Mr. Algernon Ashton; everywhere it cracked mausoleums and shivered the pavements of cathedrals, swished the flower-beds of cemeteries, and tossed tombstones aside. A crematorium in Texas blew up. The sea was greatly agitated, and the beautiful harbour of Sydney, in Australia, was seen to be littered with sharks floating upside down in manifest distress….

And all about the world a sound was heard like the sound of a trumpet instantly cut short.