But it was beyond human endurance to remain longer above. It was no longer possible to breathe. To the intense heat and atmospheric drouth, destroying all vital functions, was added the poisoning of our air by the oxide of carbon.
The ears rang as from the tolling of funeral bells, and all hearts were in a flutter of feverish palpitation. And always, everywhere, there was that suffocating stench of sulphur.
Now a shower of fire fell from the glowing sky. It was raining shooting-stars and white-hot meteorites, most of which burst like bombs. The fragments of these, like flying shrapnel, crashed through the roofs and set fire to the buildings.
To the conflagration of the sky were added the flames of fire everywhere on earth.
Claps of ear-splitting thunder followed each other incessantly, produced partly by the explosions of the meteors, and partly by a tremendous electric thunderstorm. Rifts of lightning zig-zagged hither and thither.
A continuous rumbling, like that of distant drums, filled the ears of the cowering people below, awaiting their fate. This low rumble was interspersed with the deafening detonations of exploding meteors and the high shriek of hurtling aerial fragments.
Then followed unearthly noises, like the seething of some immense boiling cauldron, the wild wailing of winds, and the quaking of the soil where the earth’s crust was giving way.
This unearthly tempest became so frightful, so fraught with agony and mad terror, that the multitudes grovelling below were overcome with paralysis, and lay prone. Laid low like dumb brutes, they met their doom.
The end of all had come.