There was no need to cry out to Syme, who had never taken his eyes off it. He saw the great luminous globe suddenly stagger in the sky, right itself, and then sink slowly behind the trees like a setting sun.
The man called Gogol, who had hardly spoken through all their weary travels, suddenly threw up his hands like a lost spirit.
“He is dead!” he cried. “And now I know he was my friend—my friend in the dark!”
“Dead!” snorted the Secretary. “You will not find him dead easily. If he has been tipped out of the car, we shall find him rolling as a colt rolls in a field, kicking his legs for fun.”
“Clashing his hoofs,” said the Professor. “The colts do, and so did Pan.”
“Pan again!” said Dr. Bull irritably. “You seem to think Pan is everything.”
“So he is,” said the Professor, “in Greek. He means everything.”
“Don’t forget,” said the Secretary, looking down, “that he also means Panic.”
Syme had stood without hearing any of the exclamations.
“It fell over there,” he said shortly. “Let us follow it!”