From what must befall thee."
As we listened again we heard the noise "like as of a great people; a tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together....
"A sound of battle is in the land and of great destruction....
"A sound of a cry cometh from Babylon and great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans....
"One post ran to meet another post, and one messenger to meet another to shew the king of Babylon that his city is taken."
Then we heard a sound of much feasting and revelling; we heard a solemn hush when there came forth fingers of a man's hand and wrote upon the wall. Even as we listened to the hush it seemed to grow into the great hush of ages, and we remembered that we stood alone in the living silence of these great dead, surrounded by the dead silence of an uninhabited land.
Overhead the Sun-god silently vaunted his eternal existence; at our feet the Euphrates rolled fresh waters of oblivion from an eternal source to an eternal sea.
CHAPTER XX
THE SOUND OF THE DESERT