Even as he thought it, however, the last segment of the sun's red periphery sank out of sight beneath the horizon. The terrible humming died away, melting into the universal silence in which it had found birth. With scarcely an intervening moment of twilight night swept down.
At first it seemed absolute as blindness, or the end of all created things. Then, as his pupils expanded, Drayton began dimly to perceive his companions, while, on looking upward, he beheld a sky powdered thick with clear, brilliant stars.
He drew a long breath, and heard it echoed by the others.
"They have a strange nightfall in this land," muttered Trenmore, "and they do make a great noise over it!"
"Yes," replied Drayton, the observant, "but those stars look familiar enough."
"Right as usual, Bobby. It's the same old stars they're using. Look, Viola! There's the old bear and her cub!"
"And the Milky Way," said Viola.
Somehow, in spite of all that had occurred, the sight of those familiar stars and constellations brought a feeling of almost-security, of at-homeness and actuality.
"Your talk of Purgatory," laughed Drayton, "and that abominable noise just now sent a few unearthly shivers down my back. Those stars tell a different story. We are surely somewhere on earth. Different longitude, perhaps, but in our own latitude, or nearly, even though night did shut down with such tropical suddenness. If we were in the tropics we should see a sky different from this-"
His astronomical observations were cut short by a low cry from Viola. Dimly he glimpsed her arm, stiffly outstretched and pointing.