After midnight, although the ions were flying thicker than ever, a supernatural light seemed to spread over the landscape. The very contrast to what was expected to come in the morning added to the depression and terror. If any vain hope was entertained that the sun might, during its course over the Pacific Ocean and Asia, abate some of its fiery stream, it was dispelled when, shortly after three o’clock, the first sign of the approaching luminary was seen in the East. Still thicker the ions flew, as a bright radiance, far exceeding that of the evening before, heralded the approach of what had always been considered the great luminary, but was now the great engine of destruction. Brighter and brighter grew the eastern horizon, until, long before the actual sun appeared above it, the eye could no longer endure the dazzling blaze. When, an hour later, the sun itself appeared, its rays struck the continent like a fiery flood. As they advanced from the Atlantic to the Pacific everything combustible which they struck burst into flame, stones were crumbled by the heat, towers and steeples fell as if shaken by an earthquake. Men had to take refuge in caves or cellars or beneath any covering which could protect them from the fierce heat. Old and young, rich and poor, male and female, crowded together in the confusion of despair. The great magnates of commerce and industry, whose names were everywhere familiar as household words, on whose wealth and power all the millions that inhabited the continent had looked with envy or admiration, were now huddled with their liveried servants beneath the ruins of falling houses, in the cellars of their own homes, in the vaults of their banks, or under any shelter which could protect them from the burning of a thousand sins.
The End of The World
July 16th, 2006 | Excerpts
Fiction, Whole