But the star had passed, and men, hunger-driven and gathering courage only slowly, might creep back to their ruined cities, buried granaries, and sodden fields.  Such few ships as had escaped the storms of that time came stunned and shattered and sounding their way cautiously through the new marks and shoals of once familiar ports.  And as the storms subsided men perceived that everywhere the days were hotter than of yore, and the sun larger, and the moon, shrunk to a third of its former size, took now fourscore days between its new and new.

But of the new brotherhood that grew presently among men, of the saving of laws and books and machines, of the strange change that had come over Iceland and Greenland and the shores of Baffin’s Bay, so that the sailors coming there presently found them green and gracious, and could scarce believe their eyes, this story does not tell.  Nor of the movement of mankind now that the earth was hotter, northward and southward towards the poles of the earth.  It concerns itself only with the coming and the passing of the Star.

The Martian astronomers—­for there are astronomers on Mars, although they are very different beings from men—­were naturally profoundly interested by these things.  They saw them from their own standpoint of course.  “Considering the mass and temperature of the missile that was flung through our solar system into the sun,” one wrote, “it is astonishing what a little damage the earth, which it missed so narrowly, has sustained.  All the familiar continental markings and the masses of the seas remain intact, and indeed the only difference seems to be a shrinkage of the white discoloration (supposed to be frozen water) round either pole.”  Which only shows how small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem, at a distance of a few million miles.

A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON

The man with the white face entered the carriage at Rugby.  He moved slowly in spite of the urgency of his porter, and even while he was still on the platform I noted how ill he seemed.  He dropped into the corner over against me with a sigh, made an incomplete attempt to arrange his travelling shawl, and became motionless, with his eyes staring vacantly.  Presently he was moved by a sense of my observation, looked up at me, and put out a spiritless hand for his newspaper.  Then he glanced again in my direction.

I feigned to read.  I feared I had unwittingly embarrassed him, and in a moment I was surprised to find him speaking.

“I beg your pardon?” said I.

“That book,” he repeated, pointing a lean finger, “is about dreams.”

“Obviously,” I answered, for it was Fortnum Roscoe’s Dream States, and the title was on the cover.

He hung silent for a space as if he sought words.  “Yes,” he said at last, “but they tell you nothing.”

I did not catch his meaning for a second.