Many hours passed before Ctesippus glanced
up and saw whither his steps had unconsciously led him. A dark horror
seized his soul as he looked about him.
III
It seemed as if the unknown gods of eternal night had heard his
impious prayer. Ctesippus looked about, without being able to
recognise the place where he was. The lights of the city had long been
extinguished by the darkness. The roaring of the sea had died away in
the distance; his anxious soul had even lost the recollection of
having heard it. No single sound--no mournful cry of nocturnal bird,
nor whirr of wings, nor rustling of trees, nor murmur of a merry
stream--broke the deep silence. Only the blind will-o'-the-wisps
flickered here and there over rocks, and sheet-lightning,
unaccompanied by any sound, flared up and died down against
crag-peaks. This brief illumination merely emphasised the darkness;
and the dead light disclosed the outlines of dead deserts crossed by
gorges like crawling serpents, and rising into rocky heights in a wild
chaos.
All the joyous gods that haunt green groves, purling brooks, and
mountain valleys seemed to have fled forever from these deserts.
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