And when next it rose over Europe everywhere were crowds of
watchers on hilly slopes, on house-roofs, in open spaces, staring
eastward for the rising of the great new star. It rose with a
white glow in front of it, like the glare of a white fire, and
those who had seen it come into existence the night before cried
out at the sight of it. "It is larger," they cried. "It is
brighter!" And, indeed the moon a quarter full and sinking in the
west was in its apparent size beyond comparison, but scarcely in
all its breadth had it as much brightness now as the little circle
of the strange new star.
"It is brighter!" cried the people clustering in the streets.
But in the dim observatories the watchers held their breath and
peered at one another IT IS NEARER," they said. "NEARER!"
And voice after voice repeated, "It is nearer," and the
clicking telegraph took that up, and it trembled along telephone
wires, and in a thousand cities grimy compositors fingered the
type. "It is nearer." Men writing in offices, struck with a
strange realisation, flung down their pens, men talking in a
thousand places suddenly came upon a grotesque possibility in
those words, "It is nearer." It hurried along wakening streets, it
was shouted down the frost-stilled ways of quiet villages; men who
had read these things from the throbbing tape stood in yellow-lit
doorways shouting the news to the passersby.
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