Below him, down the slope along the crater rim and the trail, the
lava was bare of all except tufts of choya. Gale gathered
assurance. It looked as if the day was favoring his side. Then
Thorne, coming partly to consciousness, engaged Gale's care. The
cavalryman stirred and moaned, called for water, and then for
Mercedes. Gale held him back with a strong hand, and presently
he was once more quiet.
For the first time in hours, as it seemed, Gale took note of the
physical aspect of his surroundings. He began to look upon them
without keen gaze strained for crouching form, or bobbing head,
or spouting carbine. Either Gale's sense of color and proportion
had become deranged during the fight, or the encompassing air
and the desert had changed. Even the sun had changed. It seemed
lowering, oval in shape, magenta in hue, and it had a surface that
gleamed like oil on water. Its red rays shone through red haze.
Distances that had formerly been clearly outlined were now dim,
obscured. The yawning chasm was not the same. It circled wider,
redder, deeper. It was a weird, ghastly mouth of hell. Gale stood
fascinated, unable to tell how much he saw was real, how
much exaggeration of overwrought emotions. There was no beauty
here, but an unparalleled grandeur, a sublime scene of devastation
and desolation which might have had its counterpart upon the
burned-out moon. The mood that gripped Gale now added to its
somber portent an unshakable foreboding of calamity.
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