It had been an excessively hot and dry month of June and forest fires, which always rage every rainless summer, had already got going. This he could tell by the pretty bluish-white smoke banks that rose above the hills at the other side of the lake. Presently, away off to southward, a shimmery white curly cloud head appeared, while in the west, over against Great Peak, huge smoke-blended clouds rolled up and up. It seemed to him as if the whole world were afire.
No flames could be seen from where he sat, but there was no mistaking that fire had broken out and could hold sway indefinitely. He only hoped it would confine itself to the forest trees, and not sweep down upon huts and farmsteads.
He could scarcely breathe. It was as if such quantities of air had been consumed that there was very little of it left. At short intervals he sensed an odour, as of something burning, that stuck in his nostrils. That odour did not come from any cook stove in the Ashdales! It was a salutation from the great stake of pine needles, and moss, and brushwood that sizzled and burned many miles away.
A little while ago the sun had gone down, red as fire, leaving in its wake enough colour to tint the whole sky, which was now rose hued not only across that corner of it where the sun had just been seen, but over its entire expanse. At the same time the waters of Dove Lake had become as dark as mirror glass in the shadow of the towering hills. In this black-looking water ran streaks of red blood and molten gold.
It was the sort of night that makes one feel that the earth is not worthy a glance; that only the heavens and the waters that mirror them are worth seeing.
As Jan sat gazing out at the beauties of the light summer night he suddenly began to wonder. Could it be that he saw aright? But it actually looked as if the firmament were sinking. Anyway, to his vision it was much nearer to the earth than usual.
Could it be possible that something had gone wrong? Surely his eyes were not deceiving him! The great pink dome of sky was certainly moving down toward the earth, and all the while it was becoming hotter and more oppressive. He already felt the terrible heat that seemed to come from the red-hot dome that was sinking toward him.
To be sure Jan had heard a good deal of talk about the coming destruction of the world and had often pictured it as being effected by means of thunderstorms and earthquakes that would hurl the mountains into the seas and drive the waters of the lakes and rivers over plains and valleys, so that all life would become extinct. But he never imagined the end should come in this way: by the earth’s burial under the vault of heaven with its inhabitants all dying from heat and suffocation! This, it seemed to him, was the worst of all.
He put down his pipe, though it was only half-smoked, but remained quietly seated in the one spot. For what else could he do? This was not something which he could ward off—something he could run away from. One could not take up arms and defend one’s self against it, nor find safety by creeping into cellars or caves. Even if one had the power to empty all the oceans and lakes, their waters would not suffice to quench the fires of the firmament. If one could uproot the mountains and prop them, beam-like, against the sky, they could not hold up this heavy dome if it was meant that it should sink.
Singularly enough no one but himself seemed to be aware of what was happening.
Ah, look! What was that that went shooting up above the crest of the hill over yonder? A lot of black specks suddenly appeared in among the pale smoke clouds. These specks whirled round each other with such rapidity that to Jan’s eyes they looked like a succession of streaks moving in much the same way as when bees swarm.
They were birds of course. The strange part of it was that they had risen in the night and soared into the clouds.
They probably knew more than the human kind, thought Jan, for they had sensed that something was about to happen.
Instead of the air becoming cooler, as on other nights, it grew warmer and warmer. Anything else was hardly to be expected, with the fiery dome coming nearer and nearer. Jan thought it had already sunk to the brow of Great Peak.
But if the end of the world was so close at hand and there was no hope of his getting any word from Glory Goldie, much less of his seeing her, before all was over, then he would pray for but a single grace—that it might be made clear to him what he had done to offend her, so that he could repent of it before the end of everything pertaining to the earth life. What had he done that she could not forgive nor forget? Why had the crown and sceptre been taken away from him?
As he put these queries to himself his glance fell upon a bit of gilt paper that lay glittering on the ground in front of him. But his mind was not on such things now. This must have been one of the paper stars he had borrowed of Mad Ingeborg. But he had not given a thought to this empty show since last autumn.
It kept getting hotter and hotter, and it was becoming more and more difficult to breathe. “The end is nearing,” thought Jan. “Maybe it’s
