Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/19

Rh rags of clouds, torn into shreds, came hurrying down the wind as harbingers of strife, while here and there denser bits of purest white recalled to one's mind the forms of drifting swans, slipping swiftly down a rapid stream. Only one higher and heavier cloud, darker than the others, seemingly almost black, opposed itself to the wind and moved but slowly, stretching out and rolling up again its tentacle-like feelers of the atmosphere beyond its rim. Soon it reached the empty field around the moon and began to stretch itself across it just as the moon itself began to darken, taking on a scarlet hue as of fresh blood and then changing again to a somber gray, until finally it faded out to a mere black ring in a blacker sky.

"It is a full eclipse," remarked one of the passengers I had noticed forward, as he approached and offered me his excellent Zeiss glass to observe the phenomenon more closely. As I watched through the glass, the moon began to emerge ever so little from behind the dark cover which our planet had drawn over it First there was but a curve of thin, white-hot wire suspended on the black gulf of the sky; then it glowed brighter and fuller until it swelled to a sickle, to a crescent, a half-moon and eventually to the brilliantly polished silver shield—the pallid face of the sad corpse, the inseparable companion, the memento mori of earth.

"A very beautiful total eclipse," observed my neighbor, as I thanked him for the glasses.

His remark gave me a second in which to scrutinize his features and observe his dress. He was an officer of the Spanish Navy, young, good looking, strong of build, with dark complexion and with bold eyes which