Page:Poet Lore, volume 4, 1892.djvu/651

 “All right,” I said.

The scene before me grew misty. Soon I saw nothing but gray dusk passing into darkness until there was impenetrable darkness before me.

“How is it that I do not see anything?” I inquire of my friend.

“We are as far from the earth,” says my friend, “as light has travelled in 119 days. From a distance of more than 431,851,000,000 miles you see now the region where the event happened 119 days ago in the night. We fly on with the velocity of light. A light pressure on the main spring of my machine will, however, suffice to make us fly faster, and so the whole scene will gradually develop before your eyes.”

I did not answer, for in the same moment it seemed to me that darkness was changing into twilight with a reddish coloring. Now flames flash through the dusk, and now the landscape emerges. I see at first only indistinct outlines of mountains, woods, rivers, cities, and villages. Soon everything looks clearer. I distinguish single fields, highways, farms, and houses; I see entire villages ablaze, and innumerable lesser lights scattered all over the region like will-o’-the-wisps. The scene grows still more distinct. I notice how dark shadows are hurrying in a wild disorder along the highways and over the fields. Soon I perceive that the shadows are numberless living beings. I recognize horsemen and wagons and foot-soldiers. I see how in some places groups or streams of men are fleeing in disorder, how in others they form immovable crowds. All this I see in the twilight of a summer night. The landscape gradually becomes more distinct. Near the burning villages I see swarms of men. Then I recognize the groups as camps of larger and smaller divisions of soldiery, or stations where the wounded are being cared for. I see places strewn with dead horses and men, with overturned wagons and cannons, and distinguish single individuals,—some digging graves, others spying about, others, again, picking up the fallen men and carrying them to the camp-fires or to the graves.

In another moment I have a perfect bird’s-eye view of an even-