Let us go out and watch the wonder.
Whatever happens we shall remain together. I am from Scandor myself,
and though I might have been safer at the mines, I could not stay there
in the crisis.'
"We descended to the ground and walked out over the hillside. The
encircling range of high country about Scandor is, perhaps, one thousand
feet high. Its crest is a low swell, that beyond the city falls away in
broken, irregular slopes to the country of the Ribi on one side, and to
far outstretched plains on almost every other side. This dome was
covered with the people of Scandor, fleeing from the doomed city. The
long lines of moving figures were issuing from the city through its
numerous boulevards, and crowding the spaces on the hilltops. The
astronomers knew exactly now the nature of the approaching mass, its
orbit, spacial extent and weight. Their proclamation had been prepared
and pasted all over the city, announcing its certain destruction, but
that the area of devastation would only embrace the city, that the
cometary visitor was a narrow train or procession of meteors of stone
and iron, that the force of impact would be considerable, enough to
crush to the ground the glassy splendor of the beautiful city, and that
beyond its limits there would be almost no falls.
"Beautiful, indeed, was Scandor in the morning light. It lay before us
shining with a hundred hues. How can I tell you of its exquisite
perfection! Its arrangement expressed a color scheme simple and
effective.
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