I have never seen such a
night. It seemed to throw calumny in the teeth of all the painters
that ever dabbled in starlight. The sky itself was of a ruddy,
powerful, nameless, changing colour, dark and glossy like a
serpent's back. The stars, by innumerable millions, stuck boldly
forth like lamps. The milky way was bright, like a moonlit cloud;
half heaven seemed milky way. The greater luminaries shone each
more clearly than a winter's moon. Their light was dyed in every
sort of colour--red, like fire; blue, like steel; green, like the
tracks of sunset; and so sharply did each stand forth in its own
lustre that there was no appearance of that flat, star-spangled
arch we know so well in pictures, but all the hollow of heaven was
one chaos of contesting luminaries--a hurry-burly of stars.
Against this the hills and rugged treetops stood out redly dark.
As we continued to advance, the lesser lights and milky ways first
grew pale, and then vanished; the countless hosts of heaven
dwindled in number by successive millions; those that still shone
had tempered their exceeding brightness and fallen back into their
customary wistful distance; and the sky declined from its first
bewildering splendour into the appearance of a common night.
Slowly this change proceeded, and still there was no sign of any
cause. Then a whiteness like mist was thrown over the spurs of the
mountain.
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