with the silence of the inane, eternal stars in heaven.

* * * * *

I could not get into any vehicle for some time, for all thereabouts was
practically a mere block; but near the Park, which I attained by
stooping among wheels, and selecting my foul steps, I overhauled a
Daimler car, found in it two cylinders of petrol, lit the ignition-lamp,
removed with averted abhorrence three bodies, mounted, and broke that
populous stillness. And through streets nowhere empty of bodies I went
urging eastward my jolting, and spattered, and humming way.

That I should have persisted, with so much pains, to come to this
unbounded catacomb, seems now singular to me: for by that time I could
not have been sufficiently daft to expect to find another being like
myself on the earth, though I cherished, I remember, the irrational hope
of yet somewhere finding dog, or cat, or horse, to be with me, and would
anon think bitterly of Reinhardt, my Arctic dog, which my own hand had
shot. But, in reality, a morbid curiosity must have been within me all
the time to read the real truth of what had happened, so far as it was
known, or guessed, and to gloat upon all that drama, and cup of
trembling, and pouring out of the vials of the wrath of God, which must
have preceded the actual advent of the end of Time. This inquisitiveness
had, at every town which I reached, made the search for newspapers
uppermost in my mind; but, by bad luck, I had found only four, all of
them ante-dated to the one which I had read at Dover, though their dates
gave me some idea of the period when printing must have ceased, viz.
soon after the 17th July--about three months subsequent to my arrival at
the Pole--for none I found later than this date; and these contained
nothing scientific, but only orisons and despairings. On arriving,