of some Titan of the Elder World vexed with misery or wrath.
Higher and higher it arose, challenging and demanding in such
profounds of volume that it seemed intended for ears beyond the
narrow confines of the solar system. There was in it, too, the
clamour of protest in that there were no ears to hear and
comprehend its utterance.

- Such the sick man's fancy. Still he strove to analyse the sound.
Sonorous as thunder was it, mellow as a golden bell, thin and sweet
as a thrummed taut cord of silver--no; it was none of these, nor a
blend of these. There were no words nor semblances in his
vocabulary and experience with which to describe the totality of
that sound.

Time passed. Minutes merged into quarters of hours, and quarters
of hours into half-hours, and still the sound persisted, ever
changing from its initial vocal impulse yet never receiving fresh
impulse--fading, dimming, dying as enormously as it had sprung into
being. It became a confusion of troubled mutterings and babblings
and colossal whisperings. Slowly it withdrew, sob by sob, into
whatever great bosom had birthed it, until it whimpered deadly
whispers of wrath and as equally seductive whispers of delight,
striving still to be heard, to convey some cosmic secret, some
understanding of infinite import and value. It dwindled to a ghost
of sound that had lost its menace and promise, and became a thing
that pulsed on in the sick man's consciousness for minutes after it
had ceased. When he could hear it no longer, Bassett glanced at
his watch. An hour had elapsed ere that archangel's trump had
subsided into tonal nothingness.