But the star had passed, and men, hunger-driven and gathering courage only slowly, might creep back to their ruined cities, buried granaries, and sodden fields.  Such few ships as had escaped the storms of that time came stunned and shattered and sounding their way cautiously through the new marks and shoals of once familiar ports.  And as the storms subsided men perceived that everywhere the days were hotter than of yore, and the sun larger, and the moon, shrunk to a third of its former size, took now fourscore days between its new and new.

But of the new brotherhood that grew presently among men, of the saving of laws and books and machines, of the strange change that had come over Iceland and Greenland and the shores of Baffin’s Bay, so that the sailors coming there presently found them green and gracious, and could scarce believe their eyes, this story does not tell.  Nor of the movement of mankind, now that the earth was hotter, northward and southward towards the poles of the earth.  It concerns itself only with the coming and the passing of the star.

The Martian astronomers—­for there are astronomers on Mars, although they are very different beings from men—­were naturally profoundly interested by these things.  They saw them from their own standpoint of course.  “Considering the mass and temperature of the missile that was flung through our solar system into the sun,” one wrote, “it is astonishing what a little damage the earth, which it missed so narrowly, has sustained.  All the familiar continental markings and the masses of the seas remain intact, and indeed the only difference seems to be a shrinkage of the white discolouration (supposed to be frozen water) round either pole.”  Which only shows how small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem at a distance of a few million miles.

  XXI.

  THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES.

  A PANTOUM IN PROSE.

It is doubtful whether the gift was innate.  For my own part, I think it came to him suddenly.  Indeed, until he was thirty he was a sceptic, and did not believe in miraculous powers.  And here, since it is the most convenient place, I must mention that he was a little man, and had eyes of a hot brown, very erect red hair, a moustache with ends that he twisted up, and freckles.  His name was George McWhirter Fotheringay—­not the sort of name by any means to lead to any expectation of miracles—­and he was clerk at Gomshott’s.  He was greatly addicted to assertive argument.  It was while he was asserting the impossibility of miracles that he had his first intimation of his extraordinary powers.  This particular argument was being held in the bar of the Long Dragon, and Toddy Beamish was conducting the opposition by a monotonous but effective “So you say,” that drove Mr. Fotheringay to the very limit of his patience.