One night I sat alone on the great down, looking over the edge of it
at a murky, sullen city. All day long with its smoke it had troubled
the holy sky, and now it sat there roaring in the distance and glared
at me with its furnaces and lighted factory windows. Suddenly I became
aware that I was not the only enemy of that city, for I perceived
the colossal form of the Hurricane walking over the down towards me,
playing idly with the flowers as he passed, and near me he stopped and
spake to the Earthquake, who had come up mole-like but vast out of a
cleft in the earth.
‘Old friend,’ said the Hurricane, ‘rememberest when we wrecked the
nations and drave the herds of the sea into new pasturage?’
‘Yes,’ said the Earthquake, drowsily; ‘Yes, yes.’
‘Old friend,’ said the Hurricane, ‘there are cities everywhere. Over
thy head while thou didst sleep they have built them constantly. My
four children the Winds suffocate with the fumes of them, the valleys
are desolate of flowers, and the lovely forests are cut down since last
we went abroad together.’
The Earthquake lay there, with his snout towards the city, blinking at
the lights, while the tall Hurricane stood beside him pointing fiercely
at it.
‘Come,’ said the Hurricane, ‘let us fare forth again and destroy them,
that all the lovely forests may come back and the furry creeping
things. Thou shalt whelm these cities utterly and drive the people
forth, and I will smite them in the shelterless places and sweep their
desecrations from the sea. Wilt thou come forth with me and do this
thing for the glory of it? Wilt thou wreck the world again as we did,
thou and I, or ever Man had come? Wilt thou come forth to this place at
this hour tomorrow night?’
‘Yes,’ said the Earthquake, ‘Yes,’ and he crept to his cleft again, and
head foremost waddled down into the abysses.
When the Hurricane strode away, I got up quietly and departed, but at
that hour of the next night I came up cautiously to the same spot.
There I found the huge grey form of the Hurricane alone, with his head
bowed in his hands, weeping; for the Earthquake sleeps long and heavily
in the abysses, and he would not wake.