Message #138372

[Crystal Thielkien]

p. 239

CHAPTER XVI
THE SILVER HAMMER
Je ne m’en défends plus et je ne veux qu’ aller
Reconnaître la place où je dois l’immoler.
                                   (Andromaque.)
 

It was this sort of a night when what I am going to tell you now happened. Toward five o'clock the sky clouded over and a sense of the coming storm trembled in the stifling air.

I shall always remember it. It was the fifth of January, 1897.

King Hiram and Galé lay heavily on the matting of my room. Leaning on my elbows beside Tanit-Zerga in the rock-hewn window, I spied the advance tremors of lightning.

One by one they rose, streaking the now total darkness with their bluish stripes. But no burst of thunder followed. The storm did not attain the peaks of Ahaggar. It passed without breaking, leaving us in our gloomy bath of sweat.

"I am going to bed," said Tanit-Zerga.

I have said that her room was above mine. Its

p. 240