H G Wells

The Wonderful Visit H G Wells

On the Night of the Strange Bird, many people at Sidderton (and some nearer) saw a Glareon the Sidderford moor. But no one in Sidderford saw it, for most of Sidderford was abed. All day the wind had been rising, so that the larks on the moor chirruped fitfully near theground, or rose only to be driven like leaves before the wind. The sun set in a bloody welterof clouds, and the moon was hidden. The glare, they say, was golden like a beam shining outof the sky, not a uniform blaze, but broken all over by curving flashes like the waving ofswords. It lasted but a moment and left the night dark and obscure. There were lettersabout it in Nature, and a rough drawing that no one thought very like. (You may see it foryourself-the drawing that was unlike the glare-on page 42 of Vol. cclx. of thatpublication.) None in Sidderford saw the light, but Annie, Hooker Durgan's wife, was lying awake, andshe saw the reflection of it-a flickering tongue of gold-dancing on the wall