The Book of the Damned

According to Capt. Banner, it was a cloud of circular form, with an included semi-circle divided into four parts, the central dividing shaft beginning at the center of the circle and extending far outward, and then curving backward. Geometricity and complexity and stability of form: and the small likelihood of a cloud maintaining such diversity of features, to say nothing of appearance of organic form. The thing traveled from a point at about 20 degrees above the horizon to a point about 80 degrees above. Then it settled down to the northeast, having appeared from the south, southeast. Light gray in color, or it was cloud-color. "It was much lower than the other clouds." And this datum stands out: That, whatever it may have been, it traveled against the wind. "It came up obliquely against the wind, and finally settled down right in the wind's eye." For half an hour this form was visible. When it did finally disappear that was not because it disintegrated like a cloud, but because it was lost to sight in the evening darkness. Capt. Banner draws the following diagram: 23 Text-books tell us that the Dhurmsalla meteorites were picked up "soon," or "within half an hour." Given a little time the conventionalists may argue that these stones were hot when they fell, but that their great interior coldness had overcome the molten state of their surfaces. According to the Deputy Commissioner of Dhurmsalla, these stones had been picked up "immediately" by passing coolies. These stones were so cold that they benumbed the fingers. But they had fallen with a great light. It is described as "a flame of fire about two feet in depth and nine feet in length." Acceptably this light was not the light of molten matter.