The cleft leaped out in a flood of violet light.
Now for another instant the stars which had been motionless, poised upon the whirling spheres, joined in their mad spinning.

Cyclopean pin wheels they turned; again as one they ceased.

More brilliant now was their light, dazzling; as though in their whirling they had gathered greater force.
Under me I felt the split Thing quiver with eagerness.
From the stars came a hurricane of lightning! A cataract of electric flame poured into the crack, splashed and guttered down the granite walls.

We were blinded by it; were deafened with thunders.
The face of the precipice smoked and split; was whirled away in clouds of dust.
The crack widened--widened as a gulley in a sand bank does when a swift stream rushes through it.

Lightnings these were--and more than lightnings; lightnings keyed up to an invincible annihilating weapon that could rend and split and crumble to atoms the living granite.
Steadily the cleft expanded.