It was storm.
His heart sank a little as he set out straight north, marking the direction by the point of his compass.

It was a gray and sunless day.
Beyond him for a distance the Barren was a white plain, and this plain seemed always to be merging not very far ahead into the purple haze of the sky.

At the end of an hour he was in the center of a vast amphitheater which was filled with the gloom and the stillness of death.

Behind him the thin fringe of the forest had disappeared.

The rim of the sky was like a leaden thing, widening only as he advanced.
Under that sky, and imprisoned within its circular walls, he knew that men had gone mad; he felt already the crushing oppression of an appalling loneliness, and for another hour he fought an almost irresistible desire to turn back.