two hours after noon
But in front the colour grew thin , as if the stain that the river washed down was all but spent . In his heart the Wanderer thought , as any man must have deemed , that on the banks of the River of Egypt there had been some battle of great nations , and that the War God had raged furiously , wherefore the holy river as it ran forth stained all the sacred sea . Where war was , there was his home , no other home had he now , and all the more eagerly he steered right on to see what the Gods would send him . The flight of birds was over and past ; it was two hours after noon , the light was high in the heaven , when , as he gazed , another shadow fell on him , for the sun in mid-heaven grew small , and red as blood . Slowly a mist rose up over it from the South , a mist that was thin but as black as night . Beyond , to the southward , there was a bank of cloud like a mountain wall , steep , and polished , and black , tipped along the ragged crest with fire , and opening ever and again with flashes of intolerable splendour , while the bases were scrawled over with lightning like a written scroll . Never had the Wanderer in all his voyaging on the sea and on the great River Oceanus that girdles the earth , and severs the dead from the living men -- never had he beheld such a darkness .