FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86  
87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   >>   >|  
e Andes call us for breakfast. When the Pacific Ocean has passed from view, Japan and Australia shall strike noon for us, and we will have supper and call it night when the Indian Ocean is gone and darkest Africa has come into view!" CHAPTER XII Space Fever We counted seven successive returns of the peaks of the Andes, and being by that time certainly six million miles from the Earth, we could distinguish them no longer. Then followed what I remember as a very long and unspeakably monotonous period, without any adequate method of marking the time. Our days became a full week long, for the only way we could guess at the time was by the quarterings of the Moon. We could still see her about the size of a marble in the telescope, and as her crescent began to wane, and finally her light entirely disappeared, we knew she was then just between us and the Earth, and shining upon that planet as a Full Moon. This was due to occur fifteen days after our departure. Then we watched her grow from a thin crescent to a bright quarter, and we knew another week had elapsed. "We shall soon be able to determine one date with absolute certainty," I said to the doctor, when we must have been some twenty days out. "I have been reading up your almanack, and I find there is a total eclipse of the Sun by the Moon on June 29th." "You might as well try to eclipse him with a straw-hat, as far as we are concerned," he replied. "The Moon will necessarily be on the further side of the Earth when that occurs, and the eclipse will barely reach the Earth. It will fall short of us by a matter of some thirty million miles!" It was soon after this that we gave up observing the Earth as a planet, put on our darkened lens, and proceeded to hold her as a spot in the Sun a little to the left of his centre. The Moon remained a tiny spot of light outside for a few days; but finally she entered the Sun also, and was seen as a faint spot travelling toward the Earth-spot. Although the dazzling quality of the light, into which we had emerged after the second day, was finally beginning to wane and pale a little, Mars was still invisible. In fact, no stars or planets were visible; only the gleaming Sun with the Earth-spot upon it. Our thermometer was poorly placed in the glare of the Sun at the rear; but it showed the heat was decreasing, and from a temperature of thirty-five degrees, observed at the end of the second day, it had now fallen to tw
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86  
87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

finally

 

eclipse

 

thirty

 

crescent

 
planet
 
million
 

Pacific

 

matter

 

barely

 

observing


breakfast

 

darkened

 

proceeded

 

occurs

 

necessarily

 

replied

 

fallen

 
concerned
 

centre

 

planets


visible
 
invisible
 

gleaming

 

thermometer

 

showed

 

poorly

 

temperature

 
beginning
 

entered

 

passed


remained

 
observed
 

travelling

 
emerged
 

degrees

 

quality

 
Although
 
dazzling
 

decreasing

 

marble


successive

 

quarterings

 

returns

 

counted

 

telescope

 

disappeared

 
Africa
 

CHAPTER

 
distinguish
 

unspeakably