Argosy, Volume XXIII — Index Page, 1897 — page 177: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Bl ign a bel ey ‘ ; "oe ig a oh see ae Tan es o 5 awk oes A MONTH IN ‘THE MOON. 747 this vantage ground in space, forbidden as it is to earthly telescopes, we shall contemplate the starry constellations of the solar world !’’ ‘‘ But do you not think that the invisible hemisphere will be just like this one?’’ asked Kaddour, wishing to be informed, and at the same time to save Norbert (whom he was daily learning to like better) from a dire disappoint- ment. ‘“TIt is,’’ replied Norbert, ‘‘ not merely the unknown surface of the moon that we long to see, but also the spectacle of the starry heavens from this new and incomparable point of view. It will be beautiful, Kaddour! We shall both feel that we are looking for the first time, as it were, upon the Great Bear, Cassiopeia, the Lyre, the Milky Way, and all the other familiar details of the sky; they will be brought out into high relief, and shown to the greatest advantage,-on the black ground of this perfect night !”’ Conversing thus by signs, Norbert, spurred on by his own enthusiasm, redoubled the pace, and took great strides of forty or fifty yards at once, so that the poor dwarf could scarcely keep up with him. At length the travelers reached a height to the west that they had been nearing for some time past. Norbert rightly supposed it to form part of the ‘ parallactic fringe,’’ an intermediate region sometimes visible and anon hidden from the earth on account of the moon’s libration. He was not mistaken. Scarcely had they passed the summit when the sun became only partially visible above the horizon. All at once it vanished, and our friends found themselves, without any transition, plunged into the darkest night ! Then, at last, the spectacle so longed for by Norbert burst upon him in its full splendor. 7 Innumerable stars gleamed like diamonds in an ink black sky devoid of either earth or moon. They were as perfectly motionless as is the polar star. For three hundred and fifty hours consecutively they reigned in the cloud- less atmosphere, and offered to the beholder every opportunity of taking the minutest observation as to their altitude and configuration. It was, indeed, what Norbert had expected to see, but the reality was dazzling in its grandeur, : When he recovered sufficiently to set up his telescope he found himself almost paralyzed with cold. His jaws were contracted, and all his limbs numbed. His lungs could scarcely breathe the oxygen of his respirator, and there was a keen pain across his temples. Another minute and he would | have frozen. He was turning back with a gesture of impatience to tell Kaddour that they must perforce return to the lighted zone, when on a sudden he caught sight afar off of a red glare upon the surface of the moon. One might have taken its flickering to proceed from a beacon fire. ‘It is a lighthouse or a volcano !’”’ thought Norbert. He took Kaddour by the hand as if he were a child of four years old, and ran toward it as hard as he could. ‘The violent exercise soon.warmed them both, and they went such a pace that they soon got over the three or four leagues separating them from the fire. Eomichooks |) (EC)