science are frequently so well disguised, that many people take them for
earnest.

Gazen made numerous observations of the celestial bodies, more
especially the sun, which now appeared as a globe of lilac fire in the
centre of a silvery lustre, but I will leave him to publish his results
in his own fashion. We may claim to have seen the South Pole, but, of
course, at a distance too great for scientific purposes. Judging by its
appearance, I should say it was surrounded by a frozen land. The earth,
with its ruddy and green continents, delineated as on a map, or veiled
in belted clouds, was a magnificent object for the telescope as it
wheeled in the blue rays of the sun.

Hour after hour, with a kind of loving fascination, we watched it
growing "fine by degrees and beautifully less," until at last it waned
into a bright star.

Venus, on the other hand, waxed more and more brilliant until it
rivalled the moon, and Mercury appeared as a rosy star not far from it.

We soon got accustomed to the funereal aspect of the sky, and the utter
silence of space. Indeed, I was not so much impressed by the reality as
I had been by the simulacrum in my dream of sunrise in the moon. When I
looked at the weird radiance of the sun, however, I realised as I had
never done before that he was only a star seen comparatively near, and
that the earth was but his insignificant satellite. Moreover, when I
gazed down into the yawning gulf, with its strange constellations so far
_beneath_ us, I felt to the full the awful loneliness of the universe;
and how that all life and soul were confined to mere sunlit specks
thinly scattered here and there in the blackness of eternal night.