not say.

I frequently lay down on the bunker of our little sloop, and
looked far up into the blue dome of the sky; and, notwithstanding
the sun was shining far away in the east, I always saw a single
star overhead. For several days, when I looked for this star,
it was always there directly above us.

It was now, according to our reckoning, about the first of
August. The sun was high in the heavens, and was so bright that I
could no longer see the one lone star that attracted my attention
a few days earlier.

One day about this time, my father startled me by calling my
attention to a novel sight far in front of us, almost at the
horizon. "It is a mock sun," exclaimed my father. "I have read
of them; it is called a reflection or mirage. It will soon pass
away."

But this dull-red, false sun, as we supposed it to be, did not
pass away for several hours; and while we were unconscious of its
emitting any rays of light, still there was no time thereafter
when we could not sweep the horizon in front and locate the
illumination of the so-called false sun, during a period of at
least twelve hours out of every twenty-four.

Clouds and mists would at times almost, but never entirely, hide
its location. Gradually it seemed to climb higher in the horizon
of the uncertain purply sky as we advanced.