Of the great courage of three engineers—How they passed the Screen and
saw the Host of Heaven—How they further discovered a Disk of
Unknown Fire—Of the reception of the news throughout the world—Of
the construction of a mountain Observatory; and of the rapid
growth of Astronomical knowledge.
The levelling of the rock was necessarily a work which required a good
deal of time; and, while it was proceeding, three of the engineers
formed the daring project of scrambling up the cliff, into the cloud,
and endeavouring to penetrate through it by themselves. All the three
were in the stationary period of life, and, consequently, in the
possession of full bodily strength and activity. The cliff was in most
places rough enough to give good hold for both hands and feet. Still, to
venture on a climb through a dense mist, on the face of a nearly
precipitous and wholly unknown mountain, where a single slip would be
certainly followed by immediate destruction, was regarded by their
comrades as too hazardous to be thought of.
But the three were not to be dissuaded—I ought, perhaps, to mention that
it is to one of these daring men I am indebted for the account of the
whole expedition. Their preparations were soon complete, for their
equipment was very simple; each of them took about one pound weight of
some sort of food in a highly concentrated form, and a flask containing
a pint of water. Water, it may be observed, was valuable at this
elevation, for every drop had to be carried up from the glacier region.
Each man also carried a coil of about five hundred yards of fine, but
very strong twine. This was intended to be used as a clue to guide them
back to the camp. Fixing an end of one of these coils to the wall of
their store, they started on their perilous journey at two o’clock in
the afternoon. Without very much difficulty they scrambled up to the
edge of the cloud, and there disappeared from the sight of their
friends, most of whom believed that they had gone mad.
As a proof of the great care and skill with which the works had been
carried on, I may here remark that, up to this time, but one fatal
accident had occurred. This was during the construction of the galleries
on the face of the thirty-thousand-feet precipice. The top had been
nearly reached, when a man, who was heaving a fragment of rock over the
edge, lost his balance, and fell with the fragment. His horrified
comrades watched his terrible fall, unbroken for about twenty thousand
feet; there he touched a projecting spur of the rock, and evanesced
instantly, mortal lesion having been made.
As soon as the three adventurers had entered the cloud they had the
satisfaction of finding that, at all events, one possible obstacle, an
obstacle which might have proved fatal to the success of the whole
undertaking, had no existence. It had been feared that the atmosphere of
the cloud-screen might turn out to be unfit for the support of animal
life. But they found no difficulty in breathing. The extreme tenuity of
the air, of course, rendered active exertion very laborious and
exhausting, and thus, though the rock was not unfavourable for climbing,
their upward progress was exceedingly slow. They often encountered
difficulties which were quite insuperable, and which compelled them,
retracing their steps, and recoiling their clue, to seek another line of
ascent.
As they slowly attained a higher altitude, it became quite plain that
the angle of inclination was steadily becoming less. Before long it
reached fifty degrees, and this change of slope, though it eased their
climb, caused great apprehension to the climbers, for it seemed to
indicate an approach to the top, and certainly no signs of any abatement
in the density of the mist had yet become visible. To reach the summit
while still wrapped in the cloud would be the deathblow to all their
hopes.
This angle of fifty degrees continued unaltered for a considerable
distance. At about six o’clock, after four hours’ hard work, they came
to the end of their second coil of string. Night was evidently coming
on; they sat down on a small ledge of rock, and after taking some
refreshment, they fastened their last coil to the string already paid
out, resolved to proceed till it also came to an end.
A few hundred feet further on the slope suddenly grew much steeper, and
this, requiring additional exertion in the very thin air, soon produced
such exhaustion in two of the party, that they were obliged to stop
again and rest.
By this time it had become quite dark, and the third engineer, who was
still in as vigorous a condition as when he started from the camp,
imagined that he perceived overhead through the mist what seemed to be
small twinkling lights. Immediately he resumed the ascent, and still
holding the clue, climbed a few yards higher up the mountain. And then
he stopped and held on to the steep rock with both his hands, while he
looked at the great Host of Heaven shining in the black depths of space.
The cloud terminated above as abruptly as it began below. He had reached
the edge, and the vision came upon him suddenly.
When he recovered his speech he called softly to his companions to
follow up the clue, for the cloud was passed. They struggled up with
difficulty, and then all three stood together in silent wonder at the
spectacle before them. They had not the slightest conception of its
meaning; what the lights were; whether connected or not with their own
abode; what were their distances; were they living beings—for a falling
star, which suddenly flashed across the sky, suggested this question.
Seen through that exceeding thin air, the splendour of the stars and
planets was greater than what we, who have only seen them through a much
denser medium, are able to conceive. Conspicuous above them all in
beauty and brightness was the earth itself, which, being then in
opposition, was at its least distance from the observers. When in that
position, the earth presents to the Hesperians a much more brilliant
object than their planet does to us. For, though not receiving as great
a supply of light from the sun as Hesperos does, this deficiency is far
more than balanced by the fact that, when in opposition, the whole of
the illuminated face of the earth is visible at Hesperos, while only an
exceedingly thin crescent of Hesperos is visible at the earth.
Notwithstanding the intense coldness of the air, they stood for a long
time contemplating the wondrous illumination. At last they became
conscious of a change in the scene. The small lights began to grow dim,
while the light diffused around them increased. The upper surface of the
sea of cloud which lay stretched out on all sides, a few feet below
them, gradually manifested itself as a smooth greyish-coloured plain.
Behind them, towards the east, the mountain still sloped steeply up;
but, at no great height above their heads, the top was distinctly
visible. They resolved to continue the ascent, having first fastened the
end of their clue, which was now unnecessary, to a conspicuous
projection of rock about a hundred feet above the upper cloud surface.
The remainder of the climb, which was hardly a thousand feet more, was
easily accomplished by the three engineers, now rested and reinvigorated
by success. And, on reaching the summit, which proved to be a small and
nearly level platform of rock, they were rewarded with another spectacle
totally different in kind, but fully as astonishing as that which met
their eyes when they emerged from the cloud.
By this time every trace of the heavenly lights had vanished, and they
beheld on all sides of them a perfectly uniform and level plain. At one
point, towards the east of this plain, an object was visible which at
once absorbed the entire attention of the three. A very small segment of
a fiery circle bordered on the horizon, shedding a track of bright light
over the cloudy sea, which lay about a thousand feet below them. As they
gazed and gazed on the fiery segment, it soon became plain that the
segment belonged to a burning circular disk which was rising out of the
cloud. The segment quickly grew into a semicircle; a few minutes more,
and the whole disk became visible, left the cloud, and mounted slowly in
the sky. At the same time the vast plain took a snow-white colour of
dazzling radiance, and the heat emitted from the disk became so intense
that the three mountaineers retreated quickly into the shadow of the
peak by descending a few steps on the western side. One thing had become
quite clear to them, namely, the cause of the daily illumination of the
cloud-screen. It was evidently the great disk of unknown fire, which was
still mounting in the air and travelling towards the west.
Obviously no delay was to be made in descending to the camp and
communicating to their comrades the tidings of the complete success of
the expedition. They were obliged to use great caution on the downward
journey. All mountaineers are aware that the descent of a very steep
slope, where a single slip would be fatal, is a much more ticklish
process than its ascent, insomuch that some have ventured to affirm that
few great ascents would be made if the descent came first. By two
o’clock in the afternoon they had accomplished the descent of the open
part of the mountain; they easily found the string fastened to the
projecting rock, and, re-entering the cloud, and guided by the clue,
they very slowly, but without accident, found their way back to the
camp, which they reached about six o’clock in the evening.
The reader will easily understand the joy which the safe return of the
three engineers occasioned in the camp, and the intense interest with
which their story of the marvels visible beyond the cloud was listened
to. Their report was hastily committed to writing, sent down by the
tramways, and circulated through the world with all speed. Operations
were instantly resumed at the gallery, which had still to be driven
through the cloud stratum. It was resolved to continue it right up to
the top of the mountain, for the report of the engineers rendered it
quite plain that an extensive observatory must be established there, and
that a corps of the ablest mathematicians and best trained physical
observers must take up their permanent abode in it, in order to
investigate the nature and meaning of the myriad smaller lights and the
great fiery disk.
Meanwhile, daring the progress of the works, many of the artificers who
were in the prime of life, repeated the ascent which had been so
successfully accomplished by the three pioneers; with the guidance of
the clue, this was now a comparatively easy undertaking. Before the
lapse of three years the first Hesperian observatory had been actually
built, and a body of twenty-five of the ablest scientific men entered
upon the study of practical and theoretical astronomy in that elevated
abode. As a protection against the violence of the unscreened solar
rays, a cavern was excavated in which the observers could pass the
daytime at their calculations, and, issuing forth at nightfall, they
laboriously watched the stars.
The speed with which these men found out the clue to the explanation of
the complicated phenomena before them, would be quite incredible to
anyone who did not bear in mind the remarkable conditions under which
they worked. This was no case of a gang of stolid country bumpkins
contemplating for the first time the starry heavens. Every one of the
observers was an expert geometer, was perfectly familiar with all kinds
of algebraical calculation, and had been trained for centuries in every
type of physical observation and experiment. Before the discovery of the
heavenly world telescopes had been invented; but, being adapted for use
on the surface of the planet only, they were all of small size. The vast
field for observation now disclosed, created a demand for a much more
powerful class of instruments, and the stimulus thus given to opticians
soon showed its effect in most important improvements in the manufacture
of glass. Before many years were over, high class astronomical
instruments were attainable, including those by which angles can be
measured to an extraordinary degree of minuteness.
Thus the great rapidity with which this able band of observers succeeded
in reducing the chaos of the fields of heaven to an orderly cosmos may
be explained. I need not attempt to recount the successive steps in
their marvellous progress. A very few days after they began their
systematic labour, one of them suggested the real rotation of the planet
on her axis as the cause of the apparent diurnal movement of the
celestial sphere. This conjecture was speedily verified by pendulum
experiments at the pole. Then followed the discoveries of the
distinction between stars and planets and satellites; the distances and
magnitudes of the planets; the position of their own world among them,
and the dependence of the whole solar system on the sun. In short, by
the close of the ninth millenary period, the Hesperian astronomy was a
long way in advance of anything even now known on earth.
In the ancient history of Hesperos this discovery of the external world
forms by far the most important epoch, and, for several centuries, the
study of astronomy seems to have absorbed a great part of the energies
of the inhabitants. Two other places were found on the mountain chains
of the north, where, by going through the same kind of works as those
detailed above—some of them involving even greater difficulties in their
execution—peaks which rose above the cloud were reached, and
observatories built upon them. It thus became possible to compare
observations taken at different parts of the surface, and astronomical
discoveries proceeded with still greater rapidity.