It had been a sultry day. The sun rose with a fiery glance, and the
sea blushed with a deep red as his hot beams glided over the heaving
surface. The clouds hung heavily and gloomy in one part of the horizon,
sending back to the sun a glowing, angry look in exchange for his
fierce gaze. It was not long before the massive clouds came rolling
up, as they were pressed forward by the western breeze, which was
rushing forward as hastily as the rest. The sun tried to frighten the
advancing vapours, but could not. They came onward till they covered
the sky, and drove the bright rays from the gilding of the waters.
The wind, rejoicing in its power to drive the clouds, now flew upon the
ocean and buffeted the waves. Affrighted at its blows, they fled hither
and thither in their distress, and mingled their roar of terror with
the shrill shrieks and cries of their invisible foe.
It was a storm. The captain, who had been attentively watching the
signs, and losing his breakfast, saw what was coming, and prepared
for it. The sails were taken in, and the ship made snug and safe. The
storm came with a wild burst all at once, and reeled the vessel almost
upon its side. But the officer was there, the helmsman was awake to
his duty, and the lounging barque kept on her course in spite of her
erratic movements.
James was not insensible to fear. He was but a boy. And when, in
addition to the noise of wind and billows, the thunders came pealing
from the heavens, he instinctively clapped his fingers to his ears, as
if to drown the sound and his fears. The vivid stream of lightning, as
it darted from cloud to cloud, played round the ship, or plunged madly
into the sea, added to the interest and the terror.
But the echoes died away to whispers. The clouds put on their snowy
robes. The ripples gently laughed on the bosom of the ocean. The sun,
no longer angry, smiled kindly upon the scene. In the evening, a few
lines of vapour were motionless in the sky; and the long, uncertain
heavings of the waters told that a calm was softly ruling all.
The boy was found by his father looking at the placid face of the
heavens.
“What, boy! at your old post, staring at Orion again.
I’ll tell you what I was thinking of, father. You see the world is like
this ship--always on the rock, never really still--and I was thinking
how pleasant rest is, and what a lot of it they must get up there in
the fixed stars.
Not so; we are now learning that they are, like some boys, not so
steady as they look.
You surely don’t mean to say that such respectable old folks as Sirius
and his bright friends ever go dancing about in the heavens like giddy
Venus and Mercury? I know they appear to tumble about over our masts in
a storm at night, but that is because the ship is rolled over by the
winds and waves.
It is really true that they do not keep to their places, though the
change of position is so very slight as not easily to be discovered.
Your friend Sirius, for instance, has been closely watched, Dog as he
is, for two thousand years. We know what his place was that time ago,
and what it is now; and it has shifted to the southward half-a-degree.
That is as much as the apparent diameter of the sun. But has he any
company in his rambles?
Yes; the _Bull’s_ Eye, Aldebaran, has kept up pace with him.
Quite right to have an Eye upon the Dog. But has any exact difference
of position been observed since we have had good telescopes?
The star sixty-nine of the _Swan_ has been well watched for fifty
years, and found to have gone on four minutes--the eighth part of the
moon’s face. A star in the _Indian_ has moved seven seconds in the
year. They are not fixed, like the ancients thought they were, in a
crystalline sphere; or riveted, as Aristotle taught.
Pray, is our sun no more fixed than the rest of them?
He, too, is on the move.
But where are they all going to?
That has been a matter of dispute. Some thought the stars were dancing
round Sirius. But Mädler, the German astronomer, would have us believe
that they have a greater fancy for some spot near the _Pleiades_.
Others think of Hercules. But all would take many millions of years.”