Part 74 (1/2)

”Then the thing is, how did the savages get here? n.o.body has ever been here before us; now where did they come from? There are sure to be grand ruins in the jungle somewhere,” said Bevis, ”all carved, and covered with inscriptions.”

”Huge trees growing on the top.”

”Magic signs chipped out on stones, and books made of string with knots instead of writing.”

Kaak! kaak! A heron was descending. The unearthly noise made them look up.

”Are there any tidal waves?” said Mark.

”Sometimes--a hundred feet high. But the thing is how did they get here? How did anybody ever get anywhere?”

”It's very crooked,” said Mark, ”very crooked: you can't quite see it, can you? Suppose you go and do the sun-dial: I'm sleepy.”

”Well, go to bed; I can do it.”

”Good-night!” said Mark. ”Lots of chopping to do to-morrow. We ought to have brought a grindstone for the axes. You have got the plan ready for the raft?”

”Quite ready.”

Mark went into the hut, placed the lantern in the niche, and threw himself on the bed. In half a minute he was firm asleep. Bevis went out of the courtyard, round outside the fence, and up on the cliff to the sun-dial. The stars shone brighter than it is usually thought they do when there is no moon; but in fact it is not so much the moon as the state of the atmosphere. There was no haze in the dry air, and he could see the Pole Star distinctly.

He sat down--as the post on which the dial was supported was low--on the southern side, with it between him and the north. He still had to stoop till he had got the tip of the gnomon to cover the North Star. Closing one eye, as if aiming, he then put his pencil on the dial in the circle or groove scratched by the compa.s.s. The long pencil was held upright in the groove, and moved round till it intercepted his view of the star.

The tip of the gnomon, the pencil, and the Pole Star were in a direct line, in a row one behind the other.

To make sure, he raised his head and looked over the gnomon and pencil to the star, when he found that he had not been holding the pencil upright; it leaned to the east, and made an error to the west in his meridian. ”It ought to be a plumb-line,” he thought. ”But I think it's straight now.”

He stooped again, and found the gnomon and pencil correct, and pressing on the pencil hard, drew it towards him out of the groove a little way.

By the moonlight when he got up he could see the mark he had left, and which showed the exact north. To-morrow he would have to draw a line from that mark straight to the gnomon, and when the shadow fell on that line it would be noon. With the fixed point of noon and the fixed point of four o'clock, he thought he could make the divisions for the rest of the hours.

The moonlight cast a shadow to the east of the noon-line, as she had crossed the meridian. Looking up, he saw the irregular circle of the moon high in the sky, so brilliant that the scored relievo work enchased upon her surface was obscured by the bright light reflected from it.

Behind him numerous lights glittered in the still water, near at hand they were sharp clean points, far away they were short bands of light drawn towards him. Bevis went to the young oak and sat down under it.

Ca.s.siopeia fronted him, and Capella; the Northern Crown, was faint and low; but westward great Arcturus shone, though the moon had taken the redness from him. The cross of Cygnus was lying on its side as it was carried through the eastern sky; beneath it the Eagle's central star hung over the Nile. Low in the south, over the unknown river Antares, too, had lost his redness.

Up through the branches of the oak he saw Lyra, the purest star in the heavens, white as whitest and clearest light may be, gleaming at the zenith of the pale blue dome. But just above the horizon northwards there was a faint white light, the faintest aurora, as if another moon was rising there. By these he knew his position, and that he was looking the same way as if he had been gazing from the large northern window of the parlour at home, or if he had been lying on the green path by the strawberries, as he sometimes did in the summer evenings.

Then the North Star, minute but clear--so small, and yet chosen for the axle and focus of the sky, instead of sun-like Sirius--the North Star always shone just over the group of elms by the orchard. Summer and winter, spring and autumn, it was always there, always over the elms-- whether they were reddening with the buds and flowers of February, whether they were dull green now in the heats of August, whether they were yellow in October.

d.i.c.k and his Team, whose waggon goes backwards, swung round it like a stone in a sling whirled about the shoulders. Sometimes the tail of the Bear, where d.i.c.k bestrides his second horse, hung down behind the elms into the vapour of the horizon. Sometimes the Pointers were nearly overhead. If they were hidden by a cloud, the Lesser Bear gave a point; or you could draw a line through Ca.s.siopeia, and tell the North by her chair of stars.

The comets seemed to come within the circle of Bootes--Arcturus you always know is some way beyond the tail of the Bear. The comets come inside the circle of the stars that never set. The governor had seen three or four appear there in his time, just over the elms under the Pole. Donati's, which perhaps you can remember, came there--a tiny thing twelve inches long from nucleus to tail to look at, afterwards the weird sign the world stood amazed at. Then there was another not long after, which seemed to appear at once as a broad streak across the sky.

Like the sketches in old star-maps, it did indeed cross the whole sky for a night or two, but went too quickly for the world to awake at midnight and wonder at. Lately two more have come in the enchanted circle of the stars that never set.

All the stars from Arcturus to Capella came about the elms by the orchard; as Arcturus went down over the place of sunset in autumn, Capella began to s.h.i.+ne over another group of elms--in the meadow to the north-east. Capella is sure to be seen, because it begins to become conspicuous just as people say the sky is star-lit as winter sends the first frost or two. But Capella is the brightest star in the northern sky in summer, and it always came up by the second or north-east group of elms.

Between these two groups of tall trees--so tall and thick that they were generally visible even on dark nights--the streamers of the Aurora Borealis shot up in winter, and between them in summer the faint reflection of the midnight sun, like the lunar dawn which precedes the rising of the moon always appeared. The real day-dawn--the white foot of Aurora--came through the sky-curtain a little to the right of the second group, and about over a young oak in the hedge across the road, opposite the garden wall.

When the few leaves left on this young oak were brown, and rustled in the frosty night, the ma.s.sy shoulder of Orion came heaving up through it--first one bright star, then another; then the gleaming girdle, and the less definite scabbard; then the great constellation stretched across the east. At the first sight of Orion's shoulder Bevis always felt suddenly stronger, as if a breath of the mighty hunter's had come down and entered into him.