For, candidly and truly speaking, never before had mortal eye revelled on such a scene of starry splendor. The black sky sparkled with lustrous fires, like the ceiling of a vast hall of ebony encrusted with flashing diamonds. Ardan's eye could take in the whole extent in an easy sweep from the Southern Cross to the Little Bear, thus embracing within one glance not only the two polar stars of the present day, but also Campus and Vega, which, by reason of the precession of the Equinoxes, are to be our polar stars 12,000 years hence. His imagination, as if intoxicated, reeled wildly through these sublime infinitudes and got lost in them. He forgot all about himself and all about his companions. He forgot even the strangeness of the fate that had sent them wandering through these f*******n reg
