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There were, however, no oscillations to and fro, such as Bessel had seen and speculated upon in 1835. As the size of the nucleus contracted with approach to perihelion, its intensity augmented. On October 2, it outshone Arcturus, and for a week or ten days was a conspicuous object half an hour after sunset.

It was an exercise designed to test a cadet's steadiness under emergency conditions of space. The three members of the Arcturus unit had completed their runs and had returned to the ship in excellent time. Roger and Astro had also taken their tests and now it depended on Tom.

Maskull smiled, but his eyes were grave. "Then we are looking at the gateway of Arcturus, and Krag is now travelling north to unlock it." "You no longer think it impossible, I fancy," mumbled Nightspore. After a mile or two, the road parted from the sea coast and swerved sharply inland, across the hills. With Nightspore as guide, they left it and took to the grass.

Its angular diameter, measured at Mount Wilson by Pease with the 20-foot Michelson interferometer on April 15, 1921, is 0.022 of a second, in close agreement with Russell's predicted value of 0.019 of a second. The mean parallax of Arcturus, based upon several determinations, is 0.095 of a second, corresponding to a distance of 34 light-years.

The men's eyes ached and the intolerable sun pierced their double hats and dulled their brains. When all was ready, they waited and watched the sandy water creep up Arcturus' plates until the ropes stretched and groaned and the hulk began to list. On the wreck's other side, the tug's mast and funnel slanted.

The two teams closed. Roger threw a perfect block on his opposing wingman and the two boys went down in a heap. Tom side-stepped the Arcturus cadet on his side and sent him sprawling to the ground. He quickly cut across the field and threw his body headlong at the last remaining member of the opposition. Astro was free to kick the ball perfectly for a fifty-yard goal.

Did Smith, when he was in the neighborhood of Carthage pick up some such literal translations of the song of Atlas' as this: "He sang the wandering moon, and the labors of the Sun; From whence the race of men and flocks; whence rain and lightning; Of Arcturus, the rainy Hyades, and the twin Triones; Why the winter suns hasten so much to touch themselves in the ocean, And what delay retards the slow nights."

After all, it is something, whatever becomes of us, to have been conscious of all this. It is something to have outwatched Arcturus, and felt "the sweet influences" of the Pleiades. Congruous with such a mood is the manner in which, while Mr. Hardy opposes himself to Christianity, he cannot forget it. He cannot "cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart."

Thousands of human generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up of Time, and there remains no wreck of them any more; and Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the Shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar. Pshaw! what is this paltry little Dog-cage of an Earth; what art thou that sittest whining there?

I look abroad on these stars of our literary firmament, some crowded together with their minute points of light in a galaxy, some standing apart in glorious constellations; I recognize Arcturus and Orion and Perseus and the glittering jewels of the Southern Crown, and the Pleiades shedding sweet influences; but the Evening Star, the soft and serene light that glowed in their van, the precursor of them all, has sunk below the horizon.