Watchers of the Sky | Page 3

our press. They'd miss the one result
To flash 'three thousand
millions' round the world."
To-morrow night! For more than twenty
years,
They had thought and planned and worked. Ten years had gone,
One-fourth, or more, of man's brief working life,
Before they made
those solid tons of glass,
Their hundred-inch reflector, the clear pool,

The polished flawless pool that it must be
To hold the perfect
image of a star.
And, even now, some secret flaw--none knew
Until
to-morrow's test--might waste it all.
Where was the gambler that
would stake so much,--
Time, patience, treasure, on a single throw?

The cost of it,--they'd not find that again,
Either in gold or life-stuff!
All their youth
Was fuel to the flame of this one work.
Once in a
lifetime to the man of science,
Despite what fools believe his
ice-cooled blood,
There comes this drama.
If he fails, he fails
Utterly. He at least will have no time
For fresh
beginnings. Other men, no doubt,
Years hence, will use the footholes
that he cut
In those precipitous cliffs, and reach the height,
But he
will never see it."
So for me,
The light words of that letter seemed to hide
The passion
of a lifetime, and I shared
The crowning moment of its hope and fear.


Next day, through whispering aisles of palm we rode
Up to the
foot-hills, dreaming desert-hills
That to assuage their own delicious
drought
Had set each tawny sun-kissed slope ablaze
With peach
and orange orchards.
Up and up,
Along the thin white trail that wound and climbed
And
zig-zagged through the grey-green mountain sage,
The car went
crawling, till the shining plain
Below it, like an airman's map,
unrolled.
Houses and orchards dwindled to white specks
In midget
cubes and squares of tufted green.
Once, as we rounded one steep
curve, that made
The head swim at the canyoned gulf below,
We
saw through thirty miles of lucid air
Elvishly small, sharp as a
crumpled petal
Blown from the stem, a yard away, a sail
Lazily
drifting on the warm blue sea.
Up for nine miles along that spiral trail

Slowly we wound to reach the lucid height
Above the clouds,
where that white dome of shell,
No wren's now, but an eagle's, took
the flush
Of dying day. The sage-brush all died out,
And all the
southern growths, and round us now,
Firs of the north, and strong,
storm-rooted pines
Exhaled a keener fragrance; till, at last,

Reversing all the laws of lesser hills,
They towered like giants round
us. Darkness fell
Before we reached the mountain's naked height.
Over us, like some great cathedral dome,
The observatory loomed
against the sky;
And the dark mountain with its headlong gulfs
Had
lost all memory of the world below;
For all those cloudless throngs of
glittering stars
And all those glimmerings where the abyss of space

Is powdered with a milky dust, each grain
A burning sun, and every
sun the lord
Of its own darkling planets,--all those lights
Met, in a
darker deep, the lights of earth,
Lights on the sea, lights of invisible
towns,

Trembling and indistinguishable from stars,
In those black
gulfs around the mountain's feet.
Then, into the glimmering dome,
with bated breath,
We entered, and, above us, in the gloom
Saw that
majestic weapon of the light
Uptowering like the shaft of some huge

gun
Through one arched rift of sky.
Dark at its base
With naked arms, the crew that all day long
Had
sweated to make ready for this night
Waited their captain's word.
The switchboard shone
With elfin lamps of white and red, and keys

Whence, at a finger's touch, that monstrous tube
Moved like a
creature dowered with life and will,
To peer from deep to deep.
Below it pulsed
The clock-machine that slowly, throb by throb,

Timed to the pace of the revolving earth,
Drove the titanic muzzle on
and on,
Fixed to the chosen star that else would glide
Out of its
field of vision.
So, set free
Balanced against the wheel of time, it swung,
Or rested,
while, to find new realms of sky
The dome that housed it, like a
moon revolved,
So smoothly that the watchers hardly knew
They
moved within; till, through the glimmering doors,
They saw the dark
procession of the pines
Like Indian warriors, quietly stealing by.
Then, at a word, the mighty weapon dipped
Its muzzle and aimed at
one small point of light
One seeming insignificant star.
The chief,
Mounting the ladder, while we held our breath,
Looked
through the eye-piece.
Then we heard him laugh
His thanks to God, and hide it in a jest.

"A prominence on Jupiter!"--
They laughed,
"What do you mean?"--"It's moving," cried the chief,

They laughed again, and watched his glimmering face
High
overhead against that moving tower.
"Come up and see, then!"
One by one they went,
And, though each laughed as he returned to
earth,
Their souls were in their eyes.

Then I, too, looked,
And saw that insignificant spark of light

Touched with new meaning, beautifully reborn,
A swimming world,
a perfect rounded pearl,
Poised in the violet sky; and, as I gazed,
I
saw a miracle,--right on its upmost edge
A tiny mound of white that
slowly rose,
Then, like an exquisite seed-pearl, swung quite clear

And swam in heaven above its parent world
To greet its three bright
sister-moons.
A moon,
Of Jupiter, no more, but clearer far
Than