'A comet--that's all, Master Swithin,' repeated Hannah, in a lower voice,
fearing she had done harm in some way.
'Well, tell me, tell me!' cried Swithin. 'Is it Gambart's? Is it
Charles the Fifth's, or Halley's, or Faye's, or whose?' 'Hush!' said she, thinking St. Cleeve slightly delirious again. ''Tis God A'mighty's, of course. I haven't seed en myself, but they say he's
getting bigger every night, and that he'll be the biggest one known for
fifty years when he's full growed. There, you must not talk any more
now, or I'll go away.' Here was an amazing event, little noise as it had made in the happening.
Of all phenomena that he had longed to witness during his short
astronomical career, those appertaining to comets had excited him most.
That the magnificent comet of 1811 would not return again for thirty
centuries had been quite a permanent regret with him. And now, when the
bottomless abyss of death seemed yawning beneath his feet, one of these
much-desired apparitions, as large, apparently, as any of its tribe, had
chosen to show itself.
'O, if I could but live to see that comet through my equatorial!' he
cried.
Compared with comets, variable stars, which he had hitherto made his
study, were, from their remoteness, uninteresting. They were to the
former as the celebrities of Ujiji or Unyamwesi to the celebrities of his
own country. Members of the solar system, these dazzling and perplexing
rangers, the fascination of all astronomers, rendered themselves still
more fascinating by the sinister suspicion attaching to them of being
possibly the ultimate destroyers of the human race. In his physical
prostration St. Cleeve wept bitterly at not being hale and strong enough
to welcome with proper honour the present specimen of these desirable
visitors.
The strenuous wish to live and behold the new phenomenon, supplanting the
utter weariness of existence that he had heretofore experienced, gave him
a new vitality. The crisis passed; there was a turn for the better; and
after that he rapidly mended. The comet had in all probability saved his
life. The limitless and complex wonders of the sky resumed their old
power over his imagination; the possibilities of that unfathomable blue
ocean were endless. Finer feats than ever he would perform were to be
achieved in its investigation. What Lady Constantine had said, that for
one discovery made ten awaited making, was strikingly verified by the
sudden appearance of this splendid marvel.
The windows of St. Cleeve's bedroom faced the west, and nothing would
satisfy him but that his bed should be so pulled round as to give him a
view of the low sky, in which the as yet minute tadpole of fire was
recognizable. The mere sight of it seemed to lend him sufficient
resolution to complete his own cure forthwith. His only fear now was
lest, from some unexpected cause or other, the comet would vanish before
he could get to the observatory on Rings-Hill Speer.