Page:Gods Glory in the Heavens.djvu/50

34 be precipitated from the lofty lunar cliffs, but no sound is heard—it falls noiselessly as a flock of wool. The inhabitants can converse only by signs. The musician in vain attempts to elicit sweet music from his stringed instrument; no note ever reaches the ear. Armies in battle array do not hear the boom of the cannon, though rifled arms, from the low trajectory of the ball, must acquire a fatal precision and range. No moving thing can live aloft; the eagle flaps its wings against the rocks, and in vain attempts to rise. The balloon, instead of raising the car, crushes it with the weight of its imprisoned gas.

Again, the inhabitants, having no atmosphere to shelter them from the sun and store up its heat, must recoil with terror from its fierce rays. During the long lunar day, the ground must become as burning marl, from which the scorched feet shrink with pain; during the equally long night, it must be colder than frozen mercury. No fuel will burn to mitigate the rigour of the cold, and none but the electric light can avail to dispel the darkness.

Then as to light, how strange are the conditions! At noon-day the sky is as black as pitch, except in the region of the sun; and the stars shine out as at midnight. When the sun disappears in the horizon, darkness is as sudden as the darkness of an eclipse, or the extinguishing of a candle in a room. The inhabitants, on the shady side of a range of mountains, must be in almost total darkness, though the sun is