Page:The Book of the Damned (Fort, 1919).djvu/205

Rh it looked like a star passing over the moon—"which, on the next moment's consideration I knew to be impossible." "It was a fixed, steady light upon the dark part of the moon." I suppose "fixed" applies to luster.

In the ''Report of the Brit. Assoc.'', 1847-18, there is an observation by Rankin, upon luminous points seen on the shaded part of the moon, during an eclipse. They seemed to this observer like reflections of stars. That's not very reasonable: however, we have, in the Annual Register, 1821-687, a light not referable to a star—because it moved with the moon: was seen three nights in succession; reported by Capt. Kater. See ''Quart. Jour. Roy. Inst.'', 12-133.

''Phil. Trans.'', 112-237:

Report from the Cape Town Observatory: a whitish spot on the dark part of the moon's limb. Three smaller lights were seen.

The call of positiveness, in its aspects of singleness, or homogeneity, or oneness, or completeness. In data now coming, I feel it myself. A Leverrier studies more than twenty observations. The inclination is irresistible to think that they all relate to one phenomenon. It is an expression of cosmic inclination. Most of the observations are so irreconcilable with any acceptance other than of orbitless, dirigible worlds that he shuts his eyes to more than two-thirds of them; he picks out six that can give him the illusion of completeness, or of all relating to one planet.

Or let it be that we have data of many dark bodies—still do we incline almost irresistibly to think of one of them as the dark-body-in-chief. Dark bodies, floating, or navigating, in inter-planetary space—and I conceive of one that's the Prince of Dark Bodies:

Melanicus.

Vast dark thing with the wings of a super-bat, or jet-black super-construction; most likely one of the spores of the Evil One.

The extraordinary year, 1883:

London Times, Dec. 17, 1883:

Extract from a letter by Hicks Pashaw: that, in Egypt, Sept. 24, 1883, he had seen, through glasses, "an immense black spot upon the lower part of the sun."

Sun spot, may be.

One night an astronomer was looking up at the sky, when something obscured a star, for three and a half seconds. A meteor had been seen nearby, but its train had been only momentarily visible. Dr. Wolf was the astronomer (Nature, 86-528).

The next datum is one of the most sensational we have, except