Ardan, who
had always particularly admired it, now hailed it as an old friend, and
almost exhausted breath, imagination and vocabulary in the epithets with
which he greeted this cynosure of the lunar mountains.
"Hail!" he cried, "thou blazing focus of glittering streaks, thou
coruscating nucleus of irradiation, thou starting point of rays
divergent, thou egress of meteoric flashes! Hub of the silver wheel that
ever rolls in silent majesty over the starry plains of Night! Paragon of
jewels enchased in a carcanet of dazzling brilliants! Eye of the
universe, beaming with heavenly resplendescence!
"Who shall say what thou art? Diana's nimbus? The golden clasp of her
floating robes? The blazing head of the great bolt that rivets the lunar
hemispheres in union inseverable? Or cans't thou have been some errant
bolide, which missing its way, butted blindly against the lunar face,
and there stuck fast, like a Minie ball mashed against a cast-iron
target? Alas! nobody knows. Not even Barbican is able to penetrate thy
mystery. But one thing _I_ know. Thy dazzling glare so sore my eyes hath
made that longer on thy light to gaze I do not dare. Captain, have you
any smoked glass?"
In spite of this anti-climax, Ardan's companions could hardly consider
his utterings either as ridiculous or over enthusiastic.
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