"Jules Verne. Off on a Comet. WORKS" - читать интересную книгу автора

in a clear firmament above.

The night was magnificent. Not a cloud dimmed the luster of the stars,
which spangled the heavens in surpassing brilliancy, and several nebulae
which hitherto no astronomer had been able to discern without the aid
of a telescope were clearly visible to the naked eye.

By a natural impulse, Servadac's first thought was to observe
the position of the pole-star. It was in sight, but so near
to the horizon as to suggest the utter impossibility of its
being any longer the central pivot of the sidereal system;
it occupied a position through which it was out of the question
that the axis of the earth indefinitely prolonged could ever pass.
In his impression he was more thoroughly confirmed when, an hour later,
he noticed that the star had approached still nearer the horizon,
as though it had belonged to one of the zodiacal constellations.

The pole-star being manifestly thus displaced, it remained
to be discovered whether any other of the celestial bodies
had become a fixed center around which the constellations made
their apparent daily revolutions. To the solution of this problem
Servadac applied himself with the most thoughtful diligence.
After patient observation, he satisfied himself that the required
conditions were answered by a certain star that was stationary not
far from the horizon. This was Vega, in the constellation Lyra,
a star which, according to the precession of the equinoxes,
will take the place of our pole-star 12,000 years hence.
The most daring imagination could not suppose that a period
of 12,000 years had been crowded into the space of a fortnight;
and therefore the captain came, as to an easier conclusion,
to the opinion that the earth's axis had been suddenly and
immensely shifted; and from the fact that the axis, if produced,
would pass through a point so little removed above the horizon,
he deduced the inference that the Mediterranean must have been
transported to the equator.

Lost in bewildering maze of thought, he gazed long and intently upon
the heavens. His eyes wandered from where the tail of the Great Bear,
now a zodiacal constellation, was scarcely visible above the waters,
to where the stars of the southern hemisphere were just breaking on his view.
A cry from Ben Zoof recalled him to himself.

"The moon!" shouted the orderly, as though overjoyed at once
again beholding what the poet has called:

"The kind companion of terrestrial night;"

and he pointed to a disc that was rising at a spot precisely
opposite the place where they would have expected to see the sun.
"The moon!" again he cried.