"
"Amen!" said I, as we all laughed. "On forty-eight
days we will begin."
Alice ran to the sheets, turned up that number, and
read, "R. A. 27@ 11'. South declination 34@ 49'."
"Convenient place," said George; "good omen, Bertha,
my darling! If we find her there, Alice and Bertha and
Clara shall all have new dolls."
It was the first word of pleasantry that had been
spoken about the horrid thing since Spoonwood Hill!
Night came at last. We trained the glass on the
fated spot. I bade Polly take the eye-glass. She did
so, shook her head uneasily, screwed the tube northward
herself a moment, and then screamed, "It is there! it is
there,--a clear disk,--gibbous shape,--and very sharp on
the upper edge. Look! look! as big again as Jupiter!"
Polly was right! The Brick Moon was found!
Now we had found it, we never lost it. Zitta and
Gmelin, I suppose, had had foggy nights and stormy
weather often. But we had some one at the eye-glass all
that night, and before morning had very respectable
elements, good measurements of angular distance when we
got one, from another star in the field of our lowest
power. For we could see her even with a good French
opera-glass I had, and with a night-glass which I used to
carry on the South Atlantic Station. It certainly
was an extraordinary illustration of Orcutt's engineering
ability, that, flying off as she did, without leave or
license, she should have gained so nearly the orbit of
our original plan,--nine thousand miles from the earth's
centre, five thousand from the surface.
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