The camp was pitched and the rest of the day given up to writing voluminous accounts of the marvel, and correcting astronomical tables to fit it.  Toward midnight a demoniacal shriek was heard, then a clattering and rumbling noise, and the next instant a vast terrific eye shot by, with a long tail attached, and disappeared in the gloom, still uttering triumphant shrieks.

The poor damp laborers were stricken to the heart with fright, and stampeded for the high grass in a body.  But not the scientists.  They had no superstitions.  They calmly proceeded to exchange theories.  The ancient geographer’s opinion was asked.  He went into his shell and deliberated long and profoundly.  When he came out at last, they all knew by his worshiping countenance that he brought light.  Said he: 

“Give thanks for this stupendous thing which we have been permitted to witness.  It is the Vernal Equinox!”

There were shoutings and great rejoicings.

“But,” said the Angle-Worm, uncoiling after reflection, “this is dead summer-time.”

“Very well,” said the Turtle, “we are far from our region; the season differs with the difference of time between the two points.”

“Ah, true:  True enough.  But it is night.  How should the sun pass in the night?”

“In these distant regions he doubtless passes always in the night at this hour.”

“Yes, doubtless that is true.  But it being night, how is it that we could see him?”

“It is a great mystery.  I grant that.  But I am persuaded that the humidity of the atmosphere in these remote regions is such that particles of daylight adhere to the disk and it was by aid of these that we were enabled to see the sun in the dark.”

This was deemed satisfactory, and due entry was made of the decision.

But about this moment those dreadful shriekings were heard again; again the rumbling and thundering came speeding up out of the night; and once more a flaming great eye flashed by and lost itself in gloom and distance.

The camp laborers gave themselves up for lost.  The savants were sorely perplexed.  Here was a marvel hard to account for.  They thought and they talked, they talked and they thought.  Finally the learned and aged Lord Grand-Daddy-Longlegs, who had been sitting in deep study, with his slender limbs crossed and his stemmy arms folded, said: 

“Deliver your opinions, brethren, and then I will tell my thought—­for I think I have solved this problem.”

“So be it, good your lordship,” piped the weak treble of the wrinkled and withered Professor Woodlouse, “for we shall hear from your lordship’s lips naught but wisdom.” [Here the speaker threw in a mess of trite, threadbare, exasperating quotations from the ancient poets and philosophers, delivering them with unction in the sounding grandeurs of the original tongues, they being from the Mastodon, the Dodo, and other dead languages.] “Perhaps I