No twinkling, no scintillation, no nictitation, disturbed their pure and lambent gleam.

No atmosphere here interposed its layers of humidity or of unequal density to interrupt the stately majesty of their effulgence.

The longer he gazed upon them, the more absorbing became their attraction.

He felt that they were great kindly eyes looking down even yet with benevolence and protection on himself and his companions now driving wildly through space, and lost in the pathless depths of the black ocean of infinity! He soon became aware that his friends, following his example, had interested themselves in gazing at the stars, and were now just as absorbed as himself in the contemplation of the transcendent spectacle.
For a long time all three continued to feast their eyes on all the glories of the starry firmament; but, strange to say, the part that seemed to possess the strangest and weirdest fascination for their wandering glances was the spot where the vast disc of the Moon showed like an enormous round hole, black and soundless, and apparently deep enough to permit a glance into the darkest mysteries of the infinite.
A disagreeable sensation, however, against which they had been for some time struggling, at last put an end to their contemplations, and compelled them to think of themselves.

This was nothing less than a pretty sharp cold, at first somewhat endurable, but which soon covered the inside surface of the window panes with a thick coating of ice.