During our last spell in the tropics, with our clear nights of calm, Australia astonished us by his remarkable familiarity with the names and constellations of the brightest stars. As I had a fair knowledge of these from my studies on the schoolship, and also had my Lecky, with the wonderfully simple star charts prepared by that master mariner, we passed some profitable and interesting hours. Even today I never miss a chance to glance at the clear sky at night and renew acquaintance with the great stars of the heavens. Australia had picked up his knowledge from a sheepherder in that far country and knew the southern constellations better than I did. We all know the Southern Cross, or at least have heard of it, and by the way it is not much of a cross, though one of the two large stars pointing toward it, _Alpha Centauri_, is said to be the nearest to the earth of all the fixed stars. This is also a double star, but a powerful telescope is needed to distinguish the separate bodies. _Canopus_, another whopper of the southern heavens, ranks next to the Dog Star, _Sirius_, and we never tired looking at these magnificent gems of the night as they shone with living fire in the clear deep blue of the tropic heavens. As I gaze from time to time at the constellations, at _Cassiopeia's_ _Chair_, the _Great_ and _Little Bear_, the _Swan_, and the giant _Vega_, at _Orion_, _Leo_, or the _Sickle_, and _The Cutters' Mainsail_, I think of those days on the _Fuller_ when we conned them in mute wonder, as sailors have in countless ages gone before, and listened to the names by one more learned than the rest. _Altair!_ _Regulus!_ _Aldebaran!_ _Arcturus!_ _Capella!_ _Procyon!_ _Sirius!_ _Spica!_ _Antares!_ _Fomalhaut!_ _Achernar_ and _Adara!_ what do these names mean to the modern human calling himself educated? Since those days I have spent four years at a university, and have drilled through the technical course in astronomy, given to civil engineers, but I don't recall what was taught about the great stars of the heavens that we learned to know by their first names on that far off voyage. Of the present rank and file, who discuss anything and everything smart folk busy themselves about, how many can identify this company of noble names of the great blazing suns that swing across the heavens? And black nothingness is also to be found in the heavens, in the _Coal Sack_, a blank space of the night sky, near the _Southern Cross_, in the black depth of which no telescope has yet revealed a star. CHAPTER XXXIII APPROACHING HOME