"Suppose, then, one of these suns is red and the other blue. Imagine, if you can, the combinations of colour that ensue, not to mention the variations in day and night and in the seasons.
"At one time both suns will be high in the heavens at once, one shedding rays of red, the other rays of blue; and as they set in different corners of the horizon, two gorgeously coloured sunsets simply overwhelm the sky with beautiful colour-effects.
"At another time, perhaps, one sun will be above the horizon for half the round of the clock, the other taking the other half—no night during that period, simply so many hours of red and so many hours of blue light, and perhaps the sunrise of the one coincides with the sunset of the other. Ye gods! What a prospect! But how much further does a quadruple system carry us—four suns glaring down upon one; no nights at all now (the people in those systems no doubt have reached a stage in the evolution of the body—if, indeed, they have bodies at all—when sleep is no longer required), just days of every hue, of every grade of colour—pale blue days, brilliant red days, gorgeous yellow days, violet days, green days——"
"Good night, Jack," broke in the cowpuncher softly. "I guess I'll quit. You're one too many for me; you have me beat to a stan'still. My head'll burst if I accoomilates any more astronomy. It takes up too much space in my brain-cells an' don' settle down none, but jest rampages 'round stampedin' my intellec's out into the cold, till I wonders, has I a headpiece at all or has it blowed off like a rawcket?"
This broke up the astronomy party, and the three rolled into their blankets; but Curly, when he was turned out at one bell, complained of a dream in which the devil, with a face of variegated colours, had been grinning at him through Saturn's rings, whilst the grim shades of ghost stars pranced before him in all manner of fantastic shapes, headed by the monstrous fiery apparition of Sirius, whose flames, spread out in great tentacles—a twisty, creepy, crawly mass of claw-ended arms—sought to drag the terrified dreamer out of his blankets.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] It is now known that these figures re Sirius are much overstated.
CHAPTER X
"STUDPOKER BOB'S MALADY"