“Uncle Henry,” said Betty, “you’ve told us about enough animals to really fill a Noah’s ark, but we’ve never heard anything about Noah himself. Isn’t there any Mr. Noah in the sky?”
“Well, Betty,” said Uncle Henry, “There isn’t any constellation that’s named for Noah, but he was a great hunter, and since there is a great hunter in the sky, we can call him Noah if we want to, even if his last name is Orion.”
“Noah O’Ryan!” laughed Paul. “I know a boy named Michael O’Ryan.”
“It’s not the same spelling,” said Uncle Henry, as he turned the flashlight on the blackboard while he wrote the word upon it, and underneath, made three large chalk dots, like this:
“Find those three stars,” said Uncle Henry, “and you will have the belt of Orion. It ought not to be hard to find them, for there are no other stars like them anywhere in the whole sky. Those three stars have always attracted a lot of attention from people in all times and countries. In the Bible Job calls them ‘the bands of Orion’; the Arabs called them ‘the Golden Nuts’; the fierce Masai Tribe in Africa call them ‘the three old men’; the ancient Chinese named Orion ‘Tsan,’ which means ‘three’; and to the Eskimos these three stars appear to be the three steps that a Starland Eskimo cuts in a snowbank when he wants to climb to the top of it.”
The children soon found Orion’s belt about a third of the way up the southeastern sky.
“Now,” said Uncle Henry, “see who can find his shoulders first. Here is a piece of chalk for each of you. Put the shoulders in as soon as you see them.”
Paul found Orion’s right shoulder, and Betty his left, and made large chalk dots to show how bright and beautiful the stars that mark the shoulders are.