"Well, I've got a pair of storks—they arrived this morning from Germany—duck and drake, or should you say cock and hen?—at any rate, I've a sort of idea of trying to domesticate them, and to that end have had a nest constructed on the roof of this building, where they will be sheltered by the parapet and be high up above the roof of the City. What do you say to going to have a look at them and see if they're all right?"
Extraordinary man! He had always some odd or curious idea in his mind to improve his artificial fairyland. Nothing loth, we left Pu-Yi and ascended a winding staircase to the roof of the great building. Save for the lantern in the center, it was flat and made a not unpleasant promenade. The storks were at present in a cage, and could only be distinguished as bundles of dirty feathers in a miscellaneous litter. I thought my friend's chance of domesticating them was very small, but he seemed to be immensely interested in the problem.
When we had talked it over, he gave me a cigar and we began to promenade the whole length of the roof. As I have said, the night was clear and calm. Again the great stars globed themselves in heaven with an incomparable glory unknown and unsuspected by those down below. The silence was profound, the air like iced wine.
From where we were, we had a bird's-eye view of the whole City. Grand Square lay immediately at our feet, brilliantly illuminated as usual. Not a living soul was to be seen; only the dragon-fountain glittered with mysterious life. To the right, beyond the encircling buildings of the Square, stood the Palacete Mendoza surrounded by its gardens, a square, white, sleeping pile. I sent a mental greeting to Juanita. So high was the roof on which we stood that only one of the towers or cupolas rose much above us. It was the dome of the observatory, exactly opposite on the other side of Grand Square.
"There is some one who isn't much troubled by sub-lunary affairs," I said, pointing over the machicolade.
Morse nodded, and expelled a blue cloud of smoke. "I guess old Chang is the most contented fellow on earth," he said. "He is Professor, you know, Professor Chang, and an honorary M.A. of Oxford University. I had him from the Imperial Chinese Observatory at Pekin, and I am told he is on the track of a new comet, or something, which is to be called after me when he has discovered it—thus conferring immortality upon yours truly!
"It is an odd temper of mind," he went on more seriously, "that can spend a whole life in patient seclusion, peering into the unknown, and what, after all, is the unknowable. Still, he is happy, and that is the end of human endeavor."
He sighed, and with renewed interest I stared out at the round dome. The slit over the telescope was open, which showed that the astronomer was at work. In the gilded half-circle of the cupola, it was exactly like a cut in an orange.
I was about to make a remark, when an extraordinary thing happened.
Without any hint or warning, there was a loud, roaring sound, like that of some engine blowing off steam. With a "whoosh," a great column of fire, like golden rain, rose up out of the dark aperture in the dome, towering hundreds of feet in the sky, like the veritable comet for which old Chang was searching, and burst high in the empyrean with a dull explosion, followed by a swarm of brilliant, blue-white stars.