CHAPTER XI - THE OPPOSITION OF MARS

Summary

Meantime the 5th of September has come. I could write no diary, and have not the slightest recollection of how I spent the day—unprofitably, I fear, in watching and waiting; finally bringing on a violent headache towards evening, which was less painful, however, than the excessive nervous excitement I was endeavouring to repress. To-night Mars will be nearer to us—his ruddy glare brighter than ever again for a hundred years, and what if we should not see him?

The sun had shone all day in a cloudless sky, but before sunset some ugly clouds rolled up from wind-ward, and made me feel quite feverish. I could not rest, but kept wandering about from tent to tent like an unquiet spirit; inwardly resenting David's exceeding calm, as a tacit reproof to my perturbation. There he sat, quietly tying up photographs, softly whistling to himself, as if nothing were going to happen, and then he actually smoked a very long pipe, with even longer and slower whiffs than usual. Of course it was affectation! But I wondered how he managed to keep up the deception, and for the first time fully believed what he had told me of having enjoyed his breakfast on the morning of the Transit of Venus, notwithstanding that it rained.