They might, in throwing out the last of their ballast, have,
perhaps, prolonged for a little their sojourn in space, but the
circumstances in which they were placed did not permit them to
make many more scientific observations than those they had made,
and thus they were obliged to submit to their fate. When they
had reached their greatest height, there seemed to open up in the
midst of the vaporous mass a brilliant space, from which they
could see the blue of heaven. The polariscope, directed towards
this region, showed an internal polarisation, but, when pointed
to the side where the mist still prevailed, there was no
polarisation.
An optical phenomenon of a remarkable kind was witnessed when the
voyagers had attained their highest point. They saw the sun
through the upper mists, looking quite white, as if shorn of its
strength; and, at the same time, below the horizontal plane,
below their horizon, and at an angular distance from the plane
equal to that of the sun above it, they saw a second sun, which
resembled the reflection of the actual sun in a sheet of water.
It is natural to suppose that the second sun was formed by the
reflection of the sun's rays upon the horizontal faces of the ice
crystals floating in this high cloud.
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