HMS Orion

“ The whole fleet which bombarded Alexandria would be no match for the latest Orion, and the Orion herself at no very distant date will be removed from the list of effective ships as obsolete, or as having only a doubtful fighting value. Scientific development cannot be arrested, and the only hope is that some day the inventions for war purposes will have become so terrible that the dream [Pg 328] of inventors that they have made war impossible will be realised. ”

“ Kirk brought his hand down in a slashing gesture. "Now!"
The Fifth Lyra swooped out of the sun.
Now.
Now is the moment, the one right time, there will not be another. Either you make it or you don't. Outnumbered, outmanned, and outgunned the element of surprise is all you've got.
The Sun falls behind, the edge of the Belt shifts and tilts and swings as you cut the plane of the ecliptic. Out of the furnace into the fire, at full drive.
The long line of the Orion ships is very beautiful, strung against the glittering emptiness of space.
The Starsong groans and quivers like a living thing. ”

“ Another instance was that of a gentleman, who, having got possession of a small piece of floating wood, when a young lady was passing, he extended his hand to her, and saying "this may save us both," was enabled to keep himself and her up till they were picked off by a passing boat.
⁠We understand that a large amount of money belonging to passengers lies within the iron sides of the Orion
⁠Description of some of the bodies unclaimed:
⁠An old man with grey whiskers and light grey hair; 17s 8d in silver and one sovereign, were found on his person. ”

“ The weight of the Orion at launching was about 8,000 tons, and her estimated load displacement is 22,500 tons. Her engines, developing 27,000 shaft h.p., are Parsons turbines, driving four shafts and screws, each having a turbine for ahead and astern, the ship having a nominal speed of 21 knots, which is expected to be exceeded. She has eighteen water-tube boilers, and can carry, besides 2,700 tons of coal, 1,000 tons of oil in her double bottom tanks. Her armour varies from 12 inches to 4 inches. ”

“ Who with change-hating eyes, fixed on the earth,
Discoursed, and to Orion's anxious looks
Thus made reply. "We have resolved to give
Our utmost aid—or aid that may suffice,—
In furtherance of thy task, which many days
Rightly requires." "Six days," Orion said,
And turned to go; when Harpax interposed:
"Be it then six, but our conditions hear.
Take Merope, thy prize; the rest be ours. ”

“ If I had [Pg 323] known just where to hit you, I'd have got you to town to investigate for yourself; but I've wasted a small fortune already telegraphing to every damned port on the coast I could think of. You'll find wires waiting at every place you put into. Orion's bound to be the coming financial constellation. B. B., Mellington, Foster, and two or three others have blundered into it just by bull luck, but they haven't got enough stock to hurt us if you'll stand by me.
Yours for Orion,
R. B. T.
Jack read in steadily increasing consternation. ”

“ It was on the 11th of December, 1897, something more than a year after the death of Susy, that Orion Clemens died, at the age of seventy-two. Orion had remained the same to the end, sensitively concerned as to all his brother's doings, his fortunes and misfortunes: soaring into the clouds when any good news came; indignant, eager to lend help and advice in the hour of defeat; loyal, upright, and generally beloved by those who knew and understood his gentle nature. ”

“ It is an education in the nebular theory of the universe merely to look at this spot with a good telescope. If we do not gaze at it long and wistfully, and return to it many times with unflagging interest, we may be certain that there is not the making of an astronomer in us."
A fitting conclusion to this sketch of Orion and its stars, is a quotation from Mrs. Martin's Friendly Stars respecting the constellation: "With all its wonders and its beauties it is not strange that Orion should be one of the most familiar and most admired of all the constellations. ”

“ Hog-faced and hog-backed with his daily toil,
Mudded and root-stained by the steaming ooze,
As he himself were some unnatural growth;
Who yet, at times, whistled through broken fangs—
"Happier than I, this hind," Orion thought.
⁠Once tow'rds the city outskirts strayed his steps,
With a half purpose some relief to seek
Midst haunts of men, and on the way he met
A mastic-sifter with his fresh-oiled face.
"O friend!" Orion said, "why dost thou walk
With shining cheek so sadly in the sun?"
Sighing, the melancholy man replied:—
"The lentisk-trees have ceased to shed their gums ”

“ Orion was for them chief in significance among the constellations. They had gazed at him in their strange, surcharged hours of feeling, until they seemed themselves to live in every one of his stars. This evening Paul had been moody and perverse. Orion had seemed just an ordinary constellation to him. He had fought against his glamour and fascination. Miriam was watching her lover’s mood carefully. ”

“ Seiss, Orion stands as a prophetic representation of the great enemy and destroyer, death.
The early inhabitants of Ireland called Orion "the armed King," and the Mayas, the ancient inhabitants of Yucatan, knew the constellation as "a Warrior," a further instance of a similarity in stellar nomenclature among widely separated nations, a similarity that is so marked and so often encountered as to disprove any idea of mere coincidence.
"The rising of Orion is one of the most imposing spectacles that the heavens afford," says Serviss. "No constellation compares with it in brilliance. ”

“ Around their listless bodies thoughtfully.
"Three giants slain outright by Phoibos' beams,—
Now hath a dead sleep fallen on my friends.
'T was wise in Akinetos not to move."
An earthquake would not wake them. Artemis
Rejoices, and the hopes of Merope,
To whom the news a breathless shepherd bore,
Throbbed fearfully suspended o'er the brink
Of this event. Not long Orion paused:
"Though all may fail, the utmost shall be tried:
Secure is he who on himself relies." ”

“ Then there is a white blinding flash, and she is gone.
And the Orion fleet, leaderless, surprised, mauled and clawed and wounded, is pulling out. One by one, in pairs, in little groups, they turn tail and streak for open space, and are gone. ”

“ Sometime later these same Pleiades became seven bright stars, and were set as a constellation in the sky, where they have remained ever since.
Orion continued to hunt from early dawn until nightfall without any misfortune overtaking him on account of his impetuous love-making. On the contrary his ardor evidently found favor with the goddess Diana, for one day, when he unexpectedly met her alone in the forest, she smiled graciously upon him and offered to share the day's sport with him. Perhaps it was the beauty of the young hunter as well as his boldness that charmed the goddess ”

“ Neptune, the burly old god of the sea, had a son named Orion who was almost as fond of the woods as he was of the ocean. From the time when Orion was old enough to catch a sea horse and ride on its back to shore he was gone from his home in the depths of the sea for days at a time. When Neptune blew his conch-shell to call the runaway home, Orion would return regretfully with the tales of the bear he had seen in the forest or the comb of wild honey he had found in an old oak tree. ”

“ The constellation of Orion is not only the richest in brilliant stars, but it conceals for the initiated treasures which no other is known to afford. We might almost call it the California of the sky.
To the southeast of Orion, on the line of the Three Kings, shines the most magnificent of all the stars, Sirius, or α of the constellation of the Great Dog. This star of the first magnitude marks the upper eastern angle of a great quadrilateral, of which the base near the horizon of London, is adjacent to a triangle. ”

“ At least, so said the rumors, rumors that had reached the squadron as far away as the Pleiades. Rumors too factual, too alarming, to be ignored.
Rumors of cruisers from the squadrons of Orion Sector, that had gone into this cluster. Rumors of a secret base, on a hidden world. The ships of Orion Sector had no business here. Neither, for that matter, did the ships of Kirk's own Lyra Sector. This cluster was no-man's land, part of the buffer zones that were supposed to reduce friction between the five great Sectors of the galaxy. ”

“ The “lion’s hide” which Orion is represented as carrying on his left arm like a shield is shown by a bending row of small stars, beginning with Pi (π) and running upward between Bellatrix and Aldebaran in Taurus. The reader who is not provided with a telescope is advised, at least, to employ an opera-glass in sweeping over the whole space included in Orion. It is a region superb in its beauty and grandeur. Around the Belt, particularly, the sky is filled with sparkling multitudes infinitely varied in size, color, and grouping. ”

“ Al-Sufi says it “is represented by the figure of a standing man, to the south of the sun’s path. This constellation very much resembles a human figure with a head and two shoulders. It is called al-djabbar, ‘the Giant,’ because it has two thrones, holds a club in his hand, and is girded with a sword.” Orion is supposed to have been a son of [Pg 274] Neptune; but there are many stories of the origin of the name. It is also said to be derived from the Greek word ὤρα, because the constellation was used to mark the different times of the year. ”

“ O'Ryan was a favourite, at whom La Touche loved to jeer, and the parable of the stars convulsed them.
At the first words O'Ryan put a hand on himself and tried to grasp the meaning of it all, but his entrance and the subsequent applause had confused him. Presently, however, he turned to the back curtain, as Orion moved slowly up the heavens, and found the key to the situation. He gasped. Then he listened to the dialogue which had nothing to do with "The Sunburst Trail."
"What did Orion do, and why does he rise? Has he got to rise? Why was the gent called Orion in them far-off days?" ”

“ However, I shan't easily forget the thoughts that ran in my mind, walking the quarter-deck with the frigate under charge, the first time I noticed Orion and the Serpent begin to wheel glittering away from over Diana's Peak—the others stealing quietly into sight after them, past the leech of our main-topsail; scarce an English star to be seen for the height of the island off our quarter; some of the men on one side of the booms humming a song about Napoleon's dream, which you'll hear to this day in ships' forecastles ”

“ Beneath the three bright stars which form the belt of Orion are several small stars, ranged, when Orion is in the south, in a vertical direction. These form the sword of the giant. On a clear night it is easy to see that the middle star of the sword presents a peculiarity of appearance: it shines as through a diffused haze. In an opera-glass this phenomenon is yet more easily recognizable. A very small telescope exhibits the cause of the peculiarity, for it is at once seen that what seemed a star is, in reality, a mass of small stars intermixed with a diffused nebulosity. ”

“ According to a Jewish tradition, this constellation was appropriated to himself by a particularly mighty man. The Hebrews knew Orion as "the Giant," bound to the sky for rebellion against Jehovah, and Allen thinks that this may be the explanation of the well-known phrase "the Bands or Bonds of Orion."
The Chinese called Orion "Tsan," which signifies "Three," and corresponds to the "Three Kings," a title sometimes applied to the three prominent stars in the "Belt." The Chinese also knew Orion as "the White Tiger," a title taken from the constellation Taurus, close to Orion. ”

“ Instead of having the fire of a second Frenchman raking her bows, as we had, she was engaged with the Frenchman which had a second English ship, the Orion, pouring broadsides into her almost undefended larboard side. ”

“ Ori ́on, a giant of great beauty, and a famous hunter, who cleared the island of Chios of wild beasts. While in the island, Orion fell in love with Merŏpê, daughter of king Œnop ́ion; but one day, in a drunken fit, having offered her violence, the king put out the giant’s eyes, and drove him from the island. Orion was told if he would travel eastward, and expose his sockets to the rising sun, he would recover his sight. Guided by the sound of a Cyclop’s hammer, he reached Lemnos, where Vulcan gave him a guide to the abode of the sun. ”

“ The Orion, commanded by Captain Archibald Collingwood Dickson, formed part of the fleet under Admiral Gambier, in the expedition against Copenhagen, from whence Lieutenant Popham brought home the Rota, a Danish frigate of the largest class. During the summer of 1808, he was frequently employed in the Orion’s boats, protecting convoys through the Sound, and engaged with the enemy’s flotilla. ”

“ Hilton snapped. Then, as the admiral began to bellow orders into his microphone, he went on: “You want it the hard way, eh? Watch what happens, all of you!”
The UC-1 shot vertically into the air. Through its shallow dense layer and into and through the stratosphere. Earth's fleet, already on full alert and poised to strike, rushed to the attack. But the carrier had reached the Orion and both Ardvorian ships had been waiting, motionless, for a good half minute before the Terran warships arrived and began to blast with everything they had. ”