Even where I was, the untempered rays of the sun scorched me, and I knew that within two or three hundred thousand miles of the solar surface the heat must be sufficient to melt the hardest rocks.

I was aware that experiments with burning-glasses had sufficiently demonstrated that fact.
But perforce I resigned myself to my fate.

At any rate it would the sooner be all over.

In fact, I almost forgot my awful situation in the interest awakened by the phenomena of the comet.

I was in the midst of its very head.