Silas taking observations ('Nine-teen Twen-ty', 'Damn that cloud to hell!!')

'Wright was the possessor of a vocabulary of Canadian expressions that was the envy of all his comrades. If by chance he should breathe upon the eye-piece of his telescope at a critical moment, thereby causing it to fog -- or anything else went wrong -- the remarks that our "Silas" addressed to the particular heavenly body under observation were of such a wrathful nature that it was reported a star was seen positively to wobble ... but Silas was ... no wobbler. Never did mortal man persevere at so frigid a task with more consistent resolution. Zero or "fifty below", it was all the same to him...' (H.G. Ponting, The Great White South, p.xx)