THE AURORA AUSTRALIS. 23 



In the 'Belgica/ we had been sailing among icebergs and along 

 the ice-sheeted coast of newly discovered lands for nearly two months 

 before we saw the first aurora. During most of this time we were above 

 the polar circle, where the sun, during the hours of midnight and mid- 

 summer, sank but a few degrees behind the icy crust of the earth, 

 leaving a twilight so brilliant that no stars were visible. The glancing 

 rays of the nocturnal sun, which were thrown from peak to peak and 

 from the mirror-like slopes into the heavens, made the night a scene 

 of dazzling splendor, too bright to permit the display of the auroral 

 light. 



In the first days of March we found ourselves surrounded by a 

 hopeless sea of ice from whose ensnaring influence we were unable 

 to extricate ourselves. The long winter and the polar night, which no 

 man had as yet experienced, now came over us rapidly. The sun daily 

 sank lower on the sky and swept less of the horizon. The rose color 

 of the snow, which made the summer nights charming, now changed 

 into lilac. The open spaces of water between the restless ice-fields were 

 being hidden lender a weight of rapidly forming new ice, and the winds 

 were moaning in prophetic despair of the coming blackness. We knew 

 only too well that we were in the relentless grasp of a new monster, the 

 Antarctic Ice King, and in his grasp we must remain until the thaw 

 of another summer should release us. In this spirit of despondency and 

 with considerable anxiety we searched the skies nightly for the heavenly 

 glow of the aurora australis, which we hoped might relieve the awful 

 monotony and soul-despairing darkness of the coming winter. 



While skirting the edge of the pack-ice late in February we saw a 

 star, the first since leaving the Cape Horn waters, and this little speck, 

 though a sign of the long, gloomy night and of the polar winter, was 

 hailed as a messenger from a new world. During the days which fol- 

 lowed we watched with joy the increasing number of stars from night 

 to night, but there was so much storm and the atmosphere was so 

 thoroughly charged by humidity that a clear sky was rarely observed. 



On the evening of March 12, 1898, we saw the first distinctive 

 aurora. A faint arc was seen the night previous, but the light was so 

 feeble that many of us doubted that the phenomenon was auroral. The 

 few days which preceded were clear, sharp and cold. We had been so 

 constantly showered with snow and sleet, so persistently held in banks 

 of fog and so often driven to the verge of desperation by the violent 

 storms which ever swept the pack-edge that this calm and silence was, 

 indeed, a treat to us. On the evening of the 14th the sun sank out of a 

 cloudless sky below the crackling, quivering ice of the sea. The tem- 

 perature was — 15 C. A light wind, which came out of the south, 

 pierced the skin like needles. We were many hundred miles from the 



