e lone star that attracted my attention a few days earlier.

One day about this time, my father startled me by calling my attention
to a novel sight far in front of us, almost at the horizon. "It is a
mock sun," exclaimed my father. "I have read of them; it is called a
reflection or mirage. It will soon pass away."

But this dull-red, false sun, as we supposed it to be, did not pass away
for several hours; and while we were unconscious of its emitting any
rays of light, still there was no time thereafter when we could not
sweep the horizon in front and locate the illumination of the so-called
false sun, during a period of at least twelve hours out of every
twenty-four.

Clouds and mists would at times almost, but never entirely, hide its
location. Gradually it seemed to climb higher in the horizon of the
uncertain purply sky as we advanced.

It could hardly be said to resemble the sun, except in its circular
shape, and when not obscured by clouds or the ocean mists, it had a
hazy-red, bronzed appearance, which would change to a white light like a
luminous cloud, as if reflecting some greater light beyond.

We finally agreed in our discussion of this smoky furnace-colored sun,
that, whatever the cause of the phenomenon, it was not a reflection of
our sun, but a planet of some sort--a reality.(13)

(13 Nansen, on page 394, says: "To-day another noteworthy thing
happened, which was that about mid-day we saw the sun, or to be more
correct, an image of the sun, for it was only a mirage. A peculiar
impression was produced by the sight of that glowing fire lit just
above the outermost edge of the ice. According to the enthusiastic
descriptions given by many Arctic travelers of the first appearance of
this god of life after the long winter night, the impression ought to
be one of jubilant excitement; but it was not so in my case. We had not
expected to see it for some days yet, so that my feeling was rather one
of pain, of disappointment that we must have drifted farther south than
we thought. So it was with pleasure I soon discovered that it could not
be the sun itself. The mirage was at first a flattened-out, glowing red,
streak of fire on the horizon; later there were two streaks, the one
above the other, with a dark space between; and from the maintop I could
see four, or even five, such horizontal lines directly over one another,
all of equal length, as if one could only imagine a square, dull-red
sun, with horizonta