strong list to port. There was
no cracking of wood to be heard, so that, whatever it was, the Fram
cannot have been injured. But it was cold, and we crept down again.

"As we were sitting at supper about 6 o'clock, pressure suddenly
began. The ice creaked and roared so along the ship's sides close by
us that it was not possible to carry on any connected conversation;
we had to scream, and all agreed with Nordahl when he remarked
that it would be much pleasanter if the pressure would confine its
operations to the bow instead of coming bothering us here aft. Amidst
the noise we caught every now and again from the organ a note or
two of Kjerulf's melody--'I could not sleep for the nightingale's
voice.' The hurly-burly outside lasted for about twenty minutes,
and then all was still.

"Later in the evening Hansen came down to give notice of what really
was a remarkable appearance of aurora borealis. The deck was brightly
illuminated by it, and reflections of its light played all over the
ice. The whole sky was ablaze with it, but it was brightest in the
south; high up in that direction glowed waving masses of fire. Later
still Hansen came again to say that now it was quite extraordinary. No
words can depict the glory that met our eyes. The glowing fire-masses
had divided into glistening, many-colored bands, which were writhing
and twisting across the sky both in the south and north. The rays
sparkled with the purest, most crystalline rainbow colors, chiefly
violet-red or carmine and the clearest green. Most frequently the rays
of the arch were red at the ends, and changed higher up into sparkling
green, which quite at the top turned darker and went over into blue or
violet before disappearing in the blue of the sky; or the rays in one
and the same arch might change from clear red to clear green, coming
and going as if driven by a storm. It was an endless phantasmagoria
of sparkling color, surpassing anything that one can dream. Sometimes
the spectacle reached such a climax that one's breath was taken away;
one felt that now something extraordinary must happen--at the very
least the sky must fall. But as one stands in breathless expectation,
down the whole thing trips, as if in a few quick, light scale-runs,
into bare nothingness. There is something most undramatic about such a
denouement, but it is all done with such confident assurance that one
cannot take it amiss; one feels one's self in the presence of a master
who has