Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/258

AURORA. capricious, alternating, if I might be allowed the figure, the burst of flame from a conflagration with the soft glow of the early morn. The light grew by degrees more and more intense, and from irregular bursts it settled into an almost steady sheet of brightness. This sheet was, however, far from uniform, for it was but a flood of mingling and variously-tinted streaks. The exhibition, at first tame and quiet, became in the end startling in its brilliancy. The broad dome above me is all ablaze. Ghastly fires, more fierce than those which lit the heavens from burning Troy, flash angrily athwart the sky. The stars pale before the marvellous glare, and seem to recede further and further from the earth,—as when the chariot of the Sun, driven by Phæton, and carried from its beaten track by the ungovernable steeds, rushed madly through the skies, parching the world and withering the constellations. The gentle Andromeda flies trembling from the flame; Perseus, with his flashing sword and Gorgon shield, retreats in fear; the Pole Star is chased from the night, and the Great Bear, faithful sentinel of the North, quits his guardian watch, following the feeble trail. The color of the light was chiefly red, but this was not constant, and every hue mingled in the fierce display. Blue and yellow streamers were playing in the lurid fire; and, sometimes starting side by side from the wide expanse of the illumined arch, they melt into each other, and throw a ghostly glare of green into the face and over the landscape. Again this green overrides the red; blue and orange clasp each other in their rapid flight; violet darts tear through a broad flush of yellow, and countless tongues of white flame, formed of these uniting streams, rush aloft and lick