82 THE ‘‘ MIDNIGUT SUN.”

sun, like drift of beech leaves in the October air.
Far to the north, the sun lay in a bed of saffron
light over the clear horizon of the Arctic Occan.
A few bars of dazzling orange cloud floated above
him, and still higher in the sky, where the saffron
melted through delicate rose colour into blue, hung
light wreaths of vapour, touched with pearly
opaline flushes of pink and golden grey. ‘The sea
was a web of pale slate colour, shot through and
through with threads of orange and saffron, from
the dance of a myriad shifting and twinkling
ripples. The air was filled and permeated with
the soft mysterious glow, and even the very azure
of the southern sky seemed to shine through a net
of golden gauze. The headlands of this deeply
indented coast—the capes of the Laxe and Por-
sanger Fjords, and of Mageroe—lay around us, in
different degrees of distances, but all with forcheads
touched with supernatural glory. Far to the north-
east was Nordkyn, the most northern point of the
mainland of Europe, gleaming rosily and faint in
the full beams of the sun; and just as our watches
denoted midnight, the North Cape appeared to the
westward—a long line of purple bluff, presenting
a vertical front of 900 feet in height to the Polar
pea, Midway between these two magnificent
headlands stood the midnight sun, shining on us
with subdued fires, and with the gorgeous colour