All around there burned other stars, separated widely.

Then, over the stern, gleamed the splendid lustre of Achernar, on the left the brilliant glow of Alpha Robur and Canopus, and low down before us the bright light of Argo.

It was a scene full of splendor and fascination.

After a time a change came over the sky: the aurora-flashes, at first faint, gradually increased in brilliancy till the stars grew dim, and all the sky, wherever the eye might turn from the horizon to the zenith, seemed filled with lustrous flames of every conceivable hue.

Colossal beams radiated from the pole toward the horizon till the central light was dissipated, and there remained encircling us an infinite colonnade of flaming pillars that towered to the stars.