"There being a bright moon, and the air being nearly calm and not unusually cold, we were tempted to take a long walk; and, attracted by one object after another that was upon the frozen sea over which we were walking,--here an iceberg of peculiar formation or remarkable size, there a snow-drift of singular form,--we found ourselves at last several miles away from our hut.
"When we turned about at length to retrace our steps, we discovered that the northern sky, which we now faced (for we had walked out in a southerly direction), showed stormy symptoms, and very quickly afterward a severe gale of wind broke over the island and the desolate sea, and we found ourselves overwhelmed with drifting snow.
"The sky was for the most part cloudless, and no snow fell from the heavens, but the light snow that lay upon the ice was picked up, as it were, by the wind, and whirled through the air in a manner as beautiful as it was terrible; for the drift coming in streams, with the rushing wind, lashed our faces, torturing us in a terrible manner, chilling us through and through, and almost overpowering us. Then an aurora borealis burst out before us, as if the heavens were on fire,--and from the top of our little island the snow came whirling above our heads in constant streams, that went circling about in a most fantastic way.
"You cannot imagine how grand this storm scene was,--the wind howling around us, the snowdrifts whirling about and spinning over the icy plain, the moon gleaming brightly upon the snow and the icebergs and the island, and every now and then a great blaze of many colors that were reflected on everything about us, would start up from the auroral arch, until the light became almost as great for a few moments as if it were broad day. It was very fearful, and you may be sure that we hastened on to the hut as fast as we could, though we were not in such a great hurry as to be wholly insensible to the magnificence of the scene.
"After we had reached the hut, the Dean repeated some verses which he had picked up somewhere; and when I recite them for you, you will see how appropriate they were to what I have been describing, and how strange seemed to us our situation when we found ourselves in the very place where the poet had imagined the Northwest wind to have a beginning.