The night’s beauty swept him, touching some realm of his spirit deep and apart from his mere love of pleasing visual image. His imagination was keenly alive, and he had a distinct feeling that the North had a surprise in store for him to-night. Some stress and glory was impending: what he did not know.
Facing over the bow he suddenly perceived a faint silver radiance close to the horizon. His first impression was that the boat had taken a south-easternly course, and this argent gleam was merely the banner of the rising moon. Immediately he knew better: except by the absolute disruption of cosmic law, the moon could not rise for at least four hours. He knew of no coast light anywhere in the region, and it was hard to believe that he had caught the far-off glimmer of a ship’s light. Seemingly such followers of the sea had been left far behind them.
But as he watched the light grew. His own pulse quickened. And presently a radiant streamer burst straight upward like a rocket, fluttered a moment, and died away.
A strange thrill and stir moved through the intricacy of his nerves. He knew now what this light portended; it was known to every wayfarer in the North, yet the keenest excitement took hold of him. It moved him more than any painted art had ever done, more than any wonderful maze of color and light that a master stage director could effect. The streamer shot up again, more brightly colored now, and then a great ball of fire rolled into the sky, exploded into a thousand flying fragments, and left a sea of every hue in the spectrum in its wake.
“The Northern Lights!” he told himself. A quiver of exultation passed over him.
There could be no mistake. This was the radiance, the glory that the Red Gods reserve for those who seek the far northern trails. Ever the display increased in wonder and beauty. The streamers were whisking in all directions now, meeting with the effect of collision in the dome of the sky, remaining there to shiver and gleam with incredible beauty; the surging waves of light spread ever farther until, at times, the sky was a fluttering canopy of radiance.
He thought of calling Lenore and Mrs. Hardenworth; but some way the idea slipped out of his mind. In a moment he was too deep in his own mood even to remember that they existed. But not only his exterior world faded from his consciousness. For the moment he forgot himself; and with it the old self-love and self-conceit that had pervaded every moment of his past life, colored all his views, and shaped the ends of his destiny. All that was left was that incredible sky and its weird, reflected glamor in the sea.
This was Aurora Borealis, never to be known, in its full glory, to those that shun the silent spaces of the North. Suddenly he felt glad that he was here. The moment, by measure of some queer balance beyond his sight, was worth all the rest of his past life put together. Great trials might lie ahead, temptations might tear him down, his own weakness and folly of the past might lay him low in some woeful disaster of the future; yet he was glad that he had come! It was the most profound, the most far-reaching moment of his life.
Always he had lived close to and bound up in a man-made civilization. In his heart he had worshipped it, rather than the urge and the inspiration that had made it possible: he had always judged the Thing rather than the Source. But for the first time in his life he was close to nature’s heart. He had seen a glory, at nature’s whim, that transcended the most glorious work of man ever beheld in his native city. He was closer to redemption than at any time in his life.
A few feet distant on the deck Bess’s eyes turned from the miracle in the skies to watch the slowly growing light in Ned Cornet’s face. It was well enough for him to find his inspiration in the majesty of nature. Bess was a woman, and that meant that man that is born of woman was her work and her being. She turned her eyes from God to behold this man.