Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1910-09-01
By Henry Kitchell Webster

ing that Roscoe'B absence were taken
to mean that he had gune to mako an
attack on the pilot -house, there could
hardly be a doubt that Jeanne would
kill him.
His reasoning. was ALL hnged. "a. the
assumption that the pff6t-tinlise was
Inaccessible to any wfngless creature
except by way Of the Toe chimney.
Even now, when hts Gar for tho girl
was amounting to a superstition. on all
most irresistible intensity. It dSfy mot
occur to him TO question that.
He steadied himself as bestahe cpul0
and crouched down In the,shA1ke1eukG 9
big rock to await Roscoefs return. {
He had hardly settled himself hers
when he SAT- something that made nm.
shake his head impatientty and swearsa
little. It was the wink1ng glow Of an
aurora borealis, Off to the north.
Struggling as he was with Q foar
which his reason offered him no foun-
dalton for. he was In no moofsto appre-
ciate one on those internal. fmaxplfpanle
exhibitions that a succession Of those
long Arctic nights had made him ell
lessen the wonder OF 1t.
He hoped that this one ~nltghtpasa on
without amounting to anything: but It
was not long before a elender. niclrcr-
ing, greenish-white fash across the shy
convinced him hat he was In for Il.
He remembered having read. IN Captain
F1elding's journal, how the m~efnberssof
his own crew, and more particularly the
Walrus people, had been frightened to
the verge of terror by them,
and how the Portuguese had
always fallen on his knees and begun
jabbering his prayers when n of these
phenomena took place. He had be-
lieved them, Captain Fielding thought.
to be vertically the fires of hell.
Cayley and Jeanne had often watched
these auroras, from beginning to end.
with delight; but 1t had always been
a strange, piquant sort of pleasure; that
had a spice of terror in it.
But tonight. as he crouched there
alone on the beach, waiting forjthe.man
who did not come, the wild, frealdsh.
indefnably menacing quality Of those
strange lights affected him powerfully.
The way they leaped in long arcs, clear
across the sky-and vanished; he way
their brilliant streamers could haunt
themselves from zenith to horizon with
all the colors of the sunset n still
leave the earth as dark as 1t was after
they had rolled up and Disappeared; the
horrible, winking, shuddering ghostli-
ness Of them made 1t difficult to think
of them as part of the order Of nature
turned them Into a sort of malevolent
miracle. It was never possible to tell
how long they would last. Sometimes
they rolled up and left the sky I'M
vexed at the enc of a few brief minutes;
sometimes they kept up their witches
dance all night.
The n he saw Frightening, now was
developing itself into a st%upendous
spectacle. The long, greenish pencils
of light, ripping, Pickering, fading.
flashing out again, gradually estab-
lished themselves in an immense double
devils rainbow clear across the sky.
The streamers, which began presently
to pour out from both sides of it, ran a
gamut of color from angry purple up
to a flaming orange The horizon, all
the northern half of it, was banked
with what looked like luminous sui
~phur-colored clouds, shot with oo-
casional CLEANS of bright magenta.
Cayley gazed at the spectacle un-
willingly, but still he gazed. And. some-
how, though he fought the feeling des-
perately, it began to assume a personal
significance to him-a significance os
mockery. The whole sky was quivering
with vast, silent laughter. Was 1t be-
cause he, with his fancied cleverness
and daring in finding Roscoe's lair and
waiting for his return to it, was really
doing precisely the thing that Roscoe
would have had him do? Were those
sky-witches laughing over what was
happening up at the pilot-house while
he sat here and waited?
No intelligence, no sane power of con-
secutive reasoning can resist this sort
of thing indefinitely, and at last Cay
ley's power of resistance came to an
end.