still for a moment, thinking of what direction it shall take, and then away again, followed by an intermittent whistling sound.  So Nature has offered us on this wonderful morning one of her most mysterious, most incomprehensible, phenomena —­ the audible southern light.  “Now you will be able to go home and tell your friends that you have personally seen and heard the southern lights, for I suppose you have no doubt that you have really done so?” “Doubt?  How can one be in doubt about what one has heard with one’s own ears and seen with one’s own eyes?  “And yet you have been deceived, like so many others!  The whistling northern and southern lights have never existed.  They are only a creation of your own yearning for the mystical, accompanied by your own breath, which freezes in the cold air.  Goodbye, beautiful dream!  It vanishes from the glorious landscape.”  Perhaps it was stupid of me to call attention to that; my guests have now lost much of the beautiful mystery, and the landscape no longer has the same attraction.

Meanwhile we have come up past Nelson and Ronniken, and are just climbing the first ridge.  Not far away a big tent rises before us, and in front of it we see two long, dark lines.  It is our main depot that we are coming to, and you can see that we keep our things in good order, case upon case, as if they had been placed in position by an expert builder.  And they all point the same way; all the numbers face the north.  “What made you choose that particular direction?” is the natural question.  “Had you any special object?” “Oh yes, we had.  If you will look towards the east, you will notice that on the horizon the sky has a rather lighter, brighter colour there than in any other part.  That is the day as we see it now.  At present we cannot see to do anything by its light.  It would have been impossible to see that these cases were lying with their numbers to the north if it had not been for the brilliant aurora australis.  But that light colour will rise and grow stronger.  At nine o’clock it will be in the north-east, and we shall be able to trace it ten degrees above the horizon.  You would not then think it gave so much light as it really does, but you would be able without an effort to read the numbers.  What is more, you would be able to read the makers’ names which are marked on several of the cases, and when the flush of daylight has moved to the north, you will be able to see them even more clearly.  No doubt these figures and letters are big —­ about 2 inches high and 14 inches broad —­ but it shows, nevertheless, that we have daylight here at the darkest time of the year, so there is not the absolute darkness that people think.  The tent that stands behind there contains dried fish; we have a great deal of that commodity, and our dogs can never suffer hunger.  But now we must hurry on, if we are to see how the day begins at Framheim.

“What we are passing now is the mark-flag.  We have five of them standing between the camp and the depot; they are useful on dark days, when the east wind is blowing and the snow falling.  And there on the slope of the hill you see Framheim.  At present it looks like a dark shadow on the snow, although it is not far away.  The sharp peaks you see pointing to the sky are all our dog tents.  The but itself you cannot see; it is completely snowed under and hidden in the Barrier.