As we steamed up the coast the ice fields began to loom up and as far as the eye could reach they glittered and sparkled like gigantic jewels under the glare of the Arctic sun. When night came on and the stars came out they shone a hundred fold brighter than in the temperate zone and the pale blue moon illuminated the scene with a kind of a supernatural light that seemed not to belong to earth. But all the days and nights were by no means fine ones, for howling gales and fierce snow storms continually sprang up and I often wondered how a ship built and sailed by the hands of men, could weather them out. It was a man’s work! On such occasions I stuck to my wireless room which I found mighty comfortable and trusted to the Captain and his mates to see the ship safely through. As we got farther and farther north the _Aurora borealis_, or northern lights as it is called, grew brighter and brighter every night until the whole heavens in the region of the North Pole were scintillating with streamers that spread out like a great fan, reaching over our heads and far to the south. The first mate said that it was as brilliant an aurora as he had ever seen and his explanation of it was that the spots on the sun had been unusually large and numerous. Not only did the sun’s activity show itself in the aurora, but it set up a violent magnetic storm on earth and this made the compass needles oscillate to and fro as much as 1½ degrees on each side of their normal positions. Now magnetic storms always interfere very seriously with the operation of both overland telegraph lines and cable systems where the circuit is completed through the earth. I had heard some one say, or had read somewhere, that a magnetic storm would interfere in the same way with wireless messages and I was fearful for some time that it would put our signals out of commission. But all through the magnetic storm Mackey and I sent our messages without the slightest trouble--indeed if we had not been told that a magnetic storm was on we should never have guessed it. Evidently wireless had scored another point over the wire systems and another pet theory was put on the ice to cool. We sailed up the coast keeping pretty close to it while the _Midnight Sun_ steamed up and out from it until we were fifty or more miles apart. Now here is where wireless came in, in catching seals. Over the constantly broadening gap between our ships Mackey and I kept their Captains right in touch with each other. The Captain of his ship _wirelessed_ that there were any number of old seals about him and this showed, the first mate told me, that there were patches of _white coats_, as the young harp-seals are called, somewhere in the neighborhood.