Though my "affaire de cœur" was progressing satisfactorily, I was forced to walk warily. Some of my fellows were infernal busy-bodies and Sausalito, poor wretch, watched over me with furious jealousy. Innumerable were the diversions of those happy, happy days, the mad pursuit of an occasional musk-ox, of which the women were insanely fond because of the perfume derived from its peripatetic gland, and the absorbingly interesting observations of the Arctic guppys, those unique fish which bear their live and full-formed young on the ice without the tedious formality of laying an egg. The mother guppy immediately eats her offspring and the race between her and the Eskimo audience to see which could get the most, was not the least amusing phase of this quaint accouchement. And then the long, twilight evenings, snuggled down in the deep furs of our friends, sharing the warmth of our tiny Primus under the Kawa's lee, crooning our songs, passing our plugs and our gay banter. I feel sure than I shall never be nearer heaven. On an immemorial date, for our watches had long ago run down, we sat thus in our little Arctic circle listening languidly to a number on Whinney's radio,--"What the Sunday Schools of Kansas are Doing," I believe it was,--no; "The weather a hundred years ago today," that was it,--when I suddenly realized that it was dark; not twilight, but actually dark! Can you realize what that meant to me? Startled, I withdrew my thumb from Ikik's soft lips and raised myself on my elbow. About me in the gloom were vague bundles, Swank and Yalok, Frissell and Snak, Whinney and Lapatok, Wigmore and Klipitok, Triplett and Sausalito, silent, rapturous, oblivious. But a strange thing was happening. All about the circumference of the great ice bowl, of which we were the center, rose trembling, blue flames. I could hear their fluttering hiss and crackle. Now they leaped higher, shooting out giant arms toward the zenith, waving lambent fingers, shivering, interlocking, melting. My companions, aroused, sat up and I could see their startled faces lighted by an unearthly light. The noise and glare increased. Swishing waves of fuchsia-pink swept up the sky; muffled explosions were followed by writhing snakes of lemon-yellow and far-flung globes of purple and crimson gleamed in the sky while, directly overhead, millions of miles away, the North Star looked down indifferently. At times the wall of encircling flames, now approximately ten miles high, leaped in unison, to a diabolical rhythm; again they moved about us in procession, gigantic, towering, flapping, hissing, whistling, rippling, a night-mare of glorious colors which have no names. The very ice below me, cracking and groaning, was shot with fiery veins. AN ARCH ARCHEOLOGIST