Except for the little touch of colour at sunrise this morning, the weather has been one of a type which we now style gray days. These gray days are entirely characteristic of the antarctic. There is no brightness, no sparkle, no moving wind or water, nothing to infuse new life or to lighten our spirits. The atmosphere is heavy, but not opaque, the sky is low and gray, the extensive pans and bands of new ice are a smoky colour, the water is leaden, and only the snow-decked old pans form a contrast to the gray monotony, and even these take on a dirty aspect. All of this is impressed upon the mind, and when taken together with our immobility it sets up a greyness in our moods. To-night we saw a sight which aroused us to other thoughts. The sun had set rather tamely, leaving only a narrow zone upon which colour was poured; this zone was light blue at the water-line, a little darker above, merging into a violet, and then into an orange red, and over all was a mouse-coloured sky. These colours soon vanished, leaving a lemon colour which followed the sun on its journey eastward. At about eight o’clock a speck of fire was seen above the purple ice northward, but neither the ice nor the sky showed any signs of a reflected light. The sky was a dark purple blue. All was still and dead; there was not a breath of air stirring. The dull flame slowly increased in size and changed its form with marvellous rapidity. Above it there was a little blackness suggestive of smoke, and under it was a cone-like image of a mountain peak from which the fire and smoke seemed to ooze. Excitement ran high on the _Belgica_. The thing came upon us out of the smoky purple sky with the suddenness of a flash-light. To many of us it seemed like a volcanic fire; to all it was an awe-inspiring, but fascinating, puzzle. As it rose slowly higher it seemed to pull the mountain up with it; presently we noticed that the weird object had not only an upward movement but also a lateral progress. Then the fire separated from the mountain and later the smoke separated from the fire, and then both smoke and mountain vanished, leaving only a cone of rayless flame. Every few seconds for fifteen minutes this extraordinary object underwent a remarkable transfiguration; now it was oblong with its greatest diameter parallel to the line of the horizon, again it formed an inverted cone, at other times it became semi-circular, and, most curious of all, it was a globe divided by a line. There was at no time any sign of luminosity about the spot. It remained a dull red, fading into orange, and when it had ascended about five degrees it assumed the form of a ragged ball of old gold. By this time we had discovered that it was the moon making anomalous faces as it passed through the icy atmosphere resting on the pack. (It was a sight which we saw many times afterwards, and it was always full of a sort of weird glory, of which we never tired.)