Wondering what could be the nature of this mysterious light, I climbed into the shrouds, in order to get a better view.  As I watched it, it suddenly began to lengthen out at both ends, like a rapidly spreading fire, and drew a long curtain of luminous mist around the whole northern horizon.  Another similar light then appeared in the south-east, and although it was not yet connected with the first, it also seemed to be extending itself laterally, and in a moment the two luminous curtains united, forming a great semicircular band of pale, bluish-white radiance around the heavens, like a celestial equator belting a vast universe of stars.  I could form, as yet, no conjecture as to the cause or nature of this strange phenomenon which looked and behaved like an aurora, but which seemed to rise out of the water.  After watching it five or ten minutes, I went below to call the captain.

Hardly had I reached the foot of the companionway when the mate shouted again; “O Kennan!  Come on deck quick!” and rushing hastily up I saw for the first time, in all its glorious splendour, the phosphorescence of the sea.  With almost incredible swiftness, a mantle of bluish-white fire had covered nearly all the dark water north of us, and its clearly defined edge wavered and trembled for an instant, like the arch of an aurora, within half a mile of the ship.  Another lightning-like flash brought it all around us, and we floated, literally, in a sea of liquid radiance.  Not a single square foot of dark water could be seen, in any direction, from the maintop, and all the rigging of the ship, to the royal yards, was lighted up with a faint, unearthly, blue glare.  The ocean looked like a vast plain of snow, illuminated by blue fire and overhung by heavens of almost inky blackness.  The Milky Way disappeared completely in the blaze of light from the sea, and stars of the first magnitude twinkled dimly, as if half hidden by fog.

Only a moment before, the dark, still water had reflected vividly a whole hemisphere of spangled constellations, and the outlines of the ship’s spars were projected as dusky shadows against the Milky Way.  Now, the sea was ablaze with opaline light, and the yards and sails were painted in faint tints of blue on a background of ebony.  The metamorphosis was sudden and wonderful beyond description!  The polar aurora seemed to have left its home in the higher regions of the atmosphere and descended in a sheet of vivid electrical fire upon the ocean.  As we stood, silent with amazement, upon the quarter-deck, this sheet of bluish flame suddenly vanished, over at least ten square miles of water, causing, by its almost instantaneous disappearance, a sensation of total blindness, and leaving the sea, for a moment, an abyss of blackness.  As the pupils of our eyes, however, gradually dilated, we saw, as before, the dark shining mirror of water around the ship, while far away on the horizon rose the faint luminous appearance which had first attracted our attention, and which was evidently due to the lighting up of the haze by areas of phosphorescent water below the horizon line.