he little waves made soothing music as
they played among the pebbles at his feet. The sun had gone down in
splendour, leaving a glorious radiance of sapphire and crimson on hills
and waves. Quietly and imperceptibly the shadows of night mantled the
long twilight gloaming, and then one by one the stars came out from
their hiding places, until the whole high dome of heaven was bright.
The milky way brightened into wondrous distinctness, until it seemed to
Oowikapun like a great pathway, and he wondered, as held in the
tradition of his people, if on it, by and by, he should travel to the
happy hunting grounds of his fathers.

After a time a brightness began to dawn in the northern sky, and then
from it some brilliant streamers of light suddenly shot up to the
heavens above. Then wavy ribbons of light quickly followed, and rapidly
unrolling themselves parallel with the horizon, quivered and danced in
rhythmic movements, blazing out at times in varied vivid colours as they
gracefully undulated from east to west. Often had Oowikapun seen these
displays, but up to this time he had only gazed with languid interest
upon these nightly visitants. This night, however, there was a display
so glorious that he stood as one entranced.

With a suddenness that can be shown only by electrical phenomena, there
almost instantaneously shot up from below the eastern horizon a dazzling
blaze of gorgeous electrical light, which in successive bounds rushed on
and on until, like a brilliant meteor a million times magnified, it
spanned the heavens, and for a time in purest white it seemed to hang an
arch of truce from heaven to earth. For a little while it quivered in
its dazzling whiteness, and then from it flashed out streamers in all
the colours of the rainbow. With one end holding on to the arch of
snowy whiteness they danced and scintillated and blazed until the whole
heavens seemed aglow. Then breaking loose they seemed to form
themselves into whole battalions of soldiers, and advanced and fought
and retreated until the heavens seemed to be the battlefield of the
ages, and stained with the blood of millions slain. During all the
apparent carnage, great streamers waved continuously above the
contending armies, and seemed like great battle flags leading on the
forces to greater deeds of valour. Sometimes they seemed to change into
great fiery swords, ready to add to the apparent carnage and destruction
that seemed so intensely real.