intensity
and vertical force, are exquisitely traced. Every day the magnetician
attends to the lamp and changes papers; also at prearranged times he
tests his "scale values" or takes a "quick run."

To obtain results as free as possible from the local attraction of
the rocks in the neighbourhood, Webb resolved to take several sets of
observations on the ice-sheet. In order to make the determinations it
was necessary to excavate a cave in the glacier. This was done about
three-quarters of a mile south of the Hut in working shifts of two men.
A fine cavern was hewn out, and there full sets of magnetic observations
were taken under ideal conditions.

On sledging journeys the "dip" and declination were both ascertained at
many stations, around and up to within less than half a degree of the
South Magnetic Pole.

While the wind rushed by at a maddening pace and stars flashed like
jewels in a black sky, a glow of pale yellow light overspread the
north-east horizon--the aurora. A rim of dark, stratus cloud was often
visible below the light which brightened and diffused till it curved as
a low arc across the sky. It was eerie to watch the contour of the arc
break, die away into a delicate pallor and reillumine in a travelling
riband. Soon a long ray, as from a searchlight, flashed above one end,
and then a row of vertical streamers ran out from the arc, probing
upwards into the outer darkness. The streamers waxed and waned, died
away to be replaced and then faded into the starlight. The arc lost its
radiance, divided in patchy fragments, and all was dark once more.

This would be repeated again in a few hours and irregularly throughout
the night, but with scenic changes behind the great sombre pall of the
sky. North-west, northeast, and south-east it would elusively appear in
nebulous blotches, flitting about to end finally in long bright strands
in the zenith, crossing the path of the "milky way."

By the observer, who wrote down his exact observations in the
meteorological log, this was called a "quiet night."

At times the light was nimble, flinging itself about in rich waves,
warming to dazzling yellow-green and rose. These were the nights when
"curtains" hung festooned in the heavens, alive, rippling, dancing
to the lilt of lightning music. Up from the horizon they would mount,
forming a vortex overhead, soundless within the silence of the ether.

A "brilliant display," we would say, and the observer would be kept b