The Argosy — page 396: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Under Northern Skies. 375 influence. It was difficult as ever to realise that these were Northern latitudes, and we were carried in spirit to the land of the Moor. There uprose a vision of Tangiers. There, outside the walls, we had seen caravansaries, camels in every attitude and every stage of burden, patient, meek-looking creatures ; stalwart, handsome Orientals, neither meek nor patient, with flashing eyes and long beards, wrapped in their abbas, wrangling and bargaining with each other. One almost expected to come upon the same thing here; but all was silent and abandoned, and the Eastern vision gave place to the colder realities of the North. The ground without the walls of Wisby was deserted and barren as a sandy plain; immediately within them, a portion of the uninhabited, unused territory was devoted to nothing more romantic than a rope walk. We were glad to return to the streets, the evidences of a dead world, the signs of a living. In the evening we went down to the breakwater, a solid piece of masonry made to resist immense seas. Outside, to break the force of the waves, it was supported by huge blocks of granite, simply thrown down and allowed to lie there. We watched a sunset from the end of the stone-work. JBefore us the wide sea stretched far as eye could reach. The sky grew red and angry, with magnificent wave-like clouds that varied every moment with the growing twilight. Presently, deep red flashes and beams, splendid and beautiful, shot upwards from the horizon: a dis- play of the Northern Lights. Blood-red reflections, caught by the sea, were carried on by heaving rollers that followed each other with majestic sweep ; followed and died out without breaking, only to give place to others. There were no angry waves to-night. Silence was on the sea, and solitude. Not a vessel in sight, scarcely a craft in the small harbour. Above, rose the town, its outlines of minarets, towers and ruins mapped against the deepening sky. A matchless picture. Other places have their palaces and churches, a thousand and one attrac- tions; no other place has this wonderful assemblage of ruins, all within a stone’s throw of each other, embraced within a narrow area, surrounded by ancient walls with towers keeping watch and ward over their priceless treasures. Darkness deepened, but those Northern Lights still flashed about the sky in silent, solemn grandeur. ‘The moon rose still and pale, as if angry at the invasion of her realm ; a round, silvery shield, beautiful as a dream, cold as death, lighting up a sleeping world. We left it all in sorrow. We had seen nothing grander and more startling, more magnificent and supernatural than this display of the Aurora Borealis, in conjunction with the weird influence of the won- derful town. It was worthy of being a last impression of Wisby, and shall be the last recorded, though it was not our last day in the little capital of Gotland. When we finally went down to the coast, our factotum, who had CoOnniclbooks (S©) im