The whole scene might well have been the fantastic dream of some imaginative painter, whose ambition soared beyond the limits of human skill.

Yet it was only one of those million wonderful effects of sky and sea which are common in Norway, especially on the Altenfjord, where, though beyond the Arctic circle, the climate in summer is that of another Italy, and the landscape a living poem fairer than the visions of Endymion.
There was one solitary watcher of the splendid spectacle.

This was a man of refined features and aristocratic appearance, who, reclining on a large rug of skins which he had thrown down on the shore for that purpose, was gazing at the pageant of the midnight sun and all its stately surroundings, with an earnest and rapt expression in his clear hazel eyes.
"Glorious! beyond all expectation, glorious!" he murmured half aloud, as he consulted his watch and saw that the hands marked exactly twelve on the dial.

"I believe I'm having the best of it, after all.

Even if those fellows get the _Eulalie_ into good position they will see nothing finer than this." As he spoke he raised his field-glass and swept the horizon in search of a vessel, his own pleasure yacht,--which had taken three of his friends, at their special desire, to the opposite island of Seiland,--Seiland, rising in weird majesty three thousand feet above the sea, and boasting as its chief glory the great peak of Jedke, the most northern glacier in all the wild Norwegian land.