We saw the lights our first evening out from Manehattan. They grew in splendor until, for three of us, the voyage ended. For the others, they may still move sometimes in the sky. They have never been explained, not even by Moonbeam, who found some reason for every other fantastic thing that happened.
Standing by the rail after dinner that first night, I watched them. The sea was a little rough, but most of our passengers were veterans. Nobody had retired except one old mare. We stood along the rail or walked about the deck, speaking to each other occasionally with that shyness peculiar to ponies who meet for the first time on board a ship -- especially a small ship -- the first day out. The unicorn beside me was Moonbeam, but I didn't know that then.
"Curious," she said. "They don't look like an ordinary display." I noted her soft, precise voice, and her traveler's accent -- that slightly foreign but indistinguishable trick of speech which marks a linguist.
I said, "I've never seen the aurora borealis. I don't know why I haven't."
"I have," she said, "and it's different -- not so definite as this." She pointed out to me the peculiarities of these lights. They lay in a narrow band across the sky, diagonal to our course but far down toward the east. They appeared very bright, and they had a sort of motion which couldn't be determined so far away. It became more evident during the next day or so, as we approached them. At first it was only a slight twinkling, such as stars appear to have. The lights didn't move. They looked more like the lights of a city the first night, and I heard passengers speculating as they went by, talking of uncharted pegasus cities.
Later on I tired of the lights. I took a few turns around the deck, and then went to my cabin. My companion was still watching, with a thoughtful expression, when I left.
The sea was rougher the next day, and rose perceptibly as night came on. There was little wind, though, and the sky seemed to be serene. After supper, we went up and found the lights there again. They were closer tonight, and still directly in our path. None of us were worried, naturally, but we were curious. I watched them, alone, for some hours. I saw the mare I had spoken to the night before, but she was immersed in her own thoughts.
The fourth night out we ran into the storm. The sea had been rising steadily, and tonight it was becoming actually dangerous. The ship pitched and rolled with difficulty through heavy seas that drenched the decks. We looked at the sky through occasional showers of spray. But the wind was still very moderate, and stars were visible at times through the dark, thin clouds that raced across the sky. It was as though the sea had been thrown into confusion by some curious and magnificent struggle going on far under its surface.
The lights were nearly overhead, and very bright. Tonight they were clear and distinct. They didn't touch the horizon. They seemed to appear out of nothingness down the sky in the south, and arched up to their most brilliant point over us, ahead. Then they went down again into nothingness to the north and east. It was oddly difficult to follow them at their ends, where they disappeared. It was as if they lost themselves in the distance, converging together; but whenever I tried to see where they ended, my eyes would return automatically to their center, overhead.
I met Moonbeam again. I had not seen her during the day since we left port, except at meals. We were at different tables: she had her meals with the Captain. Tonight we were alone on deck. I had come up because I have a thoroughly disreputable preference for rough weather. Moonbeam was watching the lights. I spoke to her, and she nodded.
After awhile, she said, "Do you notice how immovable those bands are? They seem to be fixed in the sky. They don't change position with the stars."
"I hadn't thought of that," I said. "Astronomy's not my line."
Again she nodded. "You see my point, though. And they're too sharply defined--more like physical objects in the sky than like bands of light."
I had noticed that. They had a certain rotundity, a perceptible effect of depth. They looked like long rods of a strange metal, heated white hot, and foreshortened by some indeterminable optical illusion. I could count an even dozen such rods. They appeared to be hundreds of miles overhead, but the clouds avoided them, thinning and dying out as they passed beneath. For the first time I had a vague feeling that something unknown and important was impending.
"You see that rod-like effect?" Moonbeam was saying. I nodded. "I've had the impression for half an hour that they're turning over and over, very slowly, as on axes. Doesn't it seem so to you?"
I watched awhile, intently.
"I think I know what you mean," I said.
"Of course it may be only an illusion," Moonbeam added.
We discussed the lights and watched them for several hours, until I found myself suddenly shivering with cold, and wet through to my skin. I turned away regretfully.
"This won't do," I said. "I'll have pneumonia if I don't go to my cabin." Moonbeam retired a little to the shelter of a boat.
"I think I'll wait awhile," she said. "These lights have fascinated me."
I nodded good night to her, and left. It was hard even to move along the deck, with the ship tossing so. We had been issued life belts, but I didn't bother to put mine on. I got to bed with difficulty, and finally fell into a troubled sleep.
Hours later I sat up, suddenly awake. The ship was creaking and trembling and rocking in a confused medley of noise and motion. My trunk had come loose, and was pitching about the cabin in the midst of falling clothes and toilet articles. A brilliant bluish light streamed in through the port hole, lighting the cabin weirdly. My skin seemed to tingle and jump as if it were charged with magic.
I rose hastily, snatched up my life belt, and ran out on deck. Most of the passengers were already there, comparatively quiet. I think they must have been overawed by the colossal majesty of the spectacle. The ship plunged desperately in the midst of the wildest sea I had ever encountered. Spray swept across the sky high over us, and from time to time waves battered against the side thunderously, rushing across the decks. There was obviously no possibility of launching a boat. Yet the little ship seemed to be holding its own somehow. The whole ocean surged about us with a strange appearance of lightness which we shared, riding it as though all at once gravity had been partly suspended.
The lights blazed above us, directly overhead. A bluish brilliance filled the sky and hovered about the ship and on the surface of the water. The ship quivered with it, and our bodies, the water, every object on deck seemed to be charged with magic. There was an exhilaration in it for even the most alarmed spectators.
But nothing happened. After about an hour, the sea grew visibly quieter. The lights overhead dimmed a little, and the magical tension gradually diminished. A few stolid spirits went back to bed, and most of the fillies retired with obvious reluctance. The officers moved about on deck, assuring us that the worst was over, promising to have us called if anything more happened. I stayed on deck to watch.
After awhile the sky grew paler, and the lights began to fade. I noticed that they had changed position and were now stretched, as well as I could see through the spray, from horizon to horizon, even and parallel, along our course -- unless we had lost our course in the confusion. The sky was clouding over. The dawn, when it came, was gray and cold -- sunless. I went back to my cabin at last for a few more hours of sleep.