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This strange phenomenon was due to mirage or refraction. We attributed it to an ice-crack to the westward, where the band of open water had heated a stratum of air. The drift of the pack was not constant, and during the succeeding days the crevassed berg alternately advanced and receded as the 'Endurance' moved with the floe. On Sunday, April 18, it was only seven miles distant from the ship.
He proceeded to the western extremity of the island, and discovered a little narrow neck of land connecting the island with the mainland, and the devil they had a genuine devil in those days, too, it seems, who is always "playing the devil" with us produced a mirage, and over on the mainland were such hills and vales, such dells and dales, such lofty mountains crowned with perpetual snow, such cataracts clad in bows of glory, that he rushed breathlessly back to his wife, exclaiming: "O, Heva! the country over there is a thousand times better and lovelier than this; let us migrate."
This was turning out of my course; but I must reach the water and save my life. I sat in my saddle, faint and choking, leaving my animal to go at will. I had lost the energy to guide him. He went many miles westward, for the sun told me the course. I was suddenly roused from my stupor. A glad sight was before me. A lake! a lake shining like crystal. Was I certain I saw it? Could it be the mirage?
I came to see that, trained as I had been in certain habits of life and work, habituated to certain experiences, the savour of the interludes had owed their pungency to their economy and rarity. And so, like some weft of opalescent mist, the sweet mirage melted in the noonday. What I then saw I will leave to be told hereafter; but it was not what I desired nor what I expected.
Leaving Silver Islet far behind, we rounded Whitefish Point, with its tall lighthouse, and saw a very distinct mirage a long stretch of cold blue water, filled with great blocks of ice. It was rather amusing to see the eagerness with which glasses were levelled at the "counterfeit presentment" of a scene, of whose reality we should soon have even too much.
Baby camels with waggling, tufted humps followed their mothers. Slim grey sloughis and Kabyle dogs quarrelled with each other, among flocks of black and white goats; and at night, the sky pulsed with the fires of desert encampments, rosy as northern lights. Just before the walled city of Ouargla, Victoria saw her first mirage, clear as a dream between waking and sleeping.
Where the vision is but mirage, even there it is a symbol of our goal; where it stands fast and true, for however brief a moment, it can illumine, and should determine the whole of our lives. For such sights are the manifestation of that glory which lies permanent beyond the changing of the world.
Five years before he had crept like a lizard; now he was rushing straight on like the homing eagle who sees his home crag gleam in the setting sun. The cactus looked up at him with spiney face. The first prairie dog sitting erect uttered a greeting to which he smiled. The first mirage filled his heart with a rush of memories of wild rides, and the grease wood recalled a hundred odorous camp fires.
Through the meshes which press gently against one's face comes every sound which our human ears can distinguish and set apart from the silence a silence which in itself is only a mirage of apparent soundlessness, a testimonial to the imperfection of our senses.
How dull, how impossible life would be without dreams waking dreams, I mean the dreams that we call "castles in the air," built by the kindly hands of Hope! Were it not for the mirage of the oasis, drawing his footsteps ever onward, the weary traveler would lie down in the desert sand and die.
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