the dragon certainly was beautiful, with his deep, clear prussian blueness, and his rainbow-colored glitter. and rising from within the cold coil of the frozen dragon the north pole shot up like a pillar made of one great diamond, and every now and then it cracked a little, from sheer cold. the sound of the cracking was the only thing that broke the great white silence in the midst of which the dragon lay like an enormous jewel, and the straight flames went up all around him like the stalks of tall lilies.