After all, what is that which we call courage? This poor savage, who would not hesitate to attack single-handed the fierce polar bear, who has now voluntarily faced a danger than which none could be more dreadful, fleeing out into the darkness, over the mountains and glaciers, and through snow-drifts and storms, pursued by fear, lacks the resolution to face an imaginary harm from his fellow-men. It seems, indeed, to be a peculiarity of uninstructed minds to dread man's anger and man's treachery more than all other evils,--whether of wild beast or storm or pestilence. CHAPTER XIV. MIDWINTER.--THE NIGHT OF MONTHS.--BRILLIANCY OF THE MOONLIGHT.--MILD TEMPERATURES.--REMARKABLE WEATHER.--A SHOWER.--DEPTH OF SNOW.--SNOW CRYSTALS.--AN EPIDEMIC AMONG THE DOGS.--SYMPTOMS OF THE DISORDER.--GREAT MORTALITY.--ONLY ONE TEAM LEFT.--NEW PLANS.--SCHEMES FOR REACHING THE ESQUIMAUX IN WHALE SOUND. The reader who has followed my diary since we entered Port Foulke will have noticed how gradually the daylight vanished, and with what slow and measured step the darkness came upon us. As November approached its close, the last glimmer of twilight disappeared. The stars shone at all hours with equal brilliancy. From a summer which had no night we had passed into a winter which had no day, through an autumn twilight. In this strange ordering of Nature there is something awe-inspiring and unreal. We all knew from our school-boy days that, at the poles of the earth there is but one day and one night in the year; but, when brought face to face with the reality, it is hard to realize. And it is harder still to get used to. If the constant sunshine of the summer disturbed our life-long habits, the continual darkness of the winter did more. In the one case the imagination was excited by the ever-present light, inspiring action; in the other, a night of months threw a cloud over the intellect and dwarfed the energies. To this prolonged darkness the moon gives some relief. From its rising to its setting it shines continually, circling around the horizon, never setting until it has run its ten days' course of brightness. And it shines with a brilliancy which one will hardly observe elsewhere. The uniform whiteness of the landscape and the general clearness of the atmosphere add to the illumination of its rays, and one may see to read by its light with ease, and the natives often use it as they do the sun, to guide their nomadic life and to lead them to their hunting-grounds. [Sidenote: MIDWINTER.]