We seem to select the nights for our attacks upon the barriers of ice which everywhere have threatened to prevent our entry into the snowy preserve beyond. During the night the temperature falls, the fog, which always screens the ice in daytime, is congealed and deposited as snow; and, though the sky here at the edge of the pack generally remains dark at night, there is an incomprehensible metallic glow on the glassy surface of the water, and a sharp phosphoretic glitter from every spire and pan of ice. The night is a long twilight, and when the demons of storm are not hovering about it is a long, dreamy spell of joy. The inspiration of this solitude, the transcendental and indescribable something about this continued twilight from sunset to dawn, and the wine which one drinks with the wintry atmosphere raises the soul into a plane of superhuman existence. The glory of these midnight glimmers will haunt me for the rest of my days. But we are below the antarctic circle, and the average reader will expect that we are flooded by the almost perpetual light of the polar summer day. This would be true earlier in the season; but now the sun is low on the horizon. The darkness, which is soon to throw the icy splendours into a hopeless, sooty gloom, is gathering its hellish fabric to cover the laughing glory of day. The sunless winter of storm, of unimaginable cold, of heart-destroying depression, is rapidly advancing. We are hoping to continue our voyage of exploration as long as possible, and when the darkness and cold become too great we expect to steal away and winter in more congenial latitudes. (How utterly we failed to gain freedom from the icy fetters of this heartless Frost King of the night is shown by our imprisonment later.) [Illustration: Bird’s-eye View of the Pack-ice Near the Outer Edge.]