(_Ogmorhynus Leptonyx._)] [Illustration: True Sea-Leopard. (_Ogmorhynus Leptonyx._)] [Illustration: Crab-eater. (_Lobodon Carcinophaga._)] [Illustration: True Sea-Leopard. (_Ogmorhynus Leptonyx._)] [Illustration: Crab-eater. (_Lobodon Carcinophaga._)] [Illustration: False, or Weddell Sea-Leopard. (_Leptonychotes Weddelli._)] CHAPTER XXI THE SOUTH POLAR NIGHT--DEPARTURE OF THE SUN. May 16.--The long night began at 12 o’clock last night. We did not know this until this afternoon. At 4 o’clock Lecointe got an observation by two stars which placed us in latitude 71° 34′ 30″, longitude 89° 10′. According to a careful calculation from these figures the captain announces the melancholy news that there will be no more day--no more sun for seventy days, if our position remains about the same. If we drift north the night will be shorter, if south it will be longer. Shortly before noon the long prayed-for southerly wind came, sweeping from the pack the warm, black atmosphere, and replacing it with a sharp air and a clearing sky. Exactly at noon we saw a brightening in the north. We expected to see the sun by refraction, though we knew it was actually below the horizon, but we were disappointed. The cold whiteness of our earlier surroundings has now been succeeded by a colder blackness. Even the long, bright twilight, which gladdened our hearts on first entering the pack, has been reduced to but a fraction of its earlier glory; this now takes the place of our departed day. The winter and the darkness have slowly but steadily settled over us. By such easy stages has the light departed that we have not, until now, appreciated the awful effect. The circumstance has furnished a subject for our conversation for most of the time which we now mis-name day, and a large part of the sleeping hours of the night. It is not difficult to read on the faces of my companions their thoughts and their moody dispositions. We are all wandering northward--homeward, with the fugitive sun. The curtain of blackness which has fallen over the outer world of icy desolation has also descended upon the inner world of our souls. Around the tables, in the laboratory, and in the forecastle, men are sitting about sad and dejected, lost in dreams of melancholy from which, now and then, one arouses with an empty attempt at enthusiasm. For brief moments some try to break the spell by jokes, told perhaps for the fiftieth time. Others grind out a cheerful philosophy; but all efforts to infuse bright hopes fail.