My companions on the excursion were Gerlache and Amundsen. Slowly and lazily we skated over the rough surface of the snow to the northward. We had not gone far before we discovered that the ice was cracking and large leads were cutting off our retreat. We mounted hummocks of unusual height, and there awaited the imitation of the rising of the sun. Where the ice broke it separated, leaving a lane of black sea, from which oozed a peculiar vapour--in reality a cloud of small icy crystals which fell on the neighbouring ice-fields. The countless miniature mountains, or hummocks, which covered the white fields, had their northern faces brightened by a pale yellow light and their southern shadowed by a dull blue. This gave a little light to the usual lifeless gray of the ice-fields. Along the fresh leads there were a few penguins and an occasional seal, and in the water, whales were spouting jets of breath. The pack, with the strange play of deflected light upon it, the subdued high lights, the softened shadows, the little speck of human and wild life, and our good ship buried under its snows, should have been interesting to us; but we were interested only in the sky and in the northern portion of it. A few moments before twelve the cream-coloured zone in the north brightened to an orange hue, and precisely at noon half of the form of the sun ascended above the ice. It was a misshapen, dull semicircle of gold, heatless, rayless, and sad. It sank again in a few moments, leaving almost no colour and nothing cheerful to remember through the seventy long days of darkness which followed. We returned to the ship, and during the afternoon laid out the plans for our midwinter occupation. May 20.--It is the fifth day of the long night and it certainly seems long, very long, since we have felt the heat of the sun. During the parting days of light the weather was exceedingly unsteady, and the sky was then constantly veiled by a frozen smoky vapour, but now a disturbing element seems to have been withdrawn. The horizon is not yet clear, but the zenith is almost always high and blue, with the Southern Cross generally visible until nine o’clock in the morning and after three o’clock in the afternoon. From eleven to one o’clock at noon to-day there was light enough thrown over the northern ice to read ordinary print outside, but in our rooms it is necessary to burn lights continually. The little midday twilight is used to make soundings and to secure the fauna and flora of the shallow sea under us. Those not engaged in this work are busied in still more snugly housing the _Belgica_ and in shoveling pathways around the ship. I have selected this part of the day to take a daily walk over the pack to neighbouring floes, and to distant icebergs, to study the ice and the life, and to obtain sufficient physical exercise, as well as mental recreation, to retard the spell of indifference which is falling over me. [Illustration: An Old Lead.]