The darkness grows daily a little deeper, and the night soaks hourly a little more colour from our blood. Our gait is now careless, the step non-elastic, the foothold uncertain. The hair grows quickly, like plants in a hot-house, but there is a great change in the colour. Most of us in the cabin have grown decidedly gray within two months, though few are over thirty. Our faces are drawn, and there is an absence of jest and cheer and hope in our make-up which, in itself, is one of the saddest incidents in our existence. There is no one willing to openly confess the force of the night upon himself, but the novelty of life has been worn out and the cold, dark outside world is incapable of introducing anything new. The moonlight comes and goes alike, during the hours of midday as at midnight. The stars glisten over the gloomy snows. We miss the usual poetry and adventure of home winter nights. We miss the flushed maidens, the jingling bells, the spirited horses, the inns, the crackling blaze of the country fire. We miss much of life which makes it worth the trouble of existence. At noon some of us went on a _ski_ journey, and about a mile south-east of the ship we were stopped by a wide lead of inky water, extending north and south as far as the sight could reach. The darkness was such that we dared not approach closely to the open sea. We were anxious to search the fringe of ice bordering on the gloomy water for animal life, and discussed the possibilities for some time, but the thickening veil of darkness drew over us tighter and tighter as we waited. Looking toward the _Belgica_ we saw that she was already nearly obscured by the sooty blackness, which was falling from the noonday heavens. Looking over the silent and endless sea of ice, however, the aspect was not one of night. A subdued glow seemed to rise from the white snows and illuminate the lower stratas of air; but this was only apparent. Nearly all irregularities were obscured or distorted. Huge hummocks, ten to twenty feet high, were not observed until we stumbled against them. Small elevations, with sharp angles, sometimes produced a mirage like that of an iceberg at a great distance. We would glide along leisurely on _ski_ and suddenly find that we had crossed this huge obstacle,--in reality only a few inches in height.