For the past month we have not felt like writing. Our humour and our ambition are not such as to make us transfer ideas to paper easily. If I could write poetry I should like to select the topics of conversation as subjects for gloomy moods,--for we certainly painted the skies darker, and made the snow blacker, than they ever appeared in reality. We made a feeble attempt to lift the gloomy seal, now and then, by a superficial humour,--a sort of frothy effervescence of the soul, but the efforts were as feeble as our anaemic muscular fibres. The long polar night lies heavily upon us. Our health has suffered considerably. We have not been so fortunate as Nansen’s party, if we may accept Nansen’s account of the health of his crew at the dawn of the arctic day. With a few boastful remarks he passes over the physical effects of the arctic night, and concludes to his own elation that they felt none of the usual complaints; but since it is reported that one of the best men has returned mentally deranged, of which Nansen leaves us in ignorance, we may infer that other matters have also slipped his memory. It is not possible for an expedition, with twelve men, to live three years in the arctic or any other region without some bodily ailments. These are as certain as human sins, and quite as interesting, but we look for them in vain in Nansen’s narrative. Perhaps Dr. Blessing or some other member of the expedition will give us a more serious account. In my experience with polar expeditions, and from every reliable record which I have been able to find where the observations have been given by honest and competent observers, there is a general agreement in the description of the physical effects of the polar night. Anaemia, or a condition allied to it, in one form or another and under various descriptions is always found if sought by an experienced eye. This malady we have had in by far the severest form which I have noticed in any arctic experiences, and more severe than is recorded in the literature of polar exploration. We have lost one officer, and a second barely escaped death. The marines are all afflicted; the condition is truly alarming. At present I have the captain in the “baking treatment.” He is pale and yellowish, with a feeble, almost imperceptible, pulse of from 100 to 140,--his recovery, while hopeful, is uncertain. [Illustration: Giant Petrel. (_Ossifraga gigantea._)] [Illustration: Megalestris. (_Megalestris antarctica._)] [Illustration: Giant Petrel. (_Ossifraga gigantea._)] [Illustration: Giant Petrel. (_Ossifraga gigantea._)] [Illustration: Megalestris. (_Megalestris antarctica._)] [Illustration: Antarctic Petrel. (_Thalassoica antarctica._)] [Illustration: Giant Petrel. (_Ossifraga gigantea._)] CHAPTER XXIV THE SOUTH POLAR NIGHT (CONTINUED). MIDNIGHT TO DAWN