[Illustration: Distorted Face of the Rising Sun.] Lecointe and Amundsen were standing on an iceberg close to me. They faced the light, and watched the fragment of the sun slide under bergs, over hummocks, and along the even expanse of the frozen sea, with a worshipful air. Their eyes beamed with delight, but under this delight there was noticeable the accumulated suffering of seventy dayless nights. Their faces were drawn and thin, though the weight of their bodies was not reduced. The skin had a sickly, jaundiced colour, green, and yellow, and muddy. Altogether, we accused each other of appearing as if we had not been washed for months. The uncertainty of our exact latitude made it impossible to estimate just how much of the sun’s disk would be visible. Our time, too, was uncertain, for our pocket timepieces were not reliable, and we were far from the chronometers. We watched and watched, expecting that the crest of fire would rise and give us an increased glow of light and some heat, but it only slid teasingly on the verge of the sea. It seemed as though our world of ice was not yet worthy of the blessings of the “sun-god.” A few minutes after twelve the light was extinguished, a smoky veil of violet was drawn over the dim outline of the ice, and quickly the stars again twinkled in the gobelin-blue of the sky as they had done, without being outshone, for nearly seventeen hundred hours. July 23.--We have just finished breakfast, and at 8 A.M. are out on deck to welcome the promise of the coming day. It is long since we have taken such interest in the cold outer world, but we are now anxious to free ourselves from the darkness of the cabins, and the tiresome sameness of the daily routine of life. The meteorologist is reading the barometers and thermometers and recording the sky phenomena. The captain has just finished a magnetic observation. The crew are taking their usual hourly exercise by a brisk walk in a path about the bark. The officers are planning the day’s work for the men to perform to-morrow. The scientific cranks are all scattered about the deck, shivering and noting matters of special interest to each. I took a short _ski_ run out over the hazy purple ice to get away from the local drift of thought, and then reclined upon a hummock to study the scene. The temperature was -25° C., there was almost no air stirring, and aside from the life and muffled noise about the vessel, a death-like silence reigned over the entire scene. The _Belgica_ was distinctly visible in the brightening twilight; her body was buried under the heavy weight of the accumulated winter snows, but the masts stood out in bold relief against a background of gold on the eastern sky. The masts and ropes and spars were heavily coated with hoar-frost, and they sparkled in the reflected glimmer of the dawn, as if beset by millions of diamonds. [Illustration: Crossing Hummocks and Crevasses. Edge of the Belgica Field in October.]