CHAPTER XVIII 



THE LONG NIGHT 



IT may well be doubted if it is possible for a person 

 who has never experienced four months of con- 

 stant darkness to imagine what it is. Every 

 school boy learns that at the two ends of the earth the 

 year is composed of one day and one night of equal 

 length, and the intervening periods of twilight; but the 

 mere recital of that fact makes no real impression on 

 his consciousness. Only he who has risen and gone to 

 bed by lamplight, and risen and gone to bed again by 

 lamplight, day after day, week after week, month after 

 month, can know how beautiful is the sunlight. 



During the long arctic night we count the days till 

 the light shall return to us, sometimes, toward the end 

 of the dark period, checking off the days on the calendar 

 — thirty-one days, thirty days, twenty-nine days, and 

 so on, till we shall see the sun again. He who would 

 understand the old sun worshipers should spend a 

 winter in the Arctic. 



Imagine us in our winter home on the Roosevelt, 

 four hundred and fifty miles from the North Pole: the 

 ship held tight in her icy berth, a hundred and fifty 

 yards from the shore, the ship and the surrounding 

 world covered with snow, the wind creaking in the 

 rigging, whistling and shrieking around the corners 

 of the deck houses, the temperature ranging from zero 



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