THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



simply swarming with living organisms. The sunsets 

 at the beginning of April were wonderful; arches of 

 prismatic colours, crimson and golden-tinged clouds, 

 hung in the heavens nearly all day, for time was going 

 on and soon the sun would have deserted us. The 

 days grew shorter and shorter, and the twilight longer. 

 During these sunsets the Western Mountains stood 

 out gloriously and the summit of Erebus was wrapped 

 in crimson when the lower slopes had faded into grey. 

 To Erebus and the Western Mountains our eyes turned 

 when the end of the long night grew near in the month 

 of August, for the mighty peaks are the first to catch 

 up and tell the tale of the coming glory and the last 

 to drop the crimson mantle from their high shoulders 

 as night draws on. Tongue and pencil would sadly 

 fail in attempting to describe the magic of the colour- 

 ing in the days when the sun was leaving us. The 

 very clouds at this time were irridescent with rainbow 

 hues. The sunsets were poems. The change from 

 twilight into night, sometimes lit by a crescent moon, 

 was extraordinarily beautiful, for the white cliffs gave 

 no part of their colour away, and the rocks beside them did 

 not part with their blackness, so the effect of deepen- 

 ing night over these contrasts was singularly weird. 

 In my diary I noted that throughout April hardly a 

 day passed without an aurora display. On more than 

 one occasion the aurora showed distinct lines of colour, 

 merging from a deep red at the base of the line of light 

 into a greenish hue on top. About the beginning of 

 April the temperature began to drop considerably, and 

 for some days in calm, still weather the thermometer often 

 registered 40° below zero. 



On April 6, Marshall decided that it was necessary 

 to amputate Brocklehurst's big toe, as there was no 

 sign of it recovering like the other toes from the frost- 



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