428 
A NIGHT SCENE. 
and made an egg-nogg of eider eggs ; and the men 
had a Hosky ball ; and, in a word, we all did our best 
to make the day differ from other days — which at- 
tempt failed. Still, God ever bless the fourth ! 
The sixth was Sunday, and we attended church in 
the morning at the schoolmaster's. The service con- 
sisted of a long-winded hymn, and a longer winded 
sermon, in the Esquimaux — surely the longest of long- 
winded languages. The congregation were some two 
dozen men and women, not counting our party. 
"We put to sea in the afternoon. The weather was 
soft and warm on shore ; but outside it was perfectly 
delightful: no wind — the streams of ice beyond en- 
forcing a most perfect calm upon the water ; the ther- 
mometer in the sunshine frequently as high as 76*^, 
and never sinking below 80° in the shade. I basked 
on deck all night, sleeping in the sun. 
And such a night! I saw the moon at midnight, 
while the sun was slanting along the tinted horizon, 
and duplicated by reflection from the water below it : 
the dark bergs to seaward had outlines of silver ; and 
two wild cataracts on the shore-side were falling from 
ice-backed cliffs twelve hundred feet into the sea. 
