CHAPTER XIX 
THE FIRST ANTARCTIC NIGHT 
“ When the shadow of night’s eternal wings 
Envelopes the gloomy whole 
And the mutter of deep-mouth’d thunderings 
Shakes all the starless pole.” 
— Tennyson. 
E XPLORERS of the South Polar seas so far had 
flitted to and fro like summer migrants, coming after 
the late spring and retiring northward when the first 
breath of autumn crisped the surface of the sea. They 
had found the summer cold and changeable, liable at any 
time to showers of snow and chilling fogs, the mercury 
of the thermometer hovering in its boldest ascents close 
to the freezing point, and too frequently retreating to the 
neighbourhood of Fahrenheit’s zero ; but yet it was sum- 
mer, the best quarter of the Antarctic year. Every ex- 
plorer has spoken of the marvellous beauty of a fine Ant- 
arctic day, the unbroken genial sunshine, twice round the 
clock, the black rocks throwing off their white covering, 
and growing hot under the persistent radiation, the soft 
snow on the levels dissolving into water which gathered 
into streams and almost rivers, every block of ice on 
land or sea musically adrip, and sea and land alike loud 
with the hoarse voice of birds, no sweet songsters among 
them, but every throat clamorous with life. 
For hundreds, if not for thousands of years the Arctic 
night has been familiar. The Greek philosophers knew 
of the land of winter darkness, the northern Scandina- 
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