LOOKING FOR THE SUN.--THE OPEN SEA.--BIRDS.
While the days were thus running on, the sun was crawling up toward
the horizon, and each returning noon brought an increase of light. I
carried in my pocket at all times a little book, and early in February
I began to experiment with it. When I could read the title-page at
noon I was much rejoiced. By and by the smaller letters could be
puzzled out; then I could decipher with ease the finest print, and the
youngsters were in great glee at being able to read the thermometers
at eleven and twelve and one o'clock without the lantern. On the 10th
of February I made the following memorandum on the margin of my book:
"Almost broad daylight at noon, and I read this page at 3 o'clock P.
M." My calculations placed the sun at the horizon on the 18th.
[Sidenote: LOOKING FOR THE SUN.]
The appearance of the sun became now the one absorbing event. About
it everybody thought and everybody talked continually. No set of
men ever looked more eagerly for a coming joy than did we for the
promised morn,--we, half-bloodless beings, coming from the night,
bleached in the long-continued lamp-light, and almost as colorless
as potato-sprouts growing in a dark cellar. We all noted how to-day
compared with yesterday, and contrasted it with this day a week ago.
Even the old cook caught the contagion, and crawled up from among his
saucepans and coppers, and, shading his eyes with his stove-hardened
hands, peered out into the growing twilight. "I tinks dis be very long
night," said he, "and I likes once more to see de blessed sun." The
steward was in a state of chronic excitement. He could not let the sun
rest in peace for an hour. He must watch for him constantly. He must be
forever running up on deck and out on the ice, book in hand, trying to
read by the returning daylight. He was impatient with the time. "Don't
the Commander think the sun will come back sooner than the 18th?"
"Don't he think it will come back on the 17th?" "Was he quite sure
that it wouldn't appear on the 16th?" "I'm afraid, steward, we must
rely upon the Nautical Almanac." "But mightn't the Nautical Almanac
be wrong?"--and I could clearly perceive that he thought my ciphering
might be wrong too.
Meanwhile we were tormented with another set of gales, and we could
scarcely stir abroad. The ice was all broken up in the outer bay, and
the open sea came nearer to us than during any previous period of the
winter. The ice was nearly all driven out of the bay, and the broad,
dark, bounding water was not only in sight from the deck, but I could
almost drop a minie-ball into it from my rifle, while standing on the
poop. Even the ice in the inner harbor was loosened around the shore,
and, thick and solid though it was, I thought at one time that there
was danger of its giving way and going bodily out to sea.
[Sidenote: ARCTIC BIRDS.]
Strange, too, along the margin of this water there came a flock of
speckled birds to shelter themselves under the lee of the shore, and
to warm their little feet in the waters which the winds would not let
freeze. They were the _Dovekie_ of Southern Greenland,--the _Uria
grylle_ of the naturalist. They are often seen about Disco Island and
Upernavik in the winter time, but I was much surprised to find them
denizens of the Arctic night so near the Pole. It was a singular sight
to see them paddling about in the caves, under the ice-foot, at 30°
below zero, uttering their plaintive cry, and looking for all the world
like homeless children, shoeless and in rags, crouching for shelter
beneath a door-stoop on a bleak December night. I wanted one of them
badly for a specimen, but it would have required something stronger
than the claims of science to have induced me to harm a feather of
their trembling little heads.
[Illustration]