I cannot attempt to picture the vast Antarctic Night. The words I have learned were never intended to convey the supreme mightiness of the Polar Dark. Chauncey Gale has referred to it as “Creation’s Cold Storage.” I am willing to let it go at that.

In the electric blaze of the Billowcrest we made merry, and occupied ourselves usefully. When the cold without was not too severe we went snow-shoeing over Bottle Bay, where a crust of ice had eventually formed, and where snow grew ever deeper until we half expected to be overwhelmed. Sometimes we heard the roaring of the pack outside, but in our snug harbor we felt little of its grinding discontent. How much we were warmed by our current beneath the ice we could not know, but the thermometer at no time showed more than 30° below zero. I have seen it as cold in northern Nebraska.

Neither was it wholly dark in clear weather. 175We had the stars, and at regular intervals, through our harbor gateway, the moon looked in. Often it was a weird, distorted moon—flattened and wrinkled by radiations of cold from the far-lying ice—but always welcome. More than once it was doubly and even trebly welcome, for the atmosphere was responsible for some curious effects. Once Gale came down hastily to where Edith and I were deep in a game of cribbage.

“I want you and Johnnie to come on deck a minute,” he said with some urgency, “I want you to look at the moon.”

We arrayed ourselves and obeyed. Gale led the way and pointed to the harbor entrance.

“Nick,” he commanded, “I want you and Johnnie to tell me how many moons you see there.”

My hand lay on Edith’s arm and I gave it a significant pressure.

“Why,” I said, “I see one moon, of course. How many do you want me to see?”

“I hope, papa,” said his daughter gravely, “that you haven’t been taking too much wine. You know that it doesn’t agree with you. It makes you too stout, and now that it affects your eyes this way, I should think you would at least moderate your appetite for strong waters.”

“Johnnie,” said Gale severely, “you’re a goose, as usual. But on the dead, now, I want you and 176Nick to tell me how many moons you see there. I see three. If you only see one, then this cold storage, or something else, has got into my eyes, and it’s time I was doing something for it.”

We assured him, then, that we saw what he did, one real moon and two false ones, the result of some strange condition of the air. When we descended to the cabin, Gale followed singing,
“Three moons rose over the city where there shouldn’t have been but one.”

Besides these things we had the Aurora Australis, though from our position under the ice-wall we seldom got a direct view of this phenomenon, and we sometimes made excursions into the desolation of the pack to view it. On one of these we were separated from the ship by a wide waterway that opened just outside the harbor. It seemed a serious predicament for a time, but the little telephone, which we always carried, promptly “vibrated” a message to the ship, and our balloon-boat-and-sled combination was first put into actual service as a ferry to bring us safely over. From without, our harbor entrance had seemed a portal to the lower regions. Crossing to it in the boat was like being ferried over the river Styx.

To me the days did not drag, though to others of the party they may have passed less swiftly. Love did not speed the hours for them, unless in the 177sense that all the ship loved the lovers, and in making our lives interesting for us they found sufficient entertainment for themselves. Gale’s acceptance of the new understanding between Edith and myself had been characteristic and hearty.

“Well,” he said, “’tain’t my fault. Don’t come around now, you and Johnnie, tryin’ to blame it onto me. I told you how it would be. Oh Lord, what’s a circus without monkeys!” He took our hands then, and squeezed them together in one big, splendid palm. “Nicholas Chase,” he went on, “you’ve got the boat, and me, and now a mortgage on Johnnie. If there’s any other outlying and unattached property you’d like to have, just name it. And if you don’t see what you want ask for it. Johnnie’s the only undivided interest I had left that I cared anything about, and if you’re going to get that you might as well have all the rest.” But at this point Edith had thrown her arms about his neck, laughing and crying at once. Happy as I was, there was a moment or two just then in which I did not feel entirely comfortable.

One day, perhaps a week later, when we came in from an hour’s snow-shoeing, he suddenly greeted us with:

“Look here, Johnnie, how did it come you didn’t turn Nick down like the others?”

My sweetheart’s cheeks were already aglow, and 178her eyes sparkling. But I thought there came an added glow and sparkle at the unexpected question. Her eyes sent a quick look into mine that warmed my soul.

“Why, you see, Daddy, we—we were away off down here, and—and we couldn’t afford to have any unpleasantness on the ship, and——”

“Oh, yes, I see—I see! And you’re going to bounce him when we get back to New York. Great girl! Takes after ............