EFFECT OF EXTREME COLD ON A CANDLE.
CHAPTER VI.
End of Twilight—Moonlight—Daily Life in Winter Quarters—Condensation—Breakfast—Morning Prayers—Outdoor Work—Exercise—The Ladies’ Mile—A Walk to Flagstaff Point—Sounds from the Pack—Optical Phenomenon—Dinner—Our Cat “Pops”—Occupation during Winter—Mock Moons—“Sally”—The Darkness.
TWILIGHT at mid-day ceased on 9th November; that is to say, the sun never afterwards came within twenty-eight degrees of the southern horizon. Such a definition of twilight is as convenient as any other, and has the advantage of being familiar to some people at least, as it is that which usually regulates the firing of the morning gun in garrison towns. After this date nothing but a faint violet glow towards the south, not bright enough to hide the stars, and that too lessening every day, marked the whereabouts of the mid-day sun. We were not at once left in darkness, however, for the moon rose, and for ten periods of twenty-four hours—one cannot call them days—climbed, and then declined spirally through the heavens. She again visited us three times before twilight returned, each time giving us the benefit of full moon; indeed, without her cheerful visits winter darkness would have been almost unendurable. During the intervening periods of darkness, “next moonlight” was looked forward to in much the same way that schoolboys look forward to holidays. A diagram made by Captain Nares, and hung up on the lower deck, representing the daily position of the moon during the absence of the sun, was constantly consulted. In this far northern region man is as much influenced by the moon as his celebrated Ascidian ancestor on the tidal beach. Her advent inaugurates a period of intermittent vitality. Then was the time to build snow-houses, to collect fresh ice for culinary purposes, and to repair the banking up of the ship. It was only then that it was possible to leave the beaten track marked out for daily exercise, and wade towards Cairn Hill or Flagstaff Point, or toboggin down Thermometer Hill or Guy Fawkes Hummock. When the moon left us, exercise collapsed into a monotonous two hours’ routine up and down, up and down the measured line of preserved meat tins, relieved here and there by an empty barrel, by way of milestone. A tread-mill would have been a pleasing exchange, especially if it was made the means of supplying an electric light during exercise hours.
Anyone acquainted with Arctic literature does not need to be told that a polar winter cannot be safely passed without strict discipline. Routine must extend even to the smallest domestic affairs. Some people would never go to bed, and others would never get up if there was nothing special to make them; and constant darkness is so enervating that few, if any, would keep up a steady healthful amount of exercise without routine.