"Here is the daylight I promised you. Did you ever see it at midnight before?"
"How do you know it is midnight? It looks more like a red sunset to me," I said, for the sun was just in the horizon.
"The sun has just set, and is now rising. It did not go out of sight, but gradually turned about and began to mount again. That is how I know it is midnight."
"Sunset presses so closely upon sunrise that night is crowded out altogether. Then this must be the land of the midnight sun that I have read about?"
"Yes, we are very near the Earth again, and this is far inside the arctic polar circle, where the sun never goes down during summer, but sets for a long night in the winter. I have kept far to the westward to avoid the magnetic pole, which might play havoc with my apparatus."
"Then your little side-trip is——"
"To the North Pole, of course!" he cried triumphantly.
How simple this vexed problem had become, after all! It had worsted the most daring travellers of all countries for centuries. Thousands upon thousands spent in sending expeditions to find the Pole had only called for other thousands to fit out relief expeditions. Ship after ship had been crashed, life after life had been clutched in its icy hand! But now it had become an after-thought, a side-trip, a little excursion to be made while waiting for midnight! And it is often that such a simple solution of the most baffling difficulties is found at last.
The doctor had been observing his quadrant, and was now busy making calculations. He called me up to his compartment.
"Longitude, 144 degrees and 45 minutes west; Latitude, 89 degrees 59 minutes and 30 seconds north. That is the way it figures out. We were half a mile from the Pole when I took my observation. We must have just crossed over it since then."