THE MIDNIGHT SUN
It was two o’clock in the morning. There had been no night. The sun had not sunk at all beyond yonder dark, ragged fringe of the spruce-trees marking the horizon. Not even the lower edge of its disk had been broken by the top of the tallest spruce-tree. Yes, for one of the few remaining nights of that year it had been given to our young travelers to see the Midnight Sun at its lowest point.
It was a strange sun, so it seemed to them all. After it had sunk far off to the left of the Peel River it seemed to hang there for a time, and then to go, not in the arc of a circle, but almost in a line parallel with the level of the earth plane, passing with considerable rapidity from left to right in its course. Its reflection upon the water of the Peel River, very noticeable at first, changed until by and by there was no reflection left at all and it had passed off across the spruce forest upon the right bank of the river. There again it seemed to hang, as in its upward course it began to forsake its semi-contact with the level of the earth’s sphere. For these few days at this latitude it would make its circle in what Rob called the northwest corner of the heavens, striving to give these poor natives who live in that land some sort of compensation for the terrible sunless nights of the immeasurable Arctic winter.
Our young adventurers, be sure, had lost no time in this fine opportunity for photography—an opportunity given to very few travelers of any age or climate at this particular spot; for since the great Klondike rush had straggled through, broken and failing, twenty years before, few white persons indeed had ever stood upon these shores.
“Run, Jesse, to our tent upon the beach!” called out John. “I’m out of films. Get all we’ve got. We’ll have to try and try again, so as to be sure we’re not missing anything.”
“That’s right,” said Rob. “We don’t know much about this light. It’s soft and faint, but it seems to cut the film, after all, as near as I can tell. I’m going to make all sorts of times—from three seconds and five seconds and ten seconds up to twenty and thirty seconds; and with each of these times that I give it I’m going to use a different stop. Somewhere, some of us will get a picture, I’m sure of that.”
“Well,” said John, looking at Jesse’s hurrying form as he scurried down the steep path to their tent upon the beach, “it would be too bad to come this far and then fail.”
It may be added that the boys did not fail, for certainly they brought out from their trip what then were known as the best amateur negatives ever made in that latitude; and of all the trophies of their northern trips they have prized none so much as these pictures of their own, of that strange spectacle of the great, mysterious North.
It was late that night, or early that morning, when at length they closed their labors with the cameras, all fairly content. Uncle Dick had left them to their own devices, feeling that if they got results—as he felt sure they would—they would feel all the more proud for having done so without the advice and aid of one older than themselves. Indeed, he was beginning more and more to trust these young lads to their own devices. Himself occupied with matters of business which kept him very largely about the government office—as might have been called the log barracks of the Northwest Mounted Police which made the only representative of the law in that far-off land—he for some time after the landing of the boat allowed the boys to shift pretty much for themselves, with what results we have seen.
They had pitched their tent farther down the beach than the lowest Eskimo hut, and had in this case put up the great mosquito tent, which stood eight feet high and had windows like a house. Into this, late that night, they now crawled, one after another, through the sleeve of the tent.