A HUNDRED NIGHTS IN AN UNDERGROUND DEN
LIVING LIKE MEN OF THE STONE AGE—THE DESOLATION OF THE LONG NIGHT—LIFE ABOUT CAPE SPARBO—PREPARING EQUIPMENT FOR THE RETURN TO GREENLAND—SUNRISE, FEBRUARY 11, 1909
XXVIII
Life About Cape Sparbo
The coming night slowly fixed its seal on our field of activity. Early in August the sun had dipped under the icy contour of North Lincoln, and Jones Sound had then begun to spread its cover of crystal. The warm rays gradually melted in a perpetual blue frost. The air thickened. The land darkened. The days shortened. The night lengthened. The Polar cold and darkness of winter came hand in hand.
Late in September the nights had become too dark to sleep in the open, with inquisitive bears on every side. Storms, too, increased thereafter and deprived us of the cheer of colored skies. Thus we were now forced to seek a retreat in our underground den.
We took about as kindly to this as a wild animal does to a cage. For over seven months we had wandered over vast plains of ice, with a new camp site almost every day. We had grown accustomed to a wandering life like that of the bear, but we had not developed his hibernating instinct. We were anxious to continue our curious battle of life.
In October the bosom of the sea became blanketed, and the curve of the snow-covered earth was polarized in the eastern skies. The final period for the death of day and earthly glory was advancing, but Nature in her last throes displayed some of her most alluring phases. The colored silhouette of the globe was perhaps the most remarkable display. In effect, this was a shadow of the earth thrown into space. By the reflected, refracted and polarized light of the sun, the terrestrial shadows were outlined against the sky in glowing colors. Seen occasionally in other parts of the globe, it is only in the Polar regions, with its air of crystal and its surface of mirrors, that the proper mediums are afforded for this gigantic spectral show.
We had an ideal location. A glittering sea, with a level horizon, lay along the east and west. The weather was good, the skies were clear, and, as the sun sank, the sky over it was flushed with orange or gold. This gradually paled, and over the horizon opposite there rose an arc in feeble prismatic colors with a dark zone of purple under it. The arc rose as the sun settled; the purple spread beyond the polarized bow; and gradually the heavens turned a deep purple blue to the zenith, while the halo of the globe was slowly lost in its own shadow.