But in spite of all efforts we gradually sank to the lowest depths of the Arctic midnight. The little midday glimmer on the southern sky became indiscernible. Only the swing of the Great Dipper and other stars told the time of the day or night. We had fancied that the persistent wind ruffled our tempers. But now it was still; not a breath of air moved the heavy blackness. In that very stillness we found reasons for complaint. Storms were preferable to the dead silence; anything was desirable to stir the spirits to action.
Still the silence was only apparent. Wind noises floated in the frosty distance; cracking rocks, exploding glaciers and tumbling avalanches kept up a muffled rumbling which the ear detected only when it rested on the floor rock of our bed. The temperature was low— -48° F.—so low that at times the very air seemed to crack. Every creature of the wild had been buried in drift; all nature was asleep. In our dungeon all was a mental blank.
Not until two weeks after midnight did we awake to a proper consciousness of life. The faint brightness of the southern skies at noon opened the eye to spiritual dawn. The sullen stupor and deathlike stillness vanished.
Shortly after black midnight descended I began to experience a curious psychological phenomenon. The stupor of the days of travel wore away, and I began to see myself as in a mirror. I can explain this no better. It is said that a man falling from a great height usually has a picture of his life flashed through his brain in the short period of descent. I saw a similar cycle of events.
The panorama began with incidents of childhood, and it seems curious now with what infinite detail I saw people whom I had long forgotten, and went through the most trivial experiences. In successive stages every phase of life appeared and was minutely examined; every hidden recess of gray matter was opened to interpret the biographies of self-analysis. The hopes of my childhood and the discouragements of my youth filled me with emotion; feelings of pleasure and sadness came as each little thought picture took definite shape; it seemed hardly possible that so many things, potent for good and bad, could have been done in so few years. I saw myself, not as a voluntary being, but rather as a resistless atom, predestined in its course, being carried on by an inexorable fate.
Meanwhile our preparations for return were being accomplished. This work had kept us busy during all of the wakeful spells of the night. Much still remained to be done.
Although real pleasure followed all efforts of physical labor, the balking muscles required considerable urging. Musk ox meat was cut into portable blocks, candles were made, fur skins were dressed and chewed, boots, stockings, pants, shirts, sleeping bags were made. The sledge was re-lashed, things were packed in bags. All was ready about three weeks before sunrise. Although the fingers and the jaws were thus kept busy, the mind and also the heart were left free to wander.
In the face of all our efforts to ward aside the ill effects of the night we gradually became its victims. Our skin paled, our strength failed, the nerves weakened, and the mind ultimately became a blank. The most notable physical effect, however, was the alarming irregularity of the heart.
In the locomotion of human machinery the heart is the motor. Like all good motors it has a governor which requires some adjustment. In the Arctic, where the need of regulation is greatest, the facilities for adjustment are withdrawn. In normal conditions, as the machine of life pumps the blood which drives all, its force and its regularity are governed by the never-erring sunbeams. When these are withdrawn, as they are in the long night, the heart pulsations become irregular; at times slow, at other times spasmodic.
Light seems to be as necessary to the animal as to the plant. A diet of fresh meat, healthful hygienic surroundings, play for the mind, recreation for the body, and strong heat from open fires, will help; but only the return of the heaven-given sun will properly adjust the motor of man.