“We made ourselves warm coats and stockings out of the skins of the birds that we had caught; and we made caps, too, out of them,—plucking off the feathers, and leaving only the soft, warm, mouse-colored down upon the skin. And out of the seal’s skin we made mittens and nice soft boots, or rather, as I might call them, moccasins.
“The birds began to go away about the middle of August, as nearly as we could tell, but it was more than a month after that before they had all left the island. Meanwhile we had caught a great number of them,—two hundred and sixty-six in all; and we had collected, besides, ninety dozen of their eggs. These birds and eggs were all carefully stowed away in our storehouses of ice and rocks near the glacier.
“In the matter of food, we had, therefore, done very well; but we felt the need of some more blubber for our fire, and some warmer clothing than the birds’ skins. To supply this latter want, we tried very hard to catch some foxes; but it was a long time before we were successful; for not until all the ducks had gone away would the foxes trouble themselves to go inside our traps. These traps were made of stones, and in building them I had derived the only benefit which had ever resulted to me from my indolent life on the farm. I was always fond of shirking away from my duties, and going into the woods to set rabbit-traps; and, remembering how I made them of wood, I easily contrived a stone one of the same pattern, and it was found afterwards to answer perfectly; for when there were no longer eggs and ducks for them to eat, the foxes went into our traps, which we baited with flesh from the dead narwhal. The pelts of these foxes were thick and warm; and, by the time the weather got very cold, we had obtained a good number, and of them we made suits of clothes at our leisure. There were two kinds of foxes; one was a sort of blue gray, and the other was quite white.
“As the weather grew colder, the little streams which had thus far supplied us with water all froze up; and we had now nothing to depend upon but the freshly fallen snow, which we had, of course, to melt. Thus you see how important it was that I should have found the soapstone in season, and made a pot of it, else we should not only have been obliged to go without boiled food, but likewise without water. As for fuel, we were for the present relieved from all anxiety by a dead walrus and a small white whale which drifted in upon the beach during a westerly gale. The waves being very strong, they were landed so high up on the beach that there was little fear of their being washed away again.
“It was no easy matter to cut these animals up with our one jack-knife, since, before we could get it done, they had frozen quite hard. The temperature had gone down until it was already below freezing all the time; and very soon a great deal of snow fell, and was drifted into heaps by the wind. The sea, soon after this, became frozen over quite solid all about the island, although we could still see plenty of clear, open water in the distance. There was one satisfaction, at least, in this freezing up of the sea: we could walk out upon it, and go all around the island without having to clamber over the rough rocks.
“You have now seen pretty much what our life was on the island, and how we were prepared for the winter. Well, the winter came by and by in good earnest, I can tell you. The sunlight all went away, and then, soon afterward, the autumn twilight went away; and then came the darkness that I told you is constant, in the winter, up towards the North Pole, for the winter there is but one long night, you know.”
Here William, who was, as we have seen, of an inquiring turn of mind, interrupted the Captain to ask if he would not be so good as to mention again how dark it was in this polar winter.
“Dark as midnight,” replied the Captain, promptly.
“Dark all the time, did you say, Captain Hardy?”