“Yes, dark all the time, my lad,—dark in the morning, dark in the evening, dark at midnight, dark at noon, dark, all the time, as any night you ever saw; only, everything being white with snow, of course makes the night lighter than it does here, where the trees and the houses, and other dark objects, help along the blackness and make it more gloomy,—absorbing the light, you see, while the snow reflects it.”
“But what,” asked William, “did you do for light in this dark time, since you did not have a lamp?”
“Easy there, my lad,” replied the Captain; “I’m just coming to that, you see. Somebody has said that ‘necessity is the mother of invention,’ or words to that effect; and darkness, I think, may be considered a ‘mother’ of that description. First we made an open dish of soapstone, and put some oil in it; and then we made a wick out of the dry moss, and set fire to it; but this was found to make so much smoke that it drove us out of the hut, and it was given up. But we did not throw away the dish, and after a while it occurred to us to powder the dry moss by rubbing it between the hands, and with this powdered moss we lined our soapstone dish all over on the inside with a layer a quarter of an inch thick. After smoothing this down all around the edge (this dish, which we called a lamp, was much like a saucer, only rougher and much larger), we filled it half full of oil, and again set fire to it all around the edge; and this time it worked beautifully,—smoking very little, and giving us plenty of light.”
“How cunning!” exclaimed the children, all at once.
“Rather so,” replied the Captain, “but hardly more so than the two little drinking-cups we carved out of the same kind of soapstone that we made the lamp and pot of.”
“It must have felt very queer, Captain Hardy,” said Fred, inquiringly, “to be in darkness all the time. I can’t imagine such a thing as the winter being all the time dark,—can you, Will?”
“No, I can’t,” replied William,—“can you, Sister Alice?”
“Yes, I think I can,” said Alice, quickly.
“Why, how’s that, my little dear?” asked the Captain, greatly interested.
“O,” said Alice, in her gentle way, “I’ve only to think of poor blind Jo going round with his little dog, begging from door to door, and never seeing anything in all the world,—no sun, no moon, no stars, no any light to him at all. Poor Jo’s bright summer went out long ago; and both light and warmth were gone, never to come back again, when old Martha died! and all’s night to Jo,—and that’s how I know what it is to be in darkness all the time”; and as little Alice made this little speech about poor blind Jo, the beggar-man, her lovely face looked thoughtful beyond its years; and, as she finished, the Captain saw a tear stealing from her soft blue eye for poor Jo’s sake; and he caught her in his arms right off, without stopping to think at all what he was doing, and he kissed away the tear; and, as he did it, a much bigger one came tearing out of his own great hazel eye, and hurried down into his shaggy beard to hide, as if it were quite frightened at what it had been doing with itself.