AN ARCTIC NIGHT.
Coal-dust every where and on every thing. Incessant work from 4, a.m., to 8 or 9 o'clock, p.m., one would have supposed, would have induced rational beings to go quietly to bed when the day's work was over. It was far otherwise.
The novelty of constant daylight, and the effect which it always has upon the system, until accustomed to it, of depriving one of the inclination to go to roost at regular hours, told upon us, and often have I found myself returning from five hours' work, chasing, shooting, and pulling a boat, just as the boatswain's mates were piping "stow hammocks!" That I was not singular, a constant discharge of guns throughout the night well proved, and unhappy nights must the ducks and dovekies have spent during our stay.
Not to shoot became, in the Arctic squadron, tantamount to folly, although the proceeds of great consumption of powder were but small; nevertheless, stout men, who had not buttoned a gaiter since their youth, were to be seen rivalling chamois-hunters in the activity with which they stalked down the lady ducks on their nests. Apoplexy was forgotten, the tender wife's last injunction on the subject of dry feet pitched to the winds, and rash men of five-and-forty pulled and shot little birds, in leaky punts, with all the energy of boys of fifteen.
Cold fingers, and a load of Flushing cloth on one's back, are vile realities; otherwise I could have given fancy her swing, and spent many an hour in the "blest ideal," at the beautiful and novel scene which lay around me on a lovely morning at one o'clock. I had just crossed to the north side of an island which faces Greenland, and passed a quiet and secluded bay, at whose head the remains of a deserted ruin told of the by-gone location of some Esquimaux fishermen, whose present home was shown by here and there a grave carefully piled over with stones to ward off dog and bear. All was silent, except the plaintive mew of the Arctic sea-swallow as it wheeled over my head, or the gentle echo made by mother ocean as she rippled under some projecting ledge of ice. The snow, as it melted amongst the rocks behind, stole quietly on to the sea through a mass of dark-coloured moss; whilst a scanty distribution of pale or delicately-tinted flowers showed the humble flora of the north. The sun, sweeping along the heavens opposite, at a very low altitude, gilded as it rose the snowy crests of the mountains of Disco, and served to show, more grim and picturesque, the naturally dark face of the "Black Land of Lively." From thence round to the east, in the far horizon, swept the shores of Greenland, its glaciers, peaks, and headlands, all tortured by mirage into a thousand fantastic shapes, as if Dame Nature had risen from her couch in frolicsome mood. Between this scene and my feet, icebergs of every size and shape, rich with fretting of silvery icicle, and showing the deepest azure tint or richest emerald, strewed a mirror-like sea, glowing with the pale pink of morning.
The awful silence was impressive: unwilling to break it I sat me down.
"I felt her presence by its spell of might,
Stoop o'er me from above—
The calm majestic presence of the night,
As of the one I love."