There was a mild, luminous light which my father said resulted from the sun shining in from the south aperture of the earth. That night we slept soundly, and awakened the next morning as refreshed as if we had been in our own beds at Stockholm.
After breakfast we started out on an inland tour of discovery, but had not gone far when we sighted some birds which we recognized at once as belonging to the penguin family.
They are flightless birds, but excellent swimmers and tremendous in size, with white breast, short wings, black head, and long peaked bills. They stand fully nine feet high. They looked at us with little surprise, and presently waddled, rather than walked, toward the water, and swam away in a northerly direction.(21)
(21 "The nights are never so dark at the Poles as in other regions, for the moon and stars seem to possess twice as much light and effulgence. In addition, there is a continuous light, the varied shades and play of which are amongst the strangest phenomena of nature."—Rambrosson's Astronomy.)
The events that occurred during the following hundred or more days beggar description. We were on an open and iceless sea. The month we reckoned to be November or December, and we knew the so-called South Pole was turned toward the sun. Therefore, when passing out and away from the internal electrical light of "The Smoky God" and its genial warmth, we would be met by the light and warmth of the sun, shining in through the south opening of the earth. We were not mistaken.(22)
(22 "The fact that gives the phenomenon of the polar aurora its greatest importance is that the earth becomes self-luminous; that, besides the light which as a planet is received from the central body, it shows a capability of sustaining a luminous process proper to itself."—Humboldt.)
There were times when our little craft, driven by wind that was continuous and persistent, shot through the waters like an arrow. Indeed, had we encountered a hidden rock or obstacle, our little vessel would have been crushed into kindling-wood.
At last we were conscious that the atmosphere was growing decidedly colder, and, a few days later, icebergs were sighted far to the left. My father argued, and correctly, that the winds which filled our sails came from the warm climate "within." The time of the year was certainly most auspicious for us to make our dash for the "outside" world and attempt to scud our fishing sloop through open channels of the frozen zone which surrounds the polar regions.
We were soon amid the ice-packs, and how our little craft got through. the narrow channels and escaped being crushed I know not. The compass behaved in the same drunken and unreliable fashion in passing over the southern curve or edge of the earth's shell as it had done on our inbound trip at the northern entrance. It gyrated, dipped and seemed like a thing possessed.(23)
(23 Captain Sabine, on page 105 in "Voyages in the Arctic Regions," says: "The geographical determination of the direction and intensity of the magnetic forces at different points of the earth's surface has been regarded as an object worthy of especial research. To examine in different parts of the globe, the declination, inclination and intensity of the magnetic force, and their periodical and secular variations, and mutual relations and dependencies could be duly investigated only in fixed magnetical observatories.")