Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/34

30 of blue and green, and we thought surely we had seen the last of Nature's white harmonies; the evening came, pensive and soothing and grey, and all the white world changed into pale violet, pale yellow, and rose.

"A dreamy stillness fills the air. To the south the sun has dipped behind a bank of pale grey cloud, and the sky above is touched with primrose light. Far to the north the dark, smooth sea is bounded by two low bergs, that stretch across the horizon. The nearest is cold violet white, and the sunlight strikes the farthest, making it shine like a wall of gold. The sky above them is of a leaden, peacock blue, with rosy cloudlets hanging against it—such colouring as I have never before seen or heard described. To the westward, across the gulf, we can just distinguish the blue-black crags jutting from the snowy lomonds. Little clouds touched with gold and rose lie nestling in the black corries, and gather round the snowy peaks. To the south, in the centre of the floe, some bergs lie cold and grey in the shadow of the bank of clouds. They look like Greek temples imprisoned for ever in a field of snow. A faint cold air comes stealing to us over the floe: it ripples the yellow sky reflection at the ice-edge for a moment, and falls away. In the distance a seal is barking—a low muffled sound that travels far over the