Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/265



And say what you will, talk as you will of pluck, and manly resolution, and mental resources, and all that sort of thing, this Arctic night is a severe ordeal. Physically one can get through it well enough. We are and always have been in perfect health. I am my own "ship's doctor," and am a doctor without a patient. Believing in Democritus rather than Heraclitus, we have laughed the scurvy and all other sources of ill-health to shame. And we have laughed at the scurvy really and truly; for if it does sometimes come in, like a thief in the night, with salt rations and insufficient food, which has not been our portion, it does, too, come with despondency and the splenetic blood of an unhappy household, from which we have fortunately been exempt.

But if the Arctic night can be endured with little strain upon the physical, it is, nevertheless, a severe trial both to the moral and the intellectual faculties. The darkness which so long clothes Nature unfolds to the senses a new world, and the senses accommodate themselves to that world but poorly. The cheering influences of the rising sun which invite to labor; the soothing influences of the evening twilight which invite to repose; the change from day to night find from night to day which lightens the burden to the weary mind and the aching body, strengthening the hope and sustaining the courage, in the great life-battle of the dear home-land, is withdrawn, and in the constant longing for Light, Light, the mind and body, weary with the changeless progress of the time, fail to find Repose where all is Rest. The grandeur of Nature ceases to give delight to the dulled sympathies. The heart longs continually for new associations, new objects, and new companionships. The