In July, resurrection comes to Herschel,--saxifrages, white anemones
through the snow, the whoop of the mosquito-hawk, and the wild fox
dodging among the dwarf-junipers and uncovered graves! And the Midnight
Sun? It is not a continual blare of light for twenty-four hours. It
sweeps through the midnight heavens, but between ten o'clock in the
evening and four in the morning there is a sensible change. Colour tints
and lines of demarcation on sea and ships are harder to distinguish,
shadows less clearcut. Birds roost and even flowers close, Nature
whispering to both that, if they would reproduce after their kind in the
short Arctic summer, energies must be conserved. Surely the world holds
nothing more beautiful than this Polar night, this compelling gloaming,
the "cockshut light" of Francis Thompson. Here the evening and the
morning sit together hand in hand, and, even as you watch, lead in the
day, the new day born beneath the starless sky. The July sun stabs into
activity our incongruous community. On board the vessels guns are
cleaned, harpoons pointed, whale-boats caulked, and the winter
deck-house is lifted off bodily.
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