why we did not
think of this before. We have been here almost two and a half years;
therefore, this is the season when the sun is beginning to shine in
at the southern opening of the earth. The long cold night is on in the
Spitzbergen country."

"What shall we do?" I inquired.

"There is only one thing we can do," my father replied, "and that is to
go south." Accordingly, he turned the craft about, gave it full reef,
and started by the compass north but, in fact, directly south. The wind
was strong, and we seemed to have struck a current that was running with
remarkable swiftness in the same direction.

In just forty days we arrived at Delfi, a city we had visited in company
with our guides Jules Galdea and his wife, near the mouth of the
Gihon river. Here we stopped for two days, and were most hospitably
entertained by the same people who had welcomed us on our former visit.
We laid in some additional provisions and again set sail, following the
needle due north.

On our outward trip we came through a narrow channel which appeared to
be a separating body of water between two considerable bodies of land.
There was a beautiful beach to our right, and we decided to reconnoiter.
Casting anchor, we waded ashore to rest up for a day before continuing
the outward hazardous undertaking. We built a fire and threw on some
sticks of dry driftwood. While my father was walking along the shore, I
prepared a tempting repast from supplies we had provided.

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 strange