well as I can, that is.
Now, do you remember what I told you the other day about the sun shining
all the time,--do you remember that, my lad?"

"Yes," answered William, "of course I do. Goes round and round, that
way," and he whirled his hat about his head.

"Just so," went on the Captain,--"just so, exactly. Goes round and
round, and never sets until the winter comes, and then it goes down, and
there it stays all the winter through, and there is constant darkness
where the daylight always was before."

"What, all the time?" asked William.

"Yes," replied the Captain; "dark all the time."

"How dark?" asked Fred.

"Dark as dark can be. Dark at morning and at evening. Dark at noon, and
dark at midnight. Dark all the time, as I have said. Dark all the winter
through. Dark for months and months."

"How dreadful!" exclaimed Fred.

"Dreadful enough, as I can assure you, with no light, all the whole
winter-time, except the moon and stars. A dreadful thing to live along
for days and days, and weeks and weeks, and months and months, without
the blessed light of day,--without once seeing the sun come up and
brighten everything and make us glad, and the pretty flowers to unfold
themselves, and all the living world praise the Lord for remembering it.
That's what you never see in all the Arctic winter,--no sunshine ever
streaming up above the hills and making all the rainbow colors in the
clouds. That's what you never see at all, no more than if you were blind
and couldn't see.

"But never mind just now about the winter. We haven't done with the
summer yet, nor with Sunday either, for that matter.

"As I have said before, the loss of Sunday much grieved the Dean. So,
you see, we had nothing else to do but make one on our own account."

"What, make a Sunday!" exclaimed William. "I've heard of people making
almost everything, even building castles in the air; but I never heard
before of anybody putting up a Sunday."

"Well, you see, we did the best we could. It is not at all surprising
that we should have lost our reckoning in this way, seeing that the sun
was shining, as I have told you, all the time; and we worked and slept
without much regard to whether the hours of night or day were on us. So
we had good reason for a little mixing up of dates. In fact we could
neither of us very well recall the day of the month that we were cast
away. It was somewhere near the end of June, that we knew; but the exact
day we could