ntinued daylight, which now lasted the
whole night round, and increased in intensity every day, as they
advanced north. They had, indeed, often heard and read of it before,
but their minds had utterly failed to form a correct conception of the
exquisite calmness and beauty of the _midnight-day_ of the north.

Everyone knows that, in consequence of the axis of the earth not being
perpendicular to the plane of its orbit round the sun, the poles are
alternately directed more or less _towards_ that great luminary during
one part of the year, and _away_ from it during another part. So that,
far north, the days during the one season grow longer and longer until,
at last, there is _one long day_ of many weeks' duration, in which the
sun does not set at all; and during the other season there is _one long
night_, in which the sun is never seen. It was approaching the height
of the summer season when the _Dolphin_ entered the Arctic regions, and,
although the sun descended below the horizon for a short time each
night, there was scarcely any diminution of the light at all, and, as
far as one's sensations were concerned, there was but one long
continuous day, which grew brighter and brighter at midnight, as they
advanced.

"How thoroughly splendid this is," remarked Tom Singleton to Fred one
night, as they sat in their favourite out-look, the main-top, gazing
down on the glassy sea, which was covered with snowy icebergs and floes,
and bathed in the rays of the sun, "and how wonderful to think that the
sun will only set for an hour or so, and then get up as splendid as
ever!"

The evening was still as death. Not a sound broke upon the ear save the
gentle cries of a few sea-birds, that dipped ever and anon into the sea,
as if to kiss it gently while asleep, and then circled slowly into the
bright sky again. The sails of the ship, too, flapped very gently, and
a spar creaked plaintively, as the vessel rose and fell on the gentle
undulations that seemed to be the breathing of the ocean; but such
sounds did not disturb the universal stillness of the hour; neither did
the gambols of yonder group of seals and walrus, that were at play round
some fantastic blocks of ice; nor did the soft murmur of the swell that
broke in surf at the foot of yonder iceberg, whose blue sides were
seamed with a thousand water-courses, and whose jagged pinnacles rose up
like needles of steel into the clear atmosphere.

There were many bergs in sight,