"How I pity Ardan's poor friends
the Selenites during that night so long and so icy! How impatient they
must be to see the Sun back again!"
"Yes," said Ardan, also sitting down the better to bask in the vivifying
rays, "his light no doubt brings them to life and keeps them alive.
Without light or heat during all that dreary winter, they must freeze
stiff like the frogs or become torpid like the bears. I can't imagine
how they could get through it otherwise."
"I'm glad _we're_ through it anyhow," observed M'Nicholl. "I may at once
acknowledge that I felt perfectly miserable as long as it lasted. I can
now easily understand how the combined cold and darkness killed Doctor
Kane's Esquimaux dogs. It was near killing me. I was so miserable that
at last I could neither talk myself nor bear to hear others talk."
"My own case exactly," said Barbican--"that is," he added hastily,
correcting himself, "I tried to talk because I found Ardan so
interested, but in spite of all we said, and saw, and had to think of,
Byron's terrible dream would continually rise up before me:
"The bright Sun was extinguished, and the Stars
Wandered all darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless and pathless, and the icy Earth
Swung blind and blackening in the Moonless air.
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