5. But what a change, when the sun, surrounded by glowing cirrus clouds, breaks through the mist, and the blue of the heavens gradually widens out! The masses of vapour, as they well up, recede to the horizon, and the cold ice-floes become in the sunlight dark borders to the “leads” which gleam between them, on the trembling surface of which the midnight sun is mirrored. Where the rays of the sun do not directly fall on it, the ice is suffused with a faint rosy haze, which deepens more and more as the source of light nears the horizon. Then the sunbeams fall drowsily and softly, as through a veil of orange gauze, all forms lose at a little distance their definition, the shadows become fainter and fainter, and all nature assumes a dreamy aspect. In calm nights the air is so mild that we forget we are in the home of ice and snow. A deep ultramarine sky stretches over all, and the outlines of the ice and the land tremble on the glassy surface of the water. If we pull in a boat over the unmoved mirror of the “ice-holes,” close beside us a whale may emerge from its depths, like a black shining mountain; if a ship penetrates into the waste, it looks as weird as the “Flying Dutchman,” and the dense columns of smoke, which rise in eddies from her funnel, remain fixed for hours until they gradually melt away. When the sun sinks at midnight to the edge of the horizon, then all life becomes dumb, and the icebergs, the rocks, the glaciers of the land glow in a rosy, effulgence, so that we are hardly conscious of the desolation. The sun has reached its lowest point,—after a pause it begins to rise, and gradually its paler beams are transformed into a dazzling brightness. Its softly warming light dissolves the ban under which congelation has placed nature, the icy streams, which had ceased to run, pour down their crystal walls. The animal creation only still enjoys its rest; the polar-bear continues to repose behind some wall of ice, and flocks of sea-gulls and divers sit round the edge of a floe, calmly sleeping, with their heads under their wings. Not a sound is to be heard, save, perhaps, the measured flapping of the sails of the ship in the dying breeze. At length the head of a seal rises stealthily for some moments from out the smooth waters; lines of auks, with the short quick beat of their wings, whiz over the islands of ice. The mighty whale again emerges from the depths, far and wide is heard his snorting and blowing, which sounds like the murmurs of a waterfall when it is distant, and like a torrent when it is near. Day reigns once more with its brilliant light, and the dreamy character of the spectacle is dissolved.