about ten at night
The moon and stars and the `` Northern Lights '' do , indeed , give their light when the fogs and clouds will allow them ; but no one will say that these make up for the absence of the sun . Then the frost is so intense that everything freezes solid except pure spirits of wine . Unless you have studied the thermometer you can not understand the intensity of this frost ; but for the sake of those who do know something about extreme cold , I give here a few facts that were noted down during the winter that my story tells of . On the 10th of September these ice-bound voyagers had eighteen degrees of frost , and the darkness had advanced on them so rapidly that it was dark about ten at night . By the 1st of October the ice round the brig was a foot and a half thick . Up to this time they had shot white hares on the island , and the hunting parties that crossed the ice to the mainland shot deer and musk oxen , and caught white foxes in traps . Gulls and other birds , too , had continued to fly around them ; but most of these went away to seek warmer regions farther south .