noon
It would be to walk as conquerors before beaten and humbled Gerns . * * * * * It was winter of the year eighty-five and the temperature was one hundred and six degrees below zero . Walter Humbolt stood in front of the ice tunnel that led back through the glacier to the caves and looked up into the sky . It was noon but there was no sun in the starlit sky . Many weeks before the sun had slipped below the southern horizon . For a little while a dim halo had marked its passage each day ; then that , too , had faded away . But now it was time for the halo to appear again , to herald the sun 's returning .