About eight o'clock
Two months earlier we should have had perpetual daylight in these latitudes ; but already we had had three or four hours of night , and by and by there would be six months of darkness in these circumpolar regions . On the 15th of March we were in the latitude of New Shetland and South Orkney . The Captain told me that formerly numerous tribes of seals inhabited them ; but that English and American whalers , in their rage for destruction , massacred both old and young ; thus , where there was once life and animation , they had left silence and death . About eight o'clock on the morning of the 16th of March the Nautilus , following the fifty-fifth meridian , cut the Antarctic polar circle . Ice surrounded us on all sides , and closed the horizon . But Captain Nemo went from one opening to another , still going higher . I can not express my astonishment at the beauties of these new regions .