midnight
In four days this land was visibly nearer , sheer basaltic cliffs mixed with glacier , forming apparently a great bay , with two small islands in the mid-distance ; and at fore-day of the 3rd August I arrived at the definite edge of the pack-ice in moderate weather at about the freezing-point . I at once , but with great reluctance , shot Reinhardt , and set to work to get the last of the provisions , and the most necessary of the implements , into the kayak , making haste to put out to the toilless luxury of being borne on the water , after all the weary trudge . Within fourteen hours I was coasting , with my little lug-sail spread , along the shore-ice of that land . It was midnight of a calm Sabbath , and low on the horizon smoked the drowsing red sun-ball , as my canvas skiff lightly chopped her little way through this silent sea . Silent , silent : for neither snort of walrus , nor yelp of fox , nor cry of startled kittiwake , did I hear : but all was still as the jet-black shadow of the cliffs and glacier on the tranquil sea : and many bodies of dead things strewed the surface of the water . * * * * * When I found a little fjord , I went up it to the end where stood a stretch of basalt columns , looking like a shattered temple of Antediluvians ; and when my foot at last touched land , I sat down there a long , long time in the rubbly snow , and silently wept . My eyes that night were like a fountain of tears .