For in the Arctic regions the sun never sets for at least three months, but just goes round and round, blazing high in the south at mid-day, and lower in the north at midnight.

Indeed, in these seas, if you were not to look at the clock, you could not really tell whether it was night or day.
Every evening now the little party gathered round the large stove, on which a copper urn of coffee was always gently simmering.

Then the professor told his strangest stories, with perhaps Pansy on his knee, and Aralia lying on the hearth-rug with the dogs.

Most of his yarns were about the Frozen North, its dangers and perils, its joys and pleasures.
"And shall we see all these strange sights ?" Pansy used to ask.
"Yes, dear, and many more than these, because I mean to give you a treat if you are good and don't get your fingers frozen." One day great lumps of white snow-clad ice came floating by, and that same evening the crow's-nest was hoisted high, high up at the very top of the main-mast.

The crow's-nest was like a big barrel with a lid at the bottom, Pansy said, and Tom, or the mate, used to climb and crawl through the bottom, and stand, spy-glass in hand, and look all about them.
"Oh," cried Pansy one day, "shouldn't I like to get up just once! Wouldn't you, Ara ?" "But we could never climb up," sighed her sister.
The clever professor heard them, and lo and behold! the very next day he had a kind of easy-chair ready for them to go up in.