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He, to match her, spoke of Iceland, its pale, nightless summers and sun that never set. Gaud did not understand and asked him to explain. "The sun goes all round," said he, waving his arm in the direction of the distant circle of the blue waters.
"Laestrygons men And Cimmerians call us Born of the land Of the sunless winter, Born of the land Of the nightless summer: Cityless, we, Beneath dark pine boughs, By the sea abiding Sail o'er the swan's bath. Wolf am I hight, The son of Signy, Son of the were-wolf. Southwards I sailed, Sailed with the amber, Sailed with the foam-wealth. Soon shall I slay thee, Sacker of Cities!"
Why had she hearkened to that false tale? Gudruda sat on high in the bride's seat, asking wisdom of the piled-up dead, while the cold blue shadows of the nightless night gathered over her and them gathered, and waned, and grew at last to the glare of day. Gizur went north to Swinefell, and Swanhild went with him.
It was a square block of building some hundreds of yards long, quite foreign in character, having the appearance of factory buildings, or of a barracks or workhouse. "What a dismal-looking place!" said Asako. "Yes," agreed Reggie, "but at night it is much brighter. It is all lit up from top to bottom. It is called the Nightless City."
This tale I know, who have seen it, who have felt the joy and pain, Each fleeing, each pursuing, like the links of the draw-well's chain: But that deedless tide of the grave-mound, and the dayless nightless day, E'en as I strive to see it, its image wanes away.
A. Sherwell, Life in West London, 1897, Ch. Bonger brings together statistics illustrating this point, op. cit., pp. 402-6. The Nightless City, p. 125. Ströhmberg, as quoted by Aschaffenburg, Das Verbrechen, 1903, p. 77. Monatsschrift für Harnkrankheiten und Sexuelle Hygiene, 1906. Heft 10, p. 460.
Here and there in the Economia embarkation camp those days and nightless nights in early June many a secret conclave of doughboys was held to devise ways and means of getting their Russian mascots aboard ship. Of these boys and youths they had become fond. They wanted to see them in "civvies" in America and the mascots were anxiously waiting the outcome at the gangplank.
It is the threshold to the undiscovered country, to that untouched north whose fields of white are only furrowed by the giant forces of the elements; on whose frigid hearthstone no fire is ever lit; where the electric phantoms of a nightless land pass and repass, and are never still; where the magic needle points not towards the north but darkly downward; where the sun never stretches warm hands to him who dares confront the terrors of eternal snow.
But there is much that is instructive in all ranks of life to be gathered from a prolonged sojourn in this "Imperial Village," where world-famed palaces have their echoes aroused at seven in the morning by a gentle shepherd like the shepherd of the remotest provincial hamlets, a strapping peasant in a scarlet cotton blouse and blue homespun linen trousers tucked into tall wrinkled boots, and armed with a fish-horn, which he toots at the intersection of the macadamized streets to assemble the village cattle; where the strawberry peddler, recognizable by the red cloth spread over the tray borne upon his head, and the herring vender, and rival ice-cream dealers deafen one with their cries, in true city fashion; where the fire department alarms one by setting fire to the baker's chimneys opposite, and then playing upon them, by way of cleaning them; where Tatars, soldiers, goats, cows, pet herons, rude peasant carts, policemen, and inhabitants share the middle of the road with the liveried equipages of royalty and courtiers; where the crows and pigeons assert rights equal to those of man, except that they go to roost at eight o'clock on the nightless "white nights;" and where one never knows whether one will encounter the Emperor of all the Russias or a barefooted Finn when one turns a corner.
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