ImageIcon in JApplet

I have a problem with drawing ImageIcon objects on a JPanel in a JApplet
Everything is ok when I run applet locally, but when it's run from a server
the images are not showing
ImageIcon objects are constructed from a *.gif files which I load in init()

for( int i=0 ; i<5 ; i++ )
{
URL url = new URL(this.getDocumentBase(),path[i]);
URLConnection urlConnection = url.openConnection();
ImageIcon im = new ImageIcon(url);
}

There's no Exception... they're just not visible... why?

Mik