The Winter Night. 323 



shouts of laughter when they reappear in the saloon after 

 the performance of one of these thundering nigger break- 

 downs above our heads, that has shaken the whole ship. 

 We ask innocently if it was cold on deck ? ' Not the 

 very least,' says Hansen ; 'just a pleasant temperature.' 

 ' And your feet are not cold now ?' ' No, I can't say that 

 they are, but one's fingers get a little cold sometimes.' 

 Two of his had just been frost-bitten ; but he refused to 

 wear one of the wolf-skin suits which I had given out 

 for the meteorologists. ' It is too mild for that yet ; and 

 it does not do to pamper one's-self,' he says. 



" I believe it was when the thermometer stood at 40 

 below zero that Hansen rushed up on deck one morning 

 in shirt and drawers to take an observation. He said 

 he had not time to get on his clothes. 



" At certain intervals they also take magnetic observa- 

 tions on the ice, these two. I watch them standing 

 there with lanterns, bending over their instruments ; and 

 presently I see them tearing away over the floe, their 

 arms swinging like the sails of the windmill when there 

 is a wind pressure of 32 to 39 feet but 'it is not at 

 all cold.' I cannot help thinking of what I have read in 

 the accounts of some of the earlier expeditions, namely, 

 that at such temperatures it was impossible to take 

 observations. It would take worse than this to make 

 these fellows give in. In the intervals between their 

 observations and calculations I hear a murmuring in 

 Hansen's cabin, which means that the principal is at 



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