22 SPITSBERGEN 



light also ; all our meals proved suppers now, for little 

 light could we see ; even the glorious sun (as if unwill- 

 ing to behold our miseries) masking his lovely face 

 from us, under the sable veil of coal-black night." But 

 they were equal to the emergency. " At the begin- 

 ning of this darksome, irksome time, we sought some 

 means of preserving light amongst us ; finding there- 

 fore a piece of sheet lead over a seam of one of the 

 coolers, that we ripped off and made three lamps of it, 

 which, maintaining with oil that we found in the 

 coopers' tent, and rope-yarn serving us instead of 

 candle-wicks, we kept them continually burning." 



Cheerful and resourceful as they were, their fits of de- 

 pression were not infrequent. "Our extremities being 

 so many, made us sometimes in impatient speeches 

 to break forth against the causers of our miseries ; but 

 then again, our consciences telling us of our own evil 

 deservings, we took it either for a punishment upon us 

 for our former wicked lives ; or else for an example of 

 God's mercy in our wonderful deliverance: humbling 

 ourselves therefore, under the mighty hand of God, we 

 cast down ourselves before him in prayer, two or three 

 times a day, which course we constantly held all the 

 time of our misery." 



Their prospects got worse, but they never lost a 

 little hope. " The new year now began : as the days 

 began to lengthen, so the cold began to strengthen ; 

 which cold came at last to that extremity, as that it 

 would raise blisters on our flesh, as if we had been 

 burnt with fire, and if we touched iron at any time it 

 would stick to our fingers like bird-lime : sometimes if 

 we went but out of doors to fetch in a little water, the 



