THE WINTER NIGHT 343 



From these places it would be quickly thrown on to 

 the ice. 



"Saturday, December 23d. What we call in Nor- 

 way 'Little Christmas -eve,' I went a long way west 

 this morning, coming home late. There was packed up 

 ice everywhere, with flat floes between. I was turned 

 by a newly formed opening in the ice, which I dared 

 not cross on the thin layer of fresh ice. In the after- 

 noon, as a first Christmas entertainment, we tried an ice- 

 blasting with four prisms of gun-cotton. A hole was 

 made with one of the large iron drills we had brought 

 with us for this purpose, and the charge, with the end of 

 the electric connecting wire, was sunk about a foot below 

 the surface of the ice. Then all retired, the knob was 

 touched, there was a dull crash, and water and pieces of 

 ice were shot up into the air. Although it was 60 yards 

 off, it gave the ship a good jerk that shook everything on 

 board, and brous^ht the hoar-frost down from the rio-orinor. 

 The explosion blew a hole through the four-feet-thick ice, 

 but its only other effect was to make small cracks round 

 this hole. 



"Sunday, December 24th (Christmas-eve), 67 degrees 

 of cold ( — 37° C.). Glittering moonlight and the end- 

 less stillness of the Arctic night. I took a solitary stroll 

 over the ice. The first Christmas-eve, and how far away ! 

 The observation shows us to be in 79" 11' north latitude. 

 There is no drift. Two minutes farther south than six 

 days ago." 



