232 
WINTER ARRANGEMENTS. 
" The tension of the great field of ice over which we 
passed must have heen enormous. It had a sensible 
curvature. On striking the surface with a walking- 
pole, loud reports issued like a pistol-shot, and lines of 
fissure radiated from the point of impact. It seemed 
as if the hlow of an axe would sever the keystone, and 
break up hy a shock the entire expanse. In one place 
the ice suddenly arched up like a bow while we were 
looking at it, burst into fragments, collapsed at the ex- 
terior margins of fracture, and by the work of a mo- 
ment created a long barrier line of ruins ten feet high. 
Our position was one of peril. We had crossed two 
miles of ice. A change of tide relieved the strain, and 
we returned. 
" The nearest break-up to our homestead floe is 
about one hundred and fifty yards off". It is now to 
the south ; though our position, constantly changing, 
alters the bearing by the hour. Very many of the 
masses that compos© it are as large as the grapery at 
home, two hundred feet long perhaps, and lifted up, 
barricade-fashion, as high as our second story win- 
dows." 
The next day our winter arrangements were com- 
pleted. They were simple enough, and hardly worth 
describing in detail. A housing of thick felt was 
drawn completely over the deck, resting on a sort of 
ridge-pole running fore and aft, and coming down close 
at the sides. The rime and snow-drift in an hour or 
two made it nearly impervious to the weather. The 
cook's galley stood on the kelson, under the main 
hatch ; its stove-pipe rising through the housing above, 
and its funnel-shaped apparatus for melting snow at- 
tached below. The bulkheads between cabin and 
forecastle had been removed ; and two stoves, one at 
