266 
CHANGES. 
atout US is apparently as strong and solid as the slow 
growth, of Wellington Channel ; but we know it to 
be recent, and less able to withstand pressure. Ev- 
ery thing now depends upon preserving our vessel and 
stores. A breaking up must take place, and for us the 
later in the spring the better. At the present rate of 
progress, we shall be in Baffin's Bay by the latter end 
of J anuary. There the daylight will be with us again ; 
most providentially, for the icebergs are wretched en- 
emies in darkness. Thirty more days, and we may 
take a noonday walk ; forty-four, and the sun comes 
back, 
" Our men are hard at work preparing for the Christ- 
mas theatre, the arrangements exclusively their own. 
But to-morrow is a day more welcome than Christmas 
— the solstitial day of greatest darkness, from which 
we may begin to date our returning light. It makes 
a man feel badly to see the faces around him bleach- 
ing into waxen paleness. Until to-day, as a looking- 
glass does not enter into an Arctic toilet, I thought I 
was the exception, and out of delicacy said nothing 
about it to my comrades. One of them, introducing 
the topic just now, told me, with an utter unconscious- 
ness of his own ghostliness, that I was the palest of 
the party. So it is, 'All men think all men,' &c. 
Why, the good fellow is as white as a cut potato !" 
In truth, we were all of us at this time undergoing 
changes unconsciously. The hazy obscurity of the 
nights we had gone through made them darker than 
the corresponding nights of Parry. The complexions 
of my comrades, and my own too, as I found soon after- 
ward, were toned down to a peculiar waxy paleness. 
Our eyes were more recessed, and strangely clear, 
Complaints of shortness of breath became general. Our 
