CHAPTER XXXIV. 
On the 2d of February the sun rose up in full disk 
at a quarter before eleven. The atmosphere was clear, 
but filled with minute spioula3. The cold was becom- 
ing more intense : our ship thermometers stood at 
—32°, my spirit standard at —34°, and my mercurial 
at —38°. The ice that had formed between the floes 
since our break-up of January 12th was already twen- 
ty-seven inches thick, and was increasing at the rate 
of five inches in the twenty-four hours. The floes 
crackled under the intense frost, and we heard loud 
explosions around us, which one of our seamen, who 
had seen land service in Mexico, compared very aptly 
to the sound of a musket fired in an empty town. 
The 6th was still colder. At seven in the evening 
my spirit standard was at —40°. The day, however, 
had been graced with some hours of sunshine, and we 
worked and played foot-ball out on the ice till we 
were many of us in a profuse perspiration. The next 
morning my mercurial thermometer had frozen, leav- 
ing its parting record at -42° ; and at half past eight 
one of the spirit standards indicated the same point. 
Up to this period, it was our lowest temperature. 
The frozen mercury resembled in appearance lead, re- 
cently chilled after melting. You could cut the thin- 
ner edges easily enough with a penknife ; but where 
it was heaped up, nearer the centre of the solid mass, 
it was tenacious and resisting. I wished to examine 
it under the microscope, but was unable to procure a 
fractured surface. 
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