232 
WINTER ARRANGEMENTS. 
“ The tension of the great field of ice over which we 
passed must have been 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 blow of an axe would sever the keystone, and 
break up by a shock the entire expanse. In one place 
the ice suddenly arched up like a how while we were 
looking at it, hurst into fragments, collapsed at the ex- 
terior margins of fracture, and by the work of a mo- 
ment created a long harrier 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 hearing by the hour. Very many of the 
masses that compose 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 
