TIIE ARCTIC FIRMAMENT. 
425 
“It was cold work reorganizing the stove for the 
nonce; but we have got it going again, as red as a 
cherry, and my well-worn dog-skin suit is drying before 
it. The blackened water is just beginning to drip, 
drip, drop, from the walls and ceiling, and the bed¬ 
clothes and the table on which I write.” 
My narrative has reached a period at which every 
thing like progress was suspended. The increasing 
cold and brightening stars, the labors and anxieties 
and sickness that pressed upon us,—these almost en¬ 
gross the pages of my journal. Now and then I find 
some marvel of Petersen’s about the fox’s dexterity as 
a hunter; and Hans tells me of domestic life in South 
Greenland, or of a seal-hunt and a wrecked kayack; or 
perhaps McGary repeats his thrice-told tale of humor; 
but the night has closed down upon us, and we are 
hibernating through it. 
Yet some of these were topics of interest. The 
intense beaut}" of the Arctic firmament can hardly be 
imagined. It looked close above our heads, with its 
stars magnified in glory and the very planets twinkling 
so much as to baffle the observations of our astronomer. 
I am afraid to speak of some of these night-scenes. I 
have trodden the deck and the floes, when the life of 
earth seemed suspended, its movements, its sounds, its 
coloring, its companionships; and as I looked on the 
radiant hemisphere, circling above me as if rendering 
worship to the unseen Centre of light, I have ejacu¬ 
lated in humility of spirit, “Lord, what is man that 
