THE ARCTIC NIGHT 
79 
running for about a hundred yards off the starboard 
bow. The crack did not open, but for the first 
time in our drift we felt a slight tremor on the ship. 
In about an hour we felt another slight tremor. I 
followed the crack for a hundred yards and then 
lost it. There was a fresh north-northeast wind 
which moderated as the day wore on but it looked 
as if we were in for some more bad weather, though 
the barometer was steady, and next day we began to 
get things ready to leave the ship at once, in case 
we should have to get out in a hurry. Everything 
was where we could lay our hands on it at 
once. 
Our soundings had been giving us depths of 
about twenty-five fathoms, which did not tally with 
our charts. It seemed likely that our chronometer 
was a trifle slow and that we were somewhat to the 
westward of our apparent position. We had a 
clear view of the sky with a very pronounced twi¬ 
light glow to the south. 
On the twenty-eighth we altered the ship’s time 
again to get the benefit of the increasing twilight. 
Molly gave birth to a litter of nine pups, which, if 
she had not eaten most of them, would have been 
useful members of the party, had our drift con¬ 
tinued for another year so that they could have 
grown large enough to use. The prizes won on 
Christmas Day were now distributed: safety razors 
