There was still a small medicine chest and a few other things, which, in our future position, would be great treasures, such as the cabin-lamp, books, cigars, boxes of games, etc. The snow roof (with which the _Hansa_ had been equipped for the winter) and the sails were brought on to the ice; but still all necessary work was not yet accomplished. Round about the ship lay a chaotic mass of heterogeneous articles, and groups of feeble rats struggling with death and trembling with the cold!” By degrees the crew got things in order and settled down for the winter in their fairly comfortable though not particularly secure abode. Occasionally they had a bad fright. On the afternoon of January 2, for example, as they were resting after dinner, they heard “a scraping, blustering, crackling, sawing, grating, and jarring sound, as if some unhappy ghost was wandering under our floe. Perplexed, we all jumped up and went out; we thought that our store-house had fallen in. Some of the sailors, going in front with the lamp, carefully searched the path to it. But in whatever direction the light fell on the sparkling and glittering ice-walls we saw nothing. Immovable hung the rigid icicles, often a foot long; evidently nothing was amiss here. We rummaged in the snow path before the house. Although completely snowed up (indeed, the whole house was buried more than a foot deep in ice), we all rushed out, but, of course, we could not see more than the steps, nor hear anything but the howling of the storm. Still, between whiles, we could detect the same rubbing and grinding. For a change we laid ourselves flat down, with our ears to the floor, and could then hear a rustling like the singing of ice when closely jammed, and as if water was running under our great floe. There could be no doubt that it stood in great danger of being smashed to pieces, either from drifting over sunken rocks and bursting up, or breaking over the ice-border; perhaps both at once. We packed our furs and filled our knapsacks with provisions. Our position, if the floe should be destroyed, seemed hopeless.”