Up to eleven o’clock this morning the weather was perfect and we carried the top-gallant-sails without trouble; we were heading our course southwest, and the sun looked down from a cloudless sky. As we went below at that hour we noticed a small bank dead ahead, but so insignificant that I didn’t think anything more about it until half an hour later, when, buried in the ice with Nansen, we became aware that it was growing very dark. The next second the ship heeled far over, and some one at the same instant cast off the spanker-halliards, the iron mast-hoops jingling noisily as the sail ran down. Of course we were on deck in another moment, and found that the wind had whipped around seven points and that a heavy squall had struck the ship aback; the great sails were swelled out inboard against the masts and backstays, while snow and sleet hurtled through the air in cutting blasts. Luckily, the top-gallant-sails had been clewed up a quarter of an hour before; but a large vessel in irons, even under short sail, in bad weather is a shocking sight. The captain was perfectly self-contained, however, and executed some rapid and precise manœuvres, no one losing his head except the mate, who went bellowing around the decks till brought to by the skipper’s angry commands, “Square that crojjick-yard; get the spencer brailed up. Call all hands. Stop that noise and single reef the fore- and maintop-sails.” Oh, well hast thou earned thy reputation, boisterous and treacherous Cape! From bright skies and glorious sun-light we came in fifteen minutes to reefed topsails, sobbing decks, and flying snow, while the heavens were completely veiled in that puny cloud, which had expanded as though by the agency of some black art. “Here comes Cape Horn,” said MacFoy; and looking to windward, we beheld another sinister squall, dark with snow, bearing swiftly down upon us. A squall with snow in it can always be detected by its peculiarly black appearance. They rapidly increased in number and severity, until now, the middle of the afternoon watch, the wind seems to have settled down for a steady blow from somewhere between west and south. The glass is very unsteady at 29.25, 5 +P.M.+ The wind has increased to a fresh gale, while a heavy swell is rolling magnificently up from the southwest. This is the first time that we have seen this heavy sea, as heretofore it has been cut off by Cape Horn itself. Every minute it seems to increase, and within forty-eight hours we will probably be surrounded by the huge rollers which have made this region so famous. Even now they are so large and steady that, as far as the apparent rise and fall is concerned when below, we might almost as well be in perfectly smooth water. Our experience of heavy seas has been that the largest of them do not move rapidly, and at the present time the ship mounts so leisurely to their summits that one cannot detect the motion. When below, it is only in the tremendous roll of the vessel as she mounts to