Our first really hard squall came at 9.30, in the mate’s watch. It was accompanied with a sweeping snow-storm that drove in great drifts across the decks, the ship standing up like a church against the blasts and sliding comparatively dry over the big seas that came piling toward us out of the gloom, invisible till their foaming tops flashed out of the darkness to windward. It was a grand, wild scene, and as the heavier puffs went ripping through the shrouds with a peculiar scream, I thought, as I looked at the driving snow and the darkness and the raging ocean, that the Dusk of the Gods had come upon us. This squall lasted fully thirty minutes, and so heavy was the fall of snow that it took the watch some little time to shovel it overboard. All through the night we were afflicted with these unwelcome visitors, variety being afforded by hail, which fell to the size of marrowfat pease, while along the lee alley-way, as that part of the poop is called between the cabin-house and the rail, crouched the forms of the seamen, for they are compelled to stay aft every night now, ready at an instant’s call, and not coiled away napping under the top-gallant forecastle. The helmsman, too, was kept busy, for every squall seemed to take us aback more or less, and the air rang with the voice of the officer of the watch, “Put your wheel up, there!” It had never been our lot to witness so dismal a scene as that disclosed to us at a quarter-past eight this morning. A squall had just passed over us, and we were at the moment in a sickly calm, with a high, greasy sea, which broke sluggishly at intervals like frothing oil; the decks and weather-side of the masts and spars were covered inch deep with the wet, clammy snow that had just fallen, the canvas was flapping loudly against the masts in the great heaving rolls, and that miserable, leaden-hued struggle was passing between the breaking day and the wan, gibbous moon showing between the ragged clouds, which casts so wretched and melancholy a light over all objects. A more oppressive scene it would be impossible to picture, and it was the moment best suited to him determined upon ending forever his earthly career; while, as if to increase the desolate aspect, an immense albatross, nearly white with age, flew circling around the ship, driving before him the flock of pigeons that hovers continuously near us. A rather distressing thought is that we are now well within the limit of ice, and that every degree farther south renders more probable the presence of some of these off-spring of the Antarctic Ice-King. This is offset, however, by the fact that most of the ice is seen more to the eastward of the Horn, and that it is usually not at all thick during the winter season. February is the worst month for those huge ice islands which render navigation in the Southern Ocean so hazardous an undertaking. Fortunately, at the summer season actual darkness off the Horn doesn’t last more than a couple of hours.