"Sunday, September 24th. Still coal-shifting. Fog in the morning, which cleared off as the day went on, when we discovered that we were closely surrounded on all sides by tolerably thick ice. Between the floes lies slush-ice, which will soon be quite firm. There is an open pool to be seen to the north, but not a large one. From the crow's-nest, with the telescope, we can still descry the sea across the ice to the south. It looks as if we were being shut in. Well, we must e'en bid the ice welcome. A dead region this; no life in any direction, except a single seal (Phoca foetida) in the water; and on the floe beside us we can see a bear-track some days old. We again try to get soundings, but still find no bottom; it is remarkable that there should be such depth here." Ugh! one can hardly imagine a dirtier, nastier job than a spell of coal-shifting on board. It is a pity that such a useful thing as coal should be so black! What we are doing now is only hoisting it from the hold and filling the bunkers with it; but every man on board must help, and everything is in a mess. So many men must stand on the coal-heap in the hold and fill the buckets, and so many hoist them. Jacobsen is specially good at this last job; his strong arms pull up bucket after bucket as if they were as many boxes of matches. The rest of us go backward and forward with the buckets between the main-hatch and the half-deck, pouring the coal into the bunkers; and down below stands Amundsen packing it, as black as he can be. Of course coal-dust is flying over the whole deck; the dogs creep into corners, black and toussled; and we ourselves--well, we don't wear our best clothes on such days. We got some amusement out of the remarkable appearance of our faces, with their dark complexions, black streaks at the most unlikely places, and eyes and white teeth shining through the dirt. Any one happening to touch the white wall below with his hand leaves a black five-fingered blot; and the doors have a wealth of such mementos. The seats of the sofas must have their wrong sides turned up, else they would bear lasting marks of another part of the body; and the table-cloth--well, we fortunately do not possess such a thing. In short, coal-shifting is as dirty and wretched an experience as one can well imagine in these bright and pure surroundings. One good thing is that there is plenty of fresh water to wash with; we can find it in every hollow on the floes, so there is some hope of our being clean again in time, and it is possible that this may be our last coal-shifting. "Monday, September 25th. Frozen in faster and faster! Beautiful, still weather; 13 degrees of frost last night. Winter is coming now. Had a visit from a bear, which was off again before any one got a shot at it." CHAPTER VI THE WINTER NIGHT