"Still the same northerly wind; we are steadily bearing south. This, then, is the change I hoped the March equinox would bring! We have been having northerly winds for more than a fortnight. I cannot conceal from myself any longer that I am beginning to despond. Quietly and slowly, but mercilessly, one hope after the other is being crushed and ... have I not a right to be a little despondent? I long unutterably after home, perhaps I am drifting away farther from it, perhaps nearer; but anyhow it is not cheering to see the realization of one's plans again and again delayed, if not annihilated altogether, in this tedious and monotonously killing way. Nature goes her age-old round impassively; summer changes into winter; spring vanishes away; autumn comes, and finds us still a mere chaotic whirl of daring projects and shattered hopes. As the wheel revolves, now the one and now the other comes to the top--but memory betweenwhiles lightly touches her ringing silver chords--now loud like a roaring waterfall, now low and soft like far off sweet music. I stand and look out over this desolate expanse of ice with its plains and heights and valleys, formed by the pressure arising from the shifting tidal currents of winter. The sun is now shining over them with his cheering beams. In the middle lies the Fram, hemmed in immovably. When, my proud ship, will you float free in the open water again? "'Ich schau dich an, und Wehmuth, Schleicht mir in's Herz hinein.' Over these masses of ice, drifting by paths unknown, a human pondered and brooded so long that he put a whole people in motion to enable him to force his way in among them--a people who had plenty of other claims upon their energies. For what purpose all this to-do? If only the calculations were correct these ice-floes would be glorious--nay, irresistible auxiliaries. But if there has been an error in the calculation--well, in that case they are not so pleasant to deal with. And how often does a calculation come out correct? But were I now free? Why, I should do it all over again, from the same starting-point. One must persevere till one learns to calculate correctly. "I laugh at the scurvy; no sanatorium better than ours. "I laugh at the ice; we are living as it were in an impregnable castle. "I laugh at the cold; it is nothing. "But I do not laugh at the winds; they are everything; they bend to no man's will. "But why always worry about the future? Why distress yourself as to whether you are drifting forward or backward? Why not carelessly let the days glide by like a peacefully flowing river? every now and then there will come a rapid that will quicken the lazy flow. Ah! what a wondrous contrivance is life--one eternal hurrying forward, ever forward--to what end? And then comes death and cuts all short before the goal is reached.