"Every here and there this monotonous grayish whiteness is broken by the coal-black water, which winds, in narrower or broader lanes, in between the high hummocks. White, snow-laden floes and lumps of ice float on the dark surface, looking like white marble on a black ground. Occasionally there is a larger dark-colored pool, where the wind gets a hold of the water and forms small waves that ripple and plash against the edge of the ice, the only signs of life in this desert tract. It is like an old friend, the sound of these playful wave-lets. And here, too, they eat away the floes and hollow out their edges. One could almost imagine one's self in more southern latitudes. But all around is wreathed with ice, towering aloft in its ever-varying fantastic forms, in striking contrast to the dark water on which a moment before the eye had rested. Everlastingly is this shifting ice modelling, as it were, in pure, gray marble, and, with nature's lavish prodigality, strewing around the most glorious statuary, which perishes without any eye having seen it. Wherefore? To what end all this shifting pageant of loveliness? It is governed by the mere caprices of nature, following out those everlasting laws that pay no heed to what we regard as aims and objects. "In front of me towers one pressure-ridge after another, with lane after lane between. It was in June the Jeannette was crushed and sank; what if the Fram were to meet her fate here? No, the ice will not get the better of her. Yet, if it should, in spite of everything! As I stood gazing around me I remembered it was Midsummer-eve. Far away yonder her masts pointed aloft, half lost to view in the snowy haze. They must, indeed, have stout hearts, those fellows on board that craft. Stout hearts, or else blind faith in a man's word. "It is all very well that he who has hatched a plan, be it never so wild, should go with it to carry it out; he naturally does his best for the child to which his thoughts have given birth. But they--they had no child to tend, and could, without feeling any yearning balked, have refrained from taking part in an expedition like this. Why should any human being renounce life to be wiped out here? "Sunday, June 24th. The anniversary of our departure from home. Northerly wind; still drifting south. Observations to-day gave 81° 41' 7'' north latitude, so we are not going at a breakneck speed.