"Thursday, August 16th. Yesterday evening, as I was lying in my berth reading, and all except the watch had turned in, I heard the report of a gun on deck over my head. Thinking it was a bear, I hurriedly put on my sea-boots and sprang on deck. There I saw Johansen bareheaded, rifle in hand. 'Was it you that fired the shot?' 'Yes. I shot at the big hummock yonder--I thought something was stirring there, and I wanted to see what it was, but it seems to have been nothing.' I went to the railings and looked out. 'I fancied it was a bear that was after our meat--but it was nothing.' As we stood there one of the dogs came jogging along from the big hummock. 'There, you see what you have shot at,' I said, laughing. 'I'm bothered if it wasn't a dog!' he replied. 'Ice-bear' it was, true enough, for so we called this dog. It had seemed so large in the fog, scratching at the meat hummock. 'Did you aim at the dog and miss? That was a lucky chance!' 'No! I simply fired at random in that direction, for I wanted to see what it was.' I went below and turned in again. At breakfast to-day he had, of course, to run the gantlet of some sarcastic questions about his 'harmless thunderbolt,' but he parried them adroitly enough. "Tuesday, August 21st. North latitude, 81° 4.2'. Strange how little alteration there is: we drift a little to the north, then a little to the south, and keep almost to the same spot. But I believe, as I have believed all along, since before we even set out, that we should be away three years, or rather three winters and four summers, neither more nor less, and that in about two years' time from this present autumn we shall reach home. [62] The approaching winter will drift us farther, however slowly, and it begins already to announce itself, for there were four degrees of cold last night. "Sunday, August 26th. It seems almost as if winter had come; the cold has kept on an average between 24.8° Fahr. (-4° C.) and 21.2° Fahr. (-6° C.) since Thursday. There are only slight variations in the temperature up here, so we may expect it to fall regularly from this time forth, though it is rather early for winter to set in. All the pools and lanes are covered with ice, thick enough to bear a man even without snow-shoes. "I went out on my snow-shoes both morning and afternoon. The surface was beautiful everywhere. Some of the lanes had opened out or been compressed a little, so that the new ice was thin and bent unpleasantly under the snow-shoes; but it bore me, though two of the dogs fell through. A good deal of snow had fallen, so there was fine, soft new snow to travel over. If it keeps on as it is now, there will be excellent snow-shoeing in the winter; for it is fresh water that now freezes on the surface, so that there is no salt that the wind can carry from the new ice to spoil the snow all around, as was the case last winter. Such snow with salt in it makes as heavy a surface as sand.