"Sunday, December 23d. Wind still unchanged, and blowing equally fresh, up to 13 or 14 metres (44 or 47 feet). The snow is drifting and sweeping so that nothing can be distinguished; the darkness is intense. Abaft on the deck there are deep mounds of snow lying round the wheel and the rails, so that when we go up on deck we get a genuine sample of an Arctic winter. The outlook is enough to make you shudder, and feel grateful that instead of having to turn out in such weather, you may dive back again into the tent, and down the companionway into your warm bunk; but soon, no doubt, Johansen and I will have to face it out, day and night, even in such weather as this, whether we like it or not. This morning Pettersen, who has had charge of the dogs this week, came down to the saloon and asked whether some one would come out with him on the ice with a rifle, as he was sure there was a bear. Peter and I went, but we could not find anything. The dogs left off barking when we arrived on the scene, and commenced to play with each other. But Pettersen was right in saying that it was 'horrid weather,' it was almost enough to take away one's breath to face the wind, and the drifting snow forced its way into the mouth and nostrils. The vessel could not be distinguished beyond a few paces, so that it was not advisable to go any distance away from her, and it was very difficult to walk; for, what with snow-drifts and ice-mounds, at one moment you stumbled against the frozen edge of a snow-drift, at another you tumbled into a hole. It was pitch-dark all round. The barometer had been falling steadily and rapidly, but at last it has commenced to rise slightly. It now registers about 726 mm. (28.6 inches). The thermometer, as usual, is describing the inverse curve. In the afternoon it rose steadily until it registered -21.3°C. Now it appears to be falling again a little, but the wind still keeps exactly in the same quarter. It has surely shifted us by now a good way to the north, well beyond the 83d degree. It is quite pleasant to hear the wind whistling and rattling in the rigging overhead. Alas! we know that all terrestrial bliss is short-lived. "About midnight the mate, who has the watch, comes down and reports that the ice has cracked just beyond the thermometer house, between it and the sounding-hole. This is the same crack that we had in the summer, and it has now burst open again, and probably the whole floe in which we are lying is split from the lane ahead to the lane astern of us. The thermograph and other instruments are being brought on board, so that we may run no risk of losing them in the event of pressure of ice. But otherwise there is scarcely anything that could be endangered. The sounding apparatus is at some distance from the open channel, on the other side. The only thing left there is the shears with the iron block standing over the hole.