"She is a big girl now. I wonder if I should be able to recognize her? I suppose I should hardly find a single familiar feature. They are sure to celebrate the day, and she will get all kinds of presents. Many a thought will be sent northward, but they know not where to look for us; are not aware that we are drifting here embedded in the ice in the highest northern latitudes ever reached, in the deepest polar night ever penetrated." During the following days the ice became steadily quieter. In the course of the night of the 9th of January the ice was still slightly cracking and grinding; then it quite subsided, and on the 10th of January the report is "ice perfectly quiet, and if it were not for the ridge on the port side one would never have thought there had ever been any breach in the eternal stillness, so calm and peaceful is it." Some men went on cutting away the ice, and little by little we could see it was getting less. Mogstad and I were busily engaged in the hold with the new sledges, and during this time I also made an attempt to photograph the Fram by moonlight from different points. The results surpassed my expectations; but as the top of the pressure-ridge had now been cut away, these photos do not give an exact impression of the pack-ice, and of how it came hurtling down upon the Fram. We then put in order our depot on the great hummock on the starboard quarter, and all sleeping-bags, Lapland boots, Finn shoes, wolfskin clothing, etc., were wrapped in the foresail and placed to the extreme west, the provisions were collected into six different heaps, and the rifles and guns were distributed among three of the heaps and wrapped up in boat-sails. Next, Hansen's instrument-case and my own, together with a bucketful of rifle-cartridges, were placed under a boat-sail. Then the forge and the smith's tools were arranged separately, and up on the top of the great hummock we laid a heap of sledges and snow-shoes. All the kayaks were laid side by side bottom upward, the cooking apparatus and lamps, etc., being placed under them. They were spread out in this way, so that in the improbable event of the thick floe splitting suddenly our loss would not be so great. We knew where to find everything, and it might blow and drift to its heart's content without our losing anything. On the evening of January 14th I wrote in my diary: "Two sharp reports were heard in the ship, like shots from a cannon, and then followed a noise as of something splitting--presumably this must be the cracking of the ice, on account of the frost. It appeared to me that the list on the ship increased at that moment, but perhaps it was only imagination."