8. There is however such an intolerable monotony in my diary, that, to spare my readers, I thus, in a few words, resuming its contents, describe our situation:—“One of us, to-day, remarked very truly, that he saw perfectly well how one might lose his reason with the continuance of these sudden and incessant assaults. It is not dangers that we fear, but worse far; we are kept in a constant state of readiness to meet destruction, and know not whether it will come to-day, or to-morrow, or in a year. Every night we are startled out of sleep, and, like hunted animals, up we spring to await amid an awful darkness the end of an enterprise from which all hope of success has departed. It becomes at last a mere mechanical process to seize our rifles and our bag of necessaries and rush on deck. In the daytime, leaning over the bulwarks of the ship, which trembles, yea, almost quivers the while, we look out on a continual work of destruction going on, and at night, as we listen to the loud and ever-increasing noises of the ice, we gather that the forces of our enemy are increasing.” CHAPTER V. OUR FIRST WINTER (1872) IN THE ICE. 1. In the beginning of November we were already environed by a deep twilight; but our dreary waste had become of magical beauty; the rigging, white with frost, stood out, spectre-like, against the grey-blue of the heavens; the ice, broken into a thousand forms and overspread with a covering of snow, had now assumed the cold pure aspect of alabaster shaded with the tender hues of arragonite. Southward at noon we saw veils of frosty vapour rise into the carmine-coloured sky out of the fissures and “ice-holes,” in which the water seemed to boil. 2. All our preparations for wintering had now been completed. Lieutenant Weyprecht struck the top-masts to diminish pressure from the wind; some sails were still kept set, in order that the ship, in the event of her being set free, might at once get under weigh. The fore-part of the ship only could be covered in as a tent, for the preparations to abandon her in case of need compelled us to leave her after-part uncovered. There, in perfect order, lay all the materials we meant to take with us, our provisions, ammunition, tents, sledges, &c. The ship was surrounded with a wall of snow and ice, which we constantly restored, whenever it was injured by pressure from without, and her deck was gradually overspread with a mantle of snow, which contributed, however, to maintain an equable warmth in the ship. Our distance from land rendered it impossible to cover the deck with a layer of sand, which would have prevented the melting of the snow from the warmth of the ship. [Illustration: THE TWILIGHT IN NOVEMBER, 1872.]