neighbours, and in turn succumbs to the mighty iceberg—the leviathan of all ice-forms, which forces its way through a phalanx of opposing masses, crushing them to pieces as it advances. And in this wild and fearful tumult a ship—squeezed, pressed, all but crushed, by the ice; her crew on deck, ready to leave her at a moment’s notice. Boats and sledges, tents, provisions, arms and ammunition, everything prepared, if the ship should at last be destroyed—but for what?—for an escape? No one really thought this possible, though all were ready for the attempt. But again the conflict ceases, and once more we breathe freely, and can contemplate the wonderful change that has come on everything round us. A few minutes have sufficed to create a maze of mountain chains from a plain of ice. The flat surfaces covered with snow, which we saw yesterday, are gone. Ice ruins are visible on every side. Abysses gape between the shattered masses, and show the dark sea beneath. Gradually a calm has crept over all; equilibrium is reinstated in the desolate realm of ice; new ‘leads’ and ‘ice-holes’ have been opened up, but for the _Tegetthoff_ no liberation.” CHAPTER VIII. THE WANE OF THE LONG POLAR NIGHT. 1. Although the sun was mounting higher, there was no essential change in the gloom and darkness which surrounded us. In fact we were drifting during the whole of January towards the north, and were wintering nearer the Pole than any who had ever preceded us.[20] On gloomy days, noon was not distinguishable. We were now four hundred miles within the Frozen Ocean, and had been for five months the sport and play of winds and currents, and nothing indicated any change in our situation. Yet, in spite of our desperate position, the first, ever so faint, indications of the return of light filled us with joy. With a clear atmosphere, January 10, we observed for the first time at noon a decided brightness, and on the 19th a brilliant carmine was seen in the sky, an hour before noon on the southern horizon. After a long obscuration from cloudy weather, the morning twilight increased gradually, and by the end of the month it was discernible in the forenoon. As the light increased, the signs of the convulsions were more distinctly seen. Round us there rose piles of craggy ice, which, hurled up, as from a crater, by the ice-pressure of the 22nd, kept us in a state of constant fear, lest the ice-walls would break up and fall in upon us. At a little distance off, nothing was to be seen of the ship but the tops of its masts: the rest of it was hidden behind a lofty wall of ice. The ship itself, raised seven feet above the level of the sea, rested on a protuberance of ice, and, removed from its natural element, looked a truly miserable object. This ice protuberance had been formed from a floe which had been often rent asunder and frozen again, and had been rounded in a singular manner from the under-driving of the ice and the lateral pressure in its recent movements. In other