10. April had begun with a temperature of -38° F.; as the month advanced it steadily increased. At the end of the month the extreme of cold was but -20° F. But the weather had now lost the clearness of the early spring; and constant calms, together with the frequent falls of snow, undid the work of the few hours of the day on which the sun shone. The ice was covered with deep snow; on the level we sank ankle deep, while among the hummocks it was up to our knees. Sledging would have been impracticable. Among the changes produced by the softening of the weather, none was greater or more agreeable than the return of daylight to the cabin, when we took off the covering of the skylight and removed the tent-roof from the fore-part of the ship. Once more to be able to read without the dull glimmer of artificial light was an extraordinary event in our monotonous life. For five months our lamps had been burning in our mess-room, so that the walls were black with smoke, and it was a work of no small labour to make them clean and pleasant. The unloading of the ship’s hold was, however, a far heavier, though necessary task; the thick crusts of ice which had accumulated on its sides must be removed, lest the provisions should be damaged by their thawing; and there was no time to lose, for the temperature in the hold was only 1° below zero. The provisions, which had been left out on the ice, were again stowed in the ship, the cessation of the ice-pressures rendering this precautionary measure useless. 11. Round a ship which has wintered in the ice there is gradually accumulated a mass of rubbish of all kinds, of which cinders form a considerable constituent. These, when thrown out in small quantities, sink at once into the snow, while larger quantities act as a non-conducting layer. Hence we were surrounded by a maze of holes, big and little, alternating with plateaus, under which winter still continued to linger. When thaw-water made its appearance, all this was transformed into a succession of lakes and islands, which we bridged over by planks. 12. Meantime we began our labours of digging out the ship. We removed the wall of snow, which had served as an outer garment and protection during the winter, and the hard-trodden layer which covered the deck a foot thick. In clearing away from the after-part of the ship, we discovered that the machinery protecting the screw had been torn away by the ice-pressures. The mischief done, however, was not considerable; and as the ship made no water, we consoled ourselves with the thought, that she had sustained no material injury, though she had lain so long out of water perched on the floe.