10. The life we now led below in the ship had ceased to be in any way disagreeable, and cheerful and entertaining reading seemed to be healthier than bodily exercise. We did not suffer from any want of the necessaries of life; the temperature of our living-rooms generally admitted of our sitting for hours even without our overcoats. The long night of this Polar winter was gloomy and oppressive only to those who had time and leisure to weigh the burden of the hours. There were, of course, even in this second winter, some of those discomforts and dangers of which the reader has heard enough, and which lead him when he reads of life in the frozen regions to think of ice-floes rather than of a room in which comfort is quite possible. We had, indeed, the usual inconveniences. As early as the middle of October the skylight was so covered with frost that we could scarcely read even at noon. On the 20th of that month we were obliged to keep the lamps constantly burning, and to close in the skylight, which brought night into the mess-room before the night of Nature had arrived. By the middle of November the condensation of moisture was perceptible, and our bed-clothes were frequently frozen to the wall, and had to be torn from it before we could go to rest. Yet what signified all this? We all slept soundly notwithstanding, and during the day had to complain rather of warmth than of cold. The condition of the crew, however, was not so happy. We could not follow the example set by Hayes and others of removing the contents of the hold to the land, and so transforming it into quarters for the men. On board the _Tegetthoff_ we suffered some of the evils of over-population, and the moisture was so much increased from it, that some of the berths were completely saturated. The employment of hammocks would perhaps avert this evil. [Illustration: IN THE MESS-ROOM.]