3. The terrible commotion going on around us prevented us from seeing anything distinctly. The sky too was overcast, the sun’s place could only be conjectured. In all haste we began to make ready to abandon the ship, in case it should be crushed, a fate which seemed inevitable, if she were not sufficiently raised through the pressure of the ice. About 12.30 the pressure reached a frightful height, every part of the vessel strained and groaned; the crew, who had been sent down to dine, rushed on deck. The _Tegetthoff_ had heeled over on her side, and huge piles of ice threatened to precipitate themselves upon her. But the pressure abated, and the ship righted herself; and about one o’clock, when the danger was in some degree over, the crew went below to dine. But again a strain was felt through the vessel, everything which hung freely began to oscillate violently, and all hastened on deck, some with the unfinished dinner in their hands, others stuffing it into their pockets. Calmly and silently, amid the loud sounds emitted by the ice in its violent movement, the officers assumed and carried out the special duty which had been assigned to each in the contemplated abandonment of the ship. Lieutenant Weyprecht got ready the boats, Brosch and Orel cleared out the supply of provision to be taken in them; Kepes, our doctor, had an eye to his drugs; the Tyrolese opened the magazine, and got out the rifles and ammunition—I myself attended to the sledges, the tents, and the sacks for sleeping in, and distributed to the crew their fur coats. We now stood ready to start, each with a bundle—whither, no one pretended to know! For not a fragment of the ice around us had remained whole; nowhere could the eye discover a still perfect and uninjured floe to serve as a place of refuge, as a vast floe had before been to the crew of the _Hansa_. Nay, not a block, not a table of ice was at rest, all shapes and sizes of it were in active motion, some rearing up, some turning and twisting, none on the level. A sledge would at once have been swallowed up, and in this very circumstance lay the horror of our situation. For, if the ship should sink, whither should we go, even with the smallest stock of provisions?—amid this confusion, how reach the land, thirty miles distant, without the most indispensable necessaries? 4. The dogs, too, demanded our attention. They had sprung on chests, and stared on the waves of ice as they rose and roared. Every trace of his fox-nature had disappeared from “Sumbu.” His look, at other times so full of cunning, had assumed an expression of timidity and humility, and, unbidden, he offered his paw to all passers by. The Lapland dog, little Pekel, sprang upon me, licked my hand, and looked out on the ice as if he meant to ask me what all this meant. The large Newfoundlands stood motionless, like scared chamois, on the piles of chests.