On the 12th of October, half the crew slept in the house for the first time: they suffered greatly from cold, as they had no fire, and because, as the narrative quaintly remarks, "they were somewhat deficient in blankets." The roof was thatched, by the end of October, with sail-cloth and sea-weed. On the 2d of November, the sun raised but half his disk above the horizon: the bears disappeared with the sun, and foxes took their place. The clock having stopped, and refusing to proceed, even with increased weights, day could not be distinguished from night, except by the twelve-hour-glass. The beer, freezing in the casks, became as tasteless as water. Half a pound of bread a day was served out to each man: the provisions of dried fish and salt meat remained still abundant. The chimney would not draw, and the apartment was filled with a blinding smoke,--which the crew were obliged to endure, however, or die of cold. The surgeon made a bathing-tub from a wine-pipe, in which they bathed four at a time. They were several times snowed up, and the house was absolutely buried. Though half a league from the sea, they heard the horrible cracking and groaning of the ice as the bergs settled down one upon the other, or as the huge mountains burst asunder. On one occasion, unable to support the cold, they made a fire in their house with coal brought from the ship. It was the first moment of comfort they had enjoyed for months. They kept up the genial heat until several of the least vigorous of the men were seized with dizziness and with the peculiar pains known as the hot-ache. Gerard de Veer, the chronicler of the expedition, caught in his arms the first man that fell, and revived him by rubbing his face with vinegar. He adds, "We had now learned that to avoid one evil we should not rush into a worse one." [Illustration: THE DUTCH IN WINTER QUARTERS.]