On the 3rd of December and the two following days it was so cold that as the men lay in their bunks they could hear the ice cracking in the sea two miles away, and thought that icebergs were breaking on each other; and as they had not so great a fire as usual owing to the smoke "it froze so sore within the house that the walls and the roof thereof were frozen two fingers thick with ice, even in the bunks in which we lay. All those three days while we could not go out by reason of the foul weather we set up the sandglass of twelve hours, and when it was run out we set it up again, still watching it lest we should miss our time. For the cold was so great that our clock was frozen and would not go, although we hung more weight on it than before." The snow fell until it was so deep round the house that on Christmas Day they heard foxes running over the roof; and the last day of the year was so cold that "the fire almost cast no heat, for as we put our feet to the fire we burnt our hose before we could feel the heat, so that we had work enough to do to patch our hose." On the 4th of January, "to know where the wind blew we thrust a half pike out of the chimney with a little cloth or feather upon it; but we had to look at it immediately the wind caught it, for as soon as we thrust it out it was frozen as hard as a piece of wood and could not go about or stir with the wind, so that we said to one another how fearfully cold it must be out of doors." Next day, being Twelfth Eve, on which foreigners, according to the old practice, hold the festivities now customary in England on the following day, the men asked Van Heemskerck that they might enjoy themselves, "and so that night we made merry and drank to the three kings. And therewith we had two pounds of meal, which we had taken to make paste for the cartridges wherewith, of which we now made pancakes with oil, and to every man a white biscuit, which we sopped in wine. And so supposing that we were in our own country and amongst our friends it comforted us as well as if we had made a great banquet in our own house. And we also distributed tickets, and our gunner was king of Nova Zembla, which is at least eight hundred miles long and lieth between two seas."