After the return of the depôt detachment from Cape Joseph Henry, the twilight had darkened so much that further sledging was impossible, and all hands set about making preparations to encounter the fast closing-in winter. Firm ice had formed round the ship, and cemented her to the grounded floebergs on her right; but, in order to guard against being again blown from shore, she was secured to the beach by two strong chain cables, supported at intervals by barrels, so that the heavy metal links should not sink into the ice. The “crow’s nest” and all the rigging that could be spared were taken down from aloft and packed away. A thick felty awning was spread overhead across spars fastened between the masts so as to completely roof in the greater part of the ship. Then snow was heaped up all round her black hull as high as the crimson stripe along her bulwarks. But for her masts and yards she might have been taken for a great marquee, with stove-pipes coming through at intervals. Her unshipped rudder was hung across the stern, safe from any ice pressure during the winter. To enter the ship, one had to pass through a narrow gap in the snow embankment, near the middle of her left side, ascend two or three steps, and lift up a hanging door closing an entrance cut in the bulwarks. The whole of the upper deck was covered with a deep layer of snow, so as to keep the heat in. Snow passages, with double wooden doors, self-closing by means of weights, were made over the two hatch-ways leading down below. The skylights were all covered up. Lamps and candles had already been in use for some time. By means of eight stoves, distributed in various parts between decks, and each burning twenty-eight pounds of coal per day, an average temperature of forty-nine was maintained through the winter. It was intended to utilise all the heat by leading the flues along the deck overhead before they passed up into the outer air; but the horizontal flues smoked so much that it was necessary to let them pass directly upwards, and even then they were as smoky as ships’ stoves usually are. Meantime, the bleak beach opposite the ship was also undergoing metamorphosis. Boats, spars, blocks of patent fuel, casks, and cans of stores innumerable had been carried to it from the ship, so as to increase the habitable space on board. The casks and barrels were piled into walls, and roofed in with spars and sails, so as to make a large storehouse to hold everything that could be taken from the ship. A short distance off, a great pyramid of pemmican, stearine-fuel, bacon, and other sledging stores rose above the snow. Next came the preparations for the scientific observations of the winter. The wooden observatory, on a firm foundation of snow-filled casks, looked like a bathing-box unaccountably gone astray. Then a whole group of beehive-shaped snow-houses, each one the temple of some special instrument, the “Declinometer,” the “Unifiler,” and so on, and a whole