Lieutenant Danenhower, who had been suffering for some time with his eyes, had become totally incapacitated for service, and on the 22d of January submitted to an operation performed by Dr. Ambler. Two days later, De Long comments on the gravity of his own responsibilities:— “My anxieties are beginning to crowd on me. A disabled and leaking ship, a seriously sick officer, and an uneasy and terrible pack, with constantly diminishing coal pile, and at a distance of 200 miles to the nearest Siberian settlement—these are enough to think of for a lifetime.” The drift of the _Jeannette_ for the first five months had covered an immense area; she had approached and receded from the one hundred eightieth meridian, drifting back to within fifty miles from where she had entered the pack. By the 3d of May, however, fresh southeast winds began, and the ship took up a rapid and uniform drift to the northwest. Hope for release, which had been buoyant in May, was deferred until June, and when that month glided by with no signs of liberation, it passed to July and gradually faded with the brief passage of a frozen summer. The _Jeannette_, again uncertain in her drift, added to the general disappointment of the commander. The ring of despair and realization of failure are voiced in an entry August 12:— “Observations to-day show a drift since the 9th of five and a half miles to S. 38° E. The irony of fate! How long, O Lord, how long?” On September 1, the _Jeannette_ for the first time since her imprisonment stood on an even keel; but four days later, one year from the time she flung her fortunes to the enemy, she was again held fast in its frozen grip. During the month she was put in winter quarters for the second time. The approach of the long night with its added anxieties brought little change to the members of the expedition. The question of fuel was the most serious problem, and the amount used was figured to the most economical basis. Weary days dragged along without novelty or change. “So far as I know,” writes De Long in January, 1881, “never has an Arctic expedition been so unprofitable as this. People beset in the pack before have always drifted somewhere to some land, but we are drifting about like modern Flying Dutchmen, never getting anywhere, but always restless and on the move. Coals are burning up, food being consumed, the pumps are still going, and thirty-three people are wearing out their hearts and souls like men doomed to imprisonment for life. If this next summer comes and goes like the last without any result, what reasonable mind can be patient in contemplation of the future?”