Jan. 20. Five days in the clutch of this fearful storm. I seem to have lived as many years since we found the warm current. If I have slept I do not know it. I am thin and haggard with watching and anxiety. But now the wind has gone down, and there is hope, though we are still beset with this pounding, maddening ice, and the Captain has taken no observation since the 14th. I shall try to sleep. Jan. 21. The sun came out this morning, and Biffer got our position. There has been little change in the past week. We have just about held our own in keeping off shore. Now we are hemmed in by ice and our currents are lost beneath it. We shall try to push southward, however, in the hope of reaching clear water. The wind is behind us, but the drift ice ahead packs fearfully, perhaps because of the opposite flowing current. Jan. 26. This morning I was called before I was awake, and hurried on deck to find Captain Biffer looking through a glass at a grim outline ahead. “There’s your ice-wall,” he said, as I approached. “What’s our latitude?” I asked. “72° 33´.” “Then it can’t be the wall,” I said. “It lies somewhere below 74°.” The Captain looked again through his glass. Then we ascended to the crow’s-nest for a better view. “Well,” he declared, at last, “if that ain’t the ice-wall, it’s the father of all the icebergs we’ve seen yet.” And an iceberg it proved to be. We pushed and worked our way toward it all the forenoon, and about two o’clock came near enough to make out an area of open water adjacent to it, by which we knew it was being carried southward against the surface current thus leaving a clear space behind. Into this we pushed a little later, and steaming in close, found that in the back of our ice giant there was a hollow of considerable size. It was, in fact, a sort of harbor for us, though not without its drawbacks. For to the right and left and behind lay pack-ice, so solid that escape in any direction seemed impossible, and ready to close in upon us should the great berg halt or hesitate in its progress poleward. “We are going now, whether we want to or not,” said Chauncey Gale. “Yes,” laughed Captain Biffer, “we’ve got a pacemaker.”