The hunters continue to chase the reindeer and foxes in the moonlight,--more, however, from habit and for exercise than from any encouragement they find in success; for, even when the moon shines, they can shoot only at random. The work at the observatory goes on, and when the magnetic "term day" comes round we clamber over the ice-foot every hour, and it marks an event. The occultations of Jupiter's satellites are carefully observed through the telescope, that our chronometers may not go astray; the tide continues to rise and fall, regardless of the vast load of ice that it lifts, and indifferent as to the fact that it is watched. Dodge keeps up his ice-measurements, and finds that the crystal table has got down to our keel (6½ feet), so that we are resting in a perfect cradle. That the sailors may have something to do, I have given them an hour's task each day sewing up canvas bags for the spring journeys. From the officers I continue to have the same daily reports; the newspaper comes out regularly, and continues to afford amusement; the librarian hands out the books every morning, and they are well read; the officers and the men have no new means of entertainment, and usually fill up the last of the waking hours (I cannot say the evening, where there is nothing else but night) with cards and pipes. I go into the cabin oftener than I used to; but I do not neglect my chess with Knorr, and, until Sonntag left us, I filled up a portion of every evening in converse with him, and, for the lack of any thing new, we talked over and over again of our summer plans, and calculated to a nicety the measure of our labor, and the share which each would take of the work laid out. [Sidenote: EFFECTS OF DARKNESS.] And thus we jog on toward the spring; but each hour of the darkness grows a little longer, and soaks a little more color from the blood, and takes a little more from the elasticity of the step, and adds a little more to the lengthening face, and checks little by little the cheerful laugh and the merry jest that come from the hold and cabin; and, without being willing to confess it openly, yet we are all forced to acknowledge to ourselves that the enemy does now and then get the better of us, and that we have often to renew the resolution. The novelty of our life is exhausted, and the outside world has nothing new. The moonlight comes and goes again, and the night glistens clear and cold over the white landscape; and the memory returns unbidden to other days that are fled and gone; and we miss in the sparkling air and the still hour of the winter night the jingling bells, and the sleigh which will always hold one more, and the wayside inn, and the smoking supper that "mine host" serves up, and the crackling blaze of country logs; and then, when we forget the moon, and the snow, and the frost, and recall the summer and the sunshine, we remember that "the seat in the shade of the hawthorn bush" is far away.