At length one man spoke. It was no use mincing matters, he told his comrades. They would do well to realise the position they were in, and, looking at it from the worst side, make the best of it and fight to the end. The vessel had gone, and all they had to keep them from starvation and death was the heap of stores and their own energy. There was no timber to build a raft, so that they could float if the ice broke up; there was no wood to waste on a fire. But as they had to keep afloat and warm if they were going to escape, he considered that first of all they should remove their stores to the thickest, heaviest ice they could find, and then set to work to build snow huts for shelter. Winter was coming on with its long spell of darkness, and there was no time to waste. It was every one's business to help one another and to do the best they could, working together and sharing whatever came, whether it was short rations or plenty. The sentiments appealed to all the men, and they formed themselves into parties to carry out the scheme. Fortunately they had just passed one winter in the Arctic regions and knew, therefore, what was in front of them, and also how to carry out the building of snow huts and the other necessary makeshifts. A massive hummock, which apparently was too strong to be crushed, and solid enough to last through several summers without melting, was selected as the site of the encampment. The snow which had fallen during the gale was not quite hard enough for building huts at the moment, so while some of the party were overhauling the stores and arranging to move them to the hummock, the others were clearing away the snow from the site of the camp and banking it up all round as a break-wind. By the time the stores were placed in the enclosure, canvas shelters were erected for a temporary covering, pending the time when the snow became hard enough to cut for building blocks. It is only when the snow has become compressed by its own weight and frozen nearly solid by the cold that it can be cut into slabs or blocks for a hut. When it has become hard enough, the blocks are cut and the building commences. First a circle is laid, with a small space vacant where the doorway is to be. On either side of this opening the blocks are laid so as to form the plan of a porch, one side of which, in the present instance, was continued at right angles so as turn the entrance passage towards the stack of provisions and thus shelter the doorway from the wind. As soon as the ground plan of the hut was laid, the surface of the blocks was moistened and other blocks laid upon them, and so on until the walls rose some five feet, the moisture making the blocks freeze hard to one another. The layers were now gradually lapped over the interior until a dome roof was formed. Both inside and outside were then moistened and smoothed, and the cold air, freezing the moisture, glazed the entire structure with a covering of ice.