We now tried to retrace our path, but we were held with such a firm embrace that we could not gain sufficient room to turn. At six o’clock the pressure slackened a little and, at the same time, we saw a black line of open water about two miles westward. We headed for this and for seven long hours we struggled with full force to press between the firmly packed floes. After midnight we were again in free waters, and set a course westerly along the edge of the pack-ice. February 19, noon, latitude 69° 06′, longitude 78° 27′ 30″. The conditions permitting nautical observations are rare at the edge of the pack, because here the atmosphere is in a constant whirlpool of agitation. Storm, fog, rain, sleet and snow, are the normal conditions. One rarely gets a peep of the sun, and if by chance it should break through, it is seldom at noon or at an hour convenient for the Captain to make his reckoning. If then it happens, as it has to-day, that we obtain the observations which fix our position accurately in this lonely world of desolation, a kind of boyish rejoicing runs along the line of men on the decks; and even in the cabins, one hears comparisons. One says, “Now I am nine thousand, nine hundred and eighty-nine miles from home. It is noon, but at home they are just taking breakfast.” Another says, “Everybody that I love is nine thousand miles over our starboard quarter. They are just entering upon the duties of the day.” It has suddenly occurred to every one to think of home and of civilisation, for we are going farther and farther away from the known world of life and comfort into the unknown world of sterility and discomfort. To-day we know the exact spot on which we are being thrown about by a great unknown sea of mystery, and this knowledge seems to bring us nearer home because it offers us something tangible with which to make comparisons. In reality, however, we are as hopelessly isolated as if we were on the surface of Mars, and we are plunging still deeper and deeper into the white antarctic silence. A man at the verge of starvation takes a certain comfort in knowing, though it is out of his reach, that food exists. So with us, we extract a certain amount of satisfaction out of the numbers which record our latitude and longitude to-day, though our homes are proven by the figures to be out of all possible reach for months, perhaps for years, and possibly forever.