February 25.--The expected storm has not struck us, but the ice has separated a little and offers us a chance to push westerly. We are passing through a loose pack with much new ice, which offers but little resistance to the vessel. On the ice there are many groups of small penguins, and we have also seen several royal penguins. Many snowy petrels follow in the wake of the ship, but they are silent companions, never uttering a song or a cry of delight or fear, always gliding lightly in the air and dropping easily into the water to seek the pelagic fish, which is their food. There is no wind to-day. The temperature is again higher -3.5° C. (25.7° F.), and the sky is lined with stratus and alto-stratus clouds of the usual steel gray. Our position at noon was latitude 69° 17′, longitude 82° 24′. From here we again pushed out into the open sea northward, and following closely the edge of the pack westerly, we continued our cheerless voyage still in search of a promising bay or open lead which might permit us to push to a higher latitude. At noon on the twenty-seventh our position was 69° 26′, longitude 86° 46′. After the ensnaring powers of the pack-ice, which we have learned in the past few weeks, we were not eager to put ourselves again in a position to become entangled. For such an entanglement would now mean confinement. The season for a campaign to the far south is past. The nights are becoming long and black, and new ice is forming on every side; but in spite of these forbidding signs M. de Gerlache believes it incumbent upon himself to abandon the new programme, and push heedlessly into the freezing waters to make as strong an effort as possible to beat the “farthest south” of other explorers. The entire scientific staff are opposed to this effort, because it is thought too late in the season. No direct opposition, however, was offered when the _Belgica_ was again headed southward. She was forced into the pack and out again, time after time, making after each rebuff a new effort farther westward. On February twenty-eighth we were forced to take to the ice that the ship might better ride out a howling storm.