Evenly scattered about in the icy expanse are numerous icebergs; usually about two hundred can be counted from the crow’s-nest. The navigating officer remains at the masthead, and directs the course of the ship. It is exciting navigation. The sky in the north is lined with heavy, lead-coloured clouds, and in the south there is the ever-bright ice-blink. Petrels in large numbers and in great varieties hover about us, as if to ask our business in their domain. Penguins walk about on the ice, uttering squeaky noises which re-echo from berg to berg. Seals, lazily sunning themselves, come to the edge of the floe to see the human intruders. Meanwhile the ship is forced on in a wild manner into the ice. Now she is running upon the floes to break them; again she is pushed between to force them aside; but always she is fighting an uneven battle against the huge masses of ice. After two days of this ice-ramming, we found that we had passed through about ninety miles of ice. We are now made to realise that further progress is out of the question. The ice is too closely packed; and the floes here are heavier; it is no longer practicable to break them, or push them aside. We are so closely hugged, indeed, that movement in any direction is impossible. To the south there are several lakes visible from the crow’s-nest, and to the north-west there are also spaces of open water; but after several efforts we found ourselves unable to reach these. On the fourth of March, we were forced to admit our inability to extricate ourselves. Our position at this time was latitude 71° 22′, longitude 84° 55′--about three hundred miles across the polar circle and about 1,100 from the geographical pole. The nearest land from here is the still unknown group of Alexander Islands, about three hundred miles eastward. We are now again firmly stationed in a moving sea of ice, with no land and nothing stable on the horizon to warn us of our movements. Even the bergs, immense, mountainous masses, though apparently fixed and immovable, sail as we do, and with the same apparent ease. The astronomical positions which we obtain from the sun and from the stars indicate to us that we drift from five to ten miles per day. It is a strange sensation to know that, blown with the winds, you are moving rapidly over an unknown sea, and yet see nothing to indicate a movement. We pass no fixed point, and can see no pieces of ice stir; everything is quiet. The entire horizon drifts with us. We are part of an endless frozen sea. Our course is zigzag, but generally west--we do not know our destination, and are always conscious that we are the only human beings to be found in the entire circumpolar region at the bottom of the globe. It is a curious situation.