April 21.--The night and the morning continued calm. What a relief to be able to step out upon the open expanse of the frozen sea without being pounded, and battered, and smothered with needle-like ice crystals driven by these damnable storms! We are all out on the pack to-day to get a breath of air in comfort and to see once more the height of the sky and the broadness of the horizon. This polar underpart of the world is decidedly unfit for human life, for it is seemingly the part which receives the kicks of the angered spirits as the globe passes through space. The temperature has fallen from -3° this morning to -17° at eight to-night. The sun has struggled to pierce the heavy cloud of ice crystals which rests on the pack, but its efforts have been rewarded only by prismatic effects. Halos, and parhelias, and fog-bows have been on the sky most of the day; the warmth of direct beams, however, has not been felt. For two days we had seen no life, but to-day we heard a whale spout, and saw two white petrels. At noon the sun was visible behind a screen of suspended ice particles. Its edges were barely perceptible, but the captain tried an observation to find our location on this unknown sea. The result of the calculations was latitude 71° 03′ 18″. The sun is now extremely unreliable as a fixed point to find our positions. It is so low on the horizon at noon that, owing to the great refraction caused by the increased depth of the atmosphere and the increased refractive quality of the air at this temperature, it is difficult to make the necessary corrections. From this time on, until the sun rises higher next summer, Captain Lecointe will use the stars to get positions. April 22.--During the night there was another fall of snow of about two inches. This morning the sky was dull and gray. The air continues calm, which is remarkable, but because of the unstability of the barometer and the persistent gloominess of the sky we anticipate another storm presently. At noon we felt coming, this time from the north, the first breath of this promised gale. It swept the pack with a blackness and a moisture which are characteristic of northerly winds. The temperature ranges from -6° to -9° C. The ice is in considerable agitation; old leads are closing and new ones are opening, with a direction almost due north. We made a sounding at two o’clock in the afternoon, hoping that the night would be clear enough to permit an observation for position, but the night is cloudy, which makes the work of sounding useless. The captain has figured out the declination of the compass for our position of yesterday and finds it to be 38° 37′ east of north.