May 10.--There are now constant complaints of the warm weather. A few days ago the temperature rose a half of a degree above zero, and it has remained about one degree under zero for several days. Such weather, in the commencement of winter, when steady cold weather is expected, is positively oppressive. Everybody is in a disgruntled spirit, because everything is wet, and there is a never-ceasing howl of the storm. It may seem unnatural that we should hate warm weather in this wilderness of south polar ice, but it is followed by so much discomfort that we are ever praying for steady frigid temperatures. In this warm weather the ice is becoming more and more broken. Seals and whales are sporting in the open channels, but penguins are rarely seen. There are a few giant and brown petrels about, and great numbers of white petrels. We have killed a few seals, and have removed from them their skins and blubber for future use, but we have left the remainder of the carcasses out on the floes. These have been claimed as prizes by the petrels. For about ten days hundreds of birds have remained near us. They are mostly white petrels, but there are also giant and brown petrels and a few brown sea-gulls. At noon there was just a slight suggestion of a sunburst, but it is growing feebler and feebler. The beams of light come to us at such an ineffective angle that our noonday is not now brighter than our twilight of a month ago. The sun is constantly veiled by a bank of frozen mist which prevents our seeing its departing splendour, but there is an occasional break which offers us for a few seconds a view of his fading face. It is sad, cold, and expressionless. The accustomed heat is absent, and the light is a despairing gray glow which, on the surface ice, makes long blue shadows. Still, despondent as this seems in comparison to brighter days, it is the only source of direct light and heat which we now have. It is the only show of seeming cheerfulness in this gloomy world of blackness into which we are fast drifting. This feeble burst of lost noonday splendour is the last draft of life which now fans the fading cinders of the soul, while the death-dealing darkness is doing its devilish work of extinguishment. May 15.--Unless we get a clear sky sometime during the night, we shall not be able to determine the exact commencement of the long night. If our position is approximately where our dead reckoning places us, we should have seen the sun for a few minutes at noon to-day for the last time; but the sky was too hazy to give us this last peep. In the south-east there is a dull, creamy light on the clouds, which suggests the presence of a high country, reflecting an ice-blink. The west and north, in the morning and afternoon, were marked by a dark, purple-blue zone. At noon the light was so feeble that we could not see the outline of the hummock on the pack.