Our floe, the sheet of ice into which the _Belgica_ is frozen, now offers a sad appearance. It is cracked, torn, rasped, ground, and so swept by thawing storms that the picturesque glory of its glowing days has gone. And what is still more disheartening is that, torn and fractured as the field is now, it no longer affords us a safe harbour, free of crushing influences, as it did when all about was one solid mass. The thick bed of soft spotless snow, which softened the sharp edges and cushioned the rough irregularities, has been reduced to a mere film through which the hard blue ice, with its savage roughness and its gloomy skeleton-like projections, is clearly seen. The unique velvety and wavy surface has given way to an ugly water-soaked plane of hard ice. We have watched the field grow by the addition of one floe after another, and we have steadily increased our comfort upon its bosom. Our sense of safety has grown with the augumented breadth and thickness. We have, to some extent, helped to harbour the _Belgica_ by walls of snow; but Nature here has curious moods. With one hand she protects, with the other she destroys,--she aided us by drifting around the ship an enormous amount of snow, but she has injured us by breaking that which sheltered us. We have learned to regard this _Belgica_ field as a little polar farm preserved for our special benefit, to harbour us safely through the long night which is before us. It is a substitute for land, though it drifts about with the wind, and on its edges we find products in the form of seals and penguins. But this faith in security and prospective rest in a solid unbroken crust has now vanished and at a time when we most need it. Only a month ago the broadest diameter of the field was four miles. About two weeks ago an assault began along the outer edge of the north and south. Huge fragments were torn off, bits of other fields were pushed on by neighbouring sheets. Little by little our field has been reduced to less than half its former size; but the _Belgica_ always escaped this battle of Nature until this morning. Now the field is completely destroyed and the bark is again among the pieces in the sea, taking hard thumps from the restless ice. We are somewhat anxious about the safety of our outhouses. There are several crevasses near Danco’s observatory. The captain’s “hotel,” from which he sights the stars, is threatened by a crevasse under it, and Arctowski has gathered up all his instruments and placed them aboard for safe keeping. It is just these little black spots about the vessel which add the suggestion of a village and a home to our otherwise dull surroundings. (However, the threatened destruction did not proceed beyond a lively scare. On the day following the ice came together, the temperature fell, the fissures closed, and a heavy fall of snow gave the _Belgica_ a soft feathery bed in which she rested until relieved by our own hands.) [Illustration: True Sea-Leopard.