sad as the sight of this captive vessel, no longer resting in its
natural element, but with its shape hidden beneath thick layers of
ice; it looks like nothing; it cannot stir, though made for motion; it
is turned into a wooden storehouse, a sedentary dwelling, this ship
which knows how to breast the wind and the storms. This anomaly, this
false situation, filled their hearts with an indefinable feeling of
disquiet and regret.

During these idle hours the doctor arranged the notes he had taken,
from which this book is made up; he was never out of spirits, and
never lost his cheerfulness. Yet he was glad to see the end of the
storm, and prepared to resume his hunting.

November 3d, at six o'clock in the morning, with a temperature of -5
degrees, he set off in company with Johnson and Bell; the expanse of
ice was unbroken; all the snow which had fallen so abundantly during
the preceding days was hardened by the frost, and made good walking;
the air was keen and piercing; the moon shone with incomparable
purity, glistening on the least roughness in the ice; their footprints
glowed like an illuminated trail, and their long shadows stood out
almost black against the brilliant ice.

[Illustration: "The moon shone with incomparable purity, glistening on
the least roughness in the ice."]

The doctor had taken Duke with him; he preferred him to the Greenland
dogs to hunt game, and he was right; for they are of very little use
under such circumstances, and they did not appear to possess the
sacred fire of the race of the temperate zone. Duke ran along with his
nose on the ground, and he often stopped on the recent marks of bears.
Still, in spite of his skill, the hunters did not find even a hare in
two hours' walking.

"Has all the game felt it necessary to go south?" said the doctor,
stopping at the foot of a hummock.

"I should fancy it must be so, Doctor," answered the carpenter.

"I don't think so," said Johnson; "the hares, foxes, and bears are
accustomed to this climate; I think this last storm must have driven
them away; but they will come back with the south-winds. Ah, if you
were to talk about reindeer and musk-deer, that might be different!"

"And yet at Melville Island numberless animals of this sort are
found," resumed the doctor; "it lies farther south, it is true, and
during the winters he spent there Parry always had plenty of this
magnificent game."

"We have much poorer luck," answered Bell; "if we c