re. The last of these fled from the darkening winter on the 7th of
November, and did not return until the 1st of the following May. When
they left it was dark almost all day. The thermometer could scarcely be
read at noon, and the stars were visible during the day. From this time
forward thick darkness set in, and the cold became intense. The
thermometer fell _below_ zero, and after that they never saw it _above_
that point for months together--20 degrees, 30 degrees, and 40 degrees
below were common temperatures. The ice around them was ten feet thick.
On the 1st of December noon was so dark that they could not see fifty
yards ahead, and on the 15th the fingers could not be counted a foot
from the eyes. The thermometer stood at 40 degrees below zero.

The darkness could not now become greater, but the cold still continued
to grow more intense. It almost doubled in severity. In January it
fell to 67 degrees below zero! So great was this cold that the men felt
impelled to breathe gradually. The breath issued from their mouths in
white clouds of steam and instantly settled on their beards and whiskers
in hoar-frost. In the cabin of the _Hope_ they had the utmost
difficulty in keeping themselves moderately warm at this time.

Things had now reached their worst, and by slow degrees matters began to
mend. On the 22nd of January the first faint sign of returning day
appeared--just a blue glimmer on the horizon. By the middle of February
the light tipped the tops of the mountains on shore, and the highest
peaks of the ice-bergs on the sea, and on the 1st of March it bathed the
deck of the _Hope_. Then the long-imprisoned crew began to feel that
spring was really coming. But there was little heat in the sun's rays
at first, and it was not till the month of May that the ice out at sea
broke up and summer could be said to have begun.

During all this long winter--during all these wonderful changes, our
Arctic voyagers had a hard fight in order to keep themselves alive.
Their life was a constant struggle. They had to fight the bears and the
walrus; to resist the cold and the darkness; to guard against treachery
from the natives; and to suffer pains, sickness, and trials, such as
seldom fall to the lot of men in ordinary climates.

How they did and suffered all this I shall try to show in the following
pages. In attempting this I shall make occasional extracts from the
journal of our friend Tom Gregory, for Tom