e performance of one of these
thundering nigger break-downs above our heads that has shaken the
whole ship. We ask innocently if it was cold on deck. 'Not the very
least,' says Hansen; 'just a pleasant temperature.' 'And your feet
are not cold now?' 'No, I can't say that they are, but one's fingers
get a little cold sometimes.' Two of his had just been frost-bitten;
but he refused to wear one of the wolf-skin suits which I had given
out for the meteorologists. 'It is too mild for that yet; and it does
not do to pamper one's self,' he says.

"I believe it was when the thermometer stood at 40 deg. below zero that
Hansen rushed up on deck one morning in shirt and drawers to take an
observation. He said he had not time to get on his clothes.

"At certain intervals they also take magnetic observations on the
ice, these two. I watch them standing there with lanterns, bending
over their instruments; and presently I see them tearing away over
the floe, their arms swinging like the sails of the windmill when
there is a wind pressure of 32 to 39 feet--but 'it is not at all
cold.' I cannot help thinking of what I have read in the accounts of
some of the earlier expeditions--namely, that at such temperatures
it was impossible to take observations. It would take worse than
this to make these fellows give in. In the intervals between their
observations and calculations I hear a murmuring in Hansen's cabin,
which means that the principal is at present occupied in inflicting
a dose of astronomy or navigation upon his assistant.

"It is something dreadful the amount of card-playing that goes on in
the saloon in the evenings now; the gaming demon is abroad far into
the night; even our model Sverdrup is possessed by him. They have
not yet played the shirts off their backs, but some of them have
literally played the bread out of their mouths; two poor wretches
have had to go without fresh bread for a whole month because they had
forfeited their rations of it to their opponents. But, all the same,
this card-playing is a healthy, harmless recreation, giving occasion
for much laughter, fun, and pleasure.

"An Irish proverb says, 'Be happy; and if you cannot be happy,
be careless; and if you cannot be careless, be as careless as you
can.' This is good philosophy, which--no, what need of proverbs here,
where life is happy! It was in all sincerity that Amundsen burst
out yesterday with, 'Yes, isn't it just as I say, that we are the
luckiest