from Saturday; we are getting on better and better.

"Why will it not snow? Christmas is near, and what is Christmas without
snow, thickly falling snow? We have not had one snowfall all the time
we have been drifting. The hard grains that come down now and again are
nothing. Oh the beautiful white snow, falling so gently and silently,
softening every hard outline with its sheltering purity! There is
nothing more deliciously restful, soft, and white. This snowless
ice-plain is like a life without love--nothing to soften it. The
marks of all the battles and pressures of the ice stand forth just
as when they were made, rugged and difficult to move among. Love is
life's snow. It falls deepest and softest into the gashes left by
the fight--whiter and purer than snow itself. What is life without
love? It is like this ice--a cold, bare, rugged mass, the wind driving
it and rending it and then forcing it together again, nothing to cover
over the open rifts, nothing to break the violence of the collisions,
nothing to round away the sharp corners of the broken floes--nothing,
nothing but bare, rugged drift-ice.

"Saturday, December 16th. In the afternoon Peter came quietly into the
saloon, and said that he heard all sorts of noises on the ice. There
was a sound to the north exactly like that of ice packing against
land, and then suddenly there was such a roar through the air that
the dogs started up and barked. Poor Peter! They laugh at him when
he comes down to give an account of his many observations; but there
is not one among us as sharp as he is.

"Wednesday, December 20th. As I was sitting at breakfast, Peter came
roaring that he believed he had seen a bear on the ice, 'and that
"Pan" set off the moment he was loosed.' I rushed on to the ice with my
gun. Several men were to be seen in the moonlight, but no bear. It was
long before 'Pan' came back; he had followed him far to the northwest.

"Sverdrup and 'Smith Lars' in partnership have made a great bear-trap,
which was put out on the ice to-day. As I was afraid of more dogs
than bears being caught in it, it was hung from a gallows, too high
for the dogs to jump up to the piece of blubber which hangs as bait
right in the mouth of the trap. All the dogs spend the evening now
sitting on the rail barking at this new man they see out there on
the ice in the moonlight.

"Thursday, December 21st. It is extraordinary, after all, how the time
passes. Here we are at the shorte