complicated one, this life
of ours; but it has one advantage, that we are all satisfied with it,
such as it is.

"They are still working in the engine-room, but expect to finish
what they are doing to the boiler in a few days, and then all is done
there. Then the turning-lathe is to be set up in the hold, and tools
for it have to be forged. There is often a job for Smith Lars, and
then the forge flames forward by the forecastle, and sends its red
glow on to the rime-covered rigging, and farther up into the starry
night, and out over the waste of ice. From far off you can hear the
strokes on the anvil ringing through the silent night. When one is
wandering alone out there, and the well-known sound reaches one's ear,
and one sees the red glow, memory recalls less solitary scenes. While
one stands gazing, perhaps a light moves along the deck and slowly
up the rigging. It is Johansen on his way up to the crow's-nest to
read the temperature. Blessing is at present engaged in counting
blood corpuscles again, and estimating amounts of haemoglobin. For
this purpose he draws blood every month from every mother's son of
us, the bloodthirsty dog, with supreme contempt for all the outcry
against vivisection. Hansen and his assistant take observations. The
meteorological ones, which are taken every four hours, are Johansen's
special department. First he reads the thermometer, hygrometer,
and thermograph on deck (they were afterwards kept on the ice);
next the barometer, barograph, and thermometer in the saloon; and
then the minimum and maximum thermometers in the crow's-nest (this
to take the record of the temperature of a higher air stratum). Then
he goes to read the thermometers that are kept on the ice to measure
the radiations from its surface, and perhaps down to the hold, too,
to see what the temperature is there. Every second day, as a rule,
astronomical observations are taken, to decide our whereabouts and
keep us up to date in the crab's progress we are making. Taking these
observations with the thermometer between 22 deg. Fahr. and 40 deg. Fahr. below
zero (-30 deg. C. to -40 deg. C.) is a very mixed pleasure. Standing still
on deck working with these fine instruments, and screwing in metal
screws with one's bare fingers, is not altogether agreeable. It
often happens that they must slap their arms about and tramp hard up
and down the deck. They are received with shouts of laughter when
they reappear in the saloon after th