Such was the general character of Stephen's counsel, and very good advice it was. Not only did Roswell adopt the scrubbing process, which enabled him to throw aside a great many clothes in the course of a week, but he kept aloof from the fires, to harden, as Stimson had called it. That which was thus enforced by example was additionally enjoined by precept. Several large, hulking, idle fellows, who greatly loved the fire, were driven away from it by shame; and the heat was allowed to diffuse itself more equally through the building. Any one who has ever had occasion to be a witness of the effect of the water-cure process in enabling even delicate women to resist cold and damp, may form some notion of the great improvement that was made among our sealers, by adopting and rigidly adhering to Stimson's cold-water and no-fire system. Those who had shivered at the very thoughts of ice-water, soon dabbled in it like young ducks; and there was scarcely an hour in the day when the half-hogshead, that was used as a bath, had not its tenant. This tub was placed on the ice of the cove, with a tent over it; and a well was made through which the water was drawn. Of course, the axe was in great request, a new hole being required each morning, and sometimes two or three times in the course of a day. The effect of these ablutions was very soon apparent. The men began to throw aside their pea-jackets, and worked in their ordinary clothing, which was warm and suited to a high latitude, with a spirit and vigour at which they were themselves surprised. The fire in the camboose sufficed as yet; and, at evening, the pea-jacket, with the shelter of the building, the crowded rooms, and the warm meals, for a long time enabled them to get on without consuming anything in the largest stove. Stimson's plans for the protection of the hut, moreover, soon began to tell. The skins, sail, and much of the rigging, were brought over from the wreck; by means of the carts, so long as there was no snow, and by means of sledges when the snow fell and rendered wheeling difficult. Luckily, the position of the road along the rocks caused the upper snow to melt a little at noon-day, while it froze again, firmer and firmer, each night. The crust soon bore, and it was found that the sledges furnished even better means of transportation than the wheels. There was a little controversy about the use of the skins, Daggett continuing to regard them as cargo. Necessity and numbers prevailed in the end, and the whole building was lined with them, four or five deep, by placing them inside of beckets made of the smaller rigging. By stuffing these skins compactly, within ropes so placed as to keep all snug, a very material defence against the entrance of cold was interposed. But this was not all. Inside of the skins Stimson got up hangings of canvas, using the sails of the wreck for that purpose. It was not necessary to cut these sails-Daggett would not have suffered it but they were sus pended, and crammed into openings, and otherwise so arranged as completely to conceal and shelter every side, as well as the ceilings of both rooms. Portions were fitted with such address as to fall before the windows, to which they formed very warm if not very ornamental curtains. Stephen, however, induced Roswell to order outside shutters to be made and hung; maintaining that one such shutter would soon count as a dozen cords of wood. Much of the wood, too, was brought over from the wreck; and that which had been carelessly abandoned on the rocks was all collected and piled carefully and conveniently near the outer door of the hut; which door, by the way, looked inward, or towards the rocks in the rear of the building, where it opened on a sort of yard, that Roswell hoped to be able to keep clear of ice and snow throughout the winter. He might as well have expected to melt the glaciers of Grindewald by lighting a fire on the meadows at their base! Stephen had another project to protect the house, and to give facilities for moving outside, when the winter should be at the hardest. In his experience at Orange Harbour, he had found that great inconvenience was sustained in consequence of the snow's melting around the building he inhabited, which came from the warmth of the fire within. To avoid this, a very serious evil, he had spare sails of heavy canvas laid across the roof of the warehouse, a building of no great height, and secured them to the rocks below by means of anchors, kedges, and various other devices; in some instances, by lashings to projections in the cliffs. Spare spars, leaning from the roof, supported this tent-like covering, and props beneath sustained the spars. This arrangement was made on only two sides of the building, one end, and the side which looked to the north; materials failing before the whole place was surrounded. The necessity for admitting light, too, admonished the sealers of the inexpediency of thus shrouding all their windows. The bottom of this tent was only ten feet from the side of the house, which gave it greater security than if it had been more horizontal, while it made a species of verandah in which exercise could be taken with greater freedom than in the rooms. Everything was done to strengthen the building in all its parts that the ingenuity of seamen could suggest; and particularly to prevent the tent-verandah from caving in. Stephen intimated that their situation possessed one great advantage, as well as disadvantage. In consequence of standing on a shelf with a lower terrace so close as to be within the cast of a shovel, the snow might be thrown below, and the hut relieved. The melted snow, too, would be apt to take the same direction, under the law that governs the course of all fluids. The disad vantage was in the barrier of rock behind the hut, which, while it served admirably to break the piercing south winds, would very naturally tend to make high snow-banks in drifting storms. CHAPTER XXIV. "My foot on the iceberg has lighted, The sea-bird, sea-bird, sea-bird, BRAINARD. Two months passed rapidly away in the excitement and novelty of the situation and pursuits of the men. In that time, all was done that the season would allow; the house being considered as complete, and far from uncomfortable. The days had rapidly lessened in length, and the nights increased proportionably, until the sun was visible only for a few hours at a time, and then merely passing low along the northern horizon. The cold increased in proportion, though the weather varied almost as much in that high latitude as it does in our own. It had ceased to thaw much, however; and the mean of the thermometer was not many degrees above zero. Notwithstanding this low range of the mercury, the men found that they were fast getting acclimated, and that they could endure a much greater intensity of cold than they had previously supposed possible. As yet, there had been nothing to surprise natives of New York and New England, there rarely occurring a winter in which weather quite as cold as any they had yet experienced in the antarctic sea does not set in, and last for some little time. Even while writing this very chapter of our legend, here in the mountains of Otsego, one of these Siberian visits had been paid to our valley. For the last three days the thermometer has ranged, at sunrise, between 17° and 22° below zero; though there is every appearance of a thaw, and we may have the mercury up to 40° above, in the course of the next twenty-four hours. Men accustomed to such transitions, and such extreme cold, are not easily laid up or intimidated. A great deal of snow fell about this particular portion of the year; more, indeed, than at a later period. This snow produced the greatest inconvenience; for it soon became so deep as to form high banks around the house, and to fill all the customary haunts of the men. Still, there were places that were in a great measure exempt from this white mantle. The terrace immediately below the hut, which has so often been mentioned, was one of these bare spots. It was so placed as to be swept by both the east and the west winds, which generally cleared it of everything like snow, as fast as it fell; and this more effectually than could be done by a thousand brooms. The level of rock usually travelled in going to or from the wreck, was another of these clear places. It was a sort of shelf, too narrow to admit of the snow's banking, and too much raked by the winds that commonly accompanied snow, to suffer the last to lodge to any great depth. Snow there was, with a hard crust, as has already been mentioned; but it was not snow ten or fifteen feet deep, as occurred in many other places. There were several points, however, where banks had formed, even on this ledge, through which the men were compelled to cut their way by the use of shovels; an occupation that gave them exercise, and contributed to keep them in health, if it was of no other service. It was found that the human frame could not endure one-half the toil, in that low state of the mercury, that it could bear in one a few degrees higher. Daggett had not, by any means, abandoned his craft, as much as he had permitted her to be dismantled. Every day or two he had some new expedient for getting the schooner off in the spring; though all who heard them were perfectly convinced of their impracticableness. This feeling induced him to cause his own men to keep open the communication; and scarce a day passed in which he did not visit the poor unfortunate craft. Nor was the place without an interest of a very peculiar sort. It has been said that the fragments of ice, some of which were more than a hundred feet in diameter, and all of which were eight or ten feet in thickness, had been left on their edges, inclining in a way to form caverns that extended a great distance. Now, it so happened, that just around the wreck the cakes were so distributed as to intercept the first snows, which filled the outer passages, got to be hardened, and covered anew by fresh storms, thus interposed an effectual barrier to the admission of any more of the frozen element within the ice. The effect was to form a vast range of natural galleries amid the cakes, that were quite clear of any snow but that which adhered to their surfaces, and which offered little or no impediment to motionnay, which rather aided it, by rendering the walking less slippery. As the deck of the schooner had been cleared, leaving an easy access to all its entrances, cabin, hold, and forecastle, this put the Vineyard Lion under cover, while it admitted of all her accommodations being used. A portion of her wood had been left in her, it will be remembered, as well as her camboose. The last was got into the cabin, and Daggett, attended by two or three of his hands, would pass a good deal of his time there. One reason given for this distribution of the forces, was the greater room it allowed those who remained at the hut for motion. The deck of this vessel being quite clear, it offered a very favourable spot for exercise; better, in fact, than the terrace beneath the hut, being quite sheltered from the winds, and much warmer than it had been originally, or ever since the heavy fall of snows commenced. Daggett paced his quarter-deck hour after hour, almost deluding himself with the expectation of sailing for home as soon as the return of summer would permit him to depart. Around the hut the snow early made vast embankments. Every one accustomed to the action of this particular condition of one of the great elements, will understand that a bend in the rocks outward, or a curve inward, must necessarily affect the manner in which these banks were formed. The wind did not, by any means, blow from any one point of the compass; though the south-western cliffs might be almost termed the weather-side of the island, so much more frequently did the gales come from that quarter than from any other. The cape where the cove lay, and where the house had been set up, being at the north-eastern point, and much protected by the high table-land in its rear, it occupied the warmest situation in the whole region. The winds that swept most of the north shore, but which, owing to a curvature in its formation, did not often blow home to the hut, even when they whistled along the terrace only a few hundred feet beneath and more salient, were ordinarily from the south-west outside; though they got a more westerly inclination by following the land under the cliffs. A bank of snow may be either a cause of destruction or a source of comfort. Of course, a certain degree of cold must exist wherever snow is to be found; but, unless in absolute contact with the human body, it does not usually affect the system beyond a certain point. On the other hand, it often breaks the wind, and it has been known to form a covering to flocks, houses, &c., that has contributed essentially to their warmth. We incline to the opinion that if one slept in a cavern formed in the snow, provided he could keep himself dry, and did not come in absolute contact with the element, he would not find his quarters very uncomfortable, so long as he had sufficient clothing to confine the animal warmth near his person. Now, our sealers |