54                      DUTCH AECTIC EXPEDITIONS.
The sun began now to pay only short visits, and to give signs of approaching departure. He rose in the south-south-east and set in the south-south-west, while the moon was scarcely dimmed by his presence. On the 4th of November the sky was calm and clear, but no sun rose or set.
The dreary winter night of three months, which had now set in, was not, however, without some alleviations. The moon, now at the full, wheeled her pale but perpetual circle round the horizon. With the sun disappeared also the bear, and in his room came the Arctic fox, a beautiful little creature, whose flesh resembled kid, and furnished a variety to their meals. They found great difficulty in the measurement of time, and on the 6th rose late in the day, when a controversy ensued whether it was day or night. The cold had stopped the movements of all the clocks, but they afterward formed a sand-glass of twelve hours, by which they contrived tolerably to estimate their time.
On the 3d of December, as the sailors lay in bed, they heard from without a noise as tremendous as if all the mountains of ice by which they were surrounded had fallen in pieces over each other, and the first light which they afterward obtained showed a considerable extent of open sea.
As the season advanced, the cold became always more and more intense. Early in December a dense fall of snow stopped up the smoke flues so that nothing but a low fire could be kept up. The room was thus kept atalow temperature, which was partially remedied by warming the beds with heated stones. Ice two inches thick formed on the walls; and their suffering came to such an extremity, that, casting at each other