“The day was bright and sunny. I walked out to the open water. Marks of commotion, hummock ridges, and chasms. A new feature was the thaw. Heretofore I could stand upon the brink of the cleanly-separated fissures, and look down upon the bleak water as securely as from a quartz rock. To-day every thing around (pshaw! the snow and ice, I mean; we have no things here) was wet and crumbling. The snow covered deceitfully some very dangerous cracks: in one of these I sunk neck deep. My carbine caught across it, and Holmes pulled me out.
“We are very anxious to obtain fresh meat for the invalids. Indeed, our longing for something fresh is itself a disease. To-day a tantalizing seal kept me prostrate upon the slushy ice for an hour and a half. In spite of all my seal craft, the prime secret of which is patience, I could not draw him into gunshot. With the characteristic curiosity of his tribe, the poor animal would rise breast high to inspect my fur cap. Presently a whale spouted, and off he went.
“The decks are clear! the barrels stowed away below, the fore-peak restored, the old bunks reoccupied, and my mess-mates snoozing away as in old times, a fire burning in the stove, and lard lamps flaming away vigorously upon my paper. Daylight still finds its way down the hatch, although it is eleven o’clock.
“April 24, Thursday. The snow falls in loose, flaky, home feathers. The decks are wet, and the misty air has the peculiar ground-glass translucency which I noticed last summer. When I came up before breakfast to look around, the thermometer gave +32°, the familiar temperature of old times: to me it was warm and sultry.
“The season of summer, if not now upon us, is close at hand. It seems but yesterday that we hailed the dawning day and burned our fingers in the frozen mercury; now we have a summer snow-storm at 32°.
“This little table will show you how stealthily and how rapidly summer has trampled down winter:
Mean temperature for week ending March 14th, -23° 94'.
Mean temperature for week ending March 21st, -9° 07'; gain, 14° 87'.
Mean temperature for week ending March 28th, -16° 90'; loss, 7° 83'.
Mean temperature for week ending April 4th, -4° 31'; gain, 12° 39'.