Imagine us in our winter home on the Roosevelt, four hundred and fifty miles from the North Pole: the ship held tight in her icy berth, a hundred and fifty yards from the shore, the ship and the surrounding world covered with snow, the wind creaking in the rigging, whistling and shrieking around the corners of the deck houses, the temperature ranging from zero to sixty below and the ice-pack in the channel outside groaning and complaining with the movement of the tides.
During the moonlit period of each month, some eight or ten days, when the moon seems to circle round and round the heavens, the younger members of the expedition were nearly always away on hunting trips; but during the longer periods of utter blackness most of us were on the ship together, as the winter hunting is done only by moonlight.
It must be understood that the arctic moon has its regular phases, its only peculiarity being the course it appears to travel in the sky. When the weather is clear there is starlight, even in the dark period; but it is a peculiar, cold, and spectral starlight, which, to borrow the words of Milton, seems but to make the "darkness visible."
When the stars are hidden, which may be much of the time, the darkness is so thick that it seems as if it could almost be grasped with the hand, and in a driving wind and snowstorm, if a man ventures to put his head outside the cabin door, he seems to be hurled back by invisible hands of demoniacal strength.
During the early part of the winter the Eskimos lived in the forward deck house of the ship. There was always a fire in the galley stove, a fire in the Eskimo quarters, and one in the crew's quarters; but though I had a small cylindrical coal stove in my cabin, it was not lighted throughout the winter. Leaving the forward door of my cabin open into the galley a part of the time, kept my cabin comfortably warm. Bartlett occasionally had a fire in his cabin, and the other members of the expedition sometimes lighted their oil-stoves.
On the first of November we adopted the winter schedule of two meals a day, breakfast at nine, dinner at four. This is the weekly bill of fare which Percy, the steward, and I made out and which was followed throughout the winter:
Monday. Breakfast: Cereal. Beans and brown bread. Butter. Coffee. Dinner: Liver and bacon. Macaroni and cheese. Bread and butter. Tea.
Tuesday. Breakfast: Oatmeal. Ham and eggs. Bread and butter. Coffee. Dinner: Corned beef and creamed peas. Duff. Tea.
Wednesday. Breakfast: Choice of two kinds of cereal. Fish, forward (that is, for the sailors); sausage, aft (for the members of the expedition). Bread and butter. Coffee. Dinner: Steak and tomatoes. Bread and butter. Tea.
Thursday. Breakfast: Cereal. Ham and eggs. Bread and butter. Coffee. Dinner: Corned beef and peas. Duff. Tea.