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 disadvantage 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 ice-berg has lighted,
  When hoarse the wild winds veer about;
  My eye when the bark is benighted,
  Sees the lamp of the light-house go out. 
  I’m the sea-bird, sea-bird, sea-bird,
  Lone looker on despair;
  The sea-bird, sea-bird, sea-bird,
  The only witness there.”

  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 has been paid to our valley.  For the last three days the thermometer has ranged, at sunrise, between 17 deg. and 22 deg. below zero; though there is every appearance of a thaw, and we may have the mercury up to 40 deg. 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