and they looked in each other’s faces sometimes in speechless amazement.  It was obvious that the extreme limit of human endurance had been reached.  Their clothes were frozen stiff.  Their shoes were like iron, so that they were obliged to array themselves from head to foot in the skins of the wild foxes.  The clocks stopped.  The beer became solid.  The Spanish wine froze and had to be melted in saucepans.  The smoke in the house blinded them.  Fire did not warm them, and their garments were often in a blaze while their bodies were half frozen.  All through the month of December an almost perpetual snow-deluge fell from the clouds.  For days together they were unable to emerge, and it was then only by most vigorous labour that they could succeed in digging a passage out of their buried house.  On the night of the 7th December sudden death had nearly put an end to the sufferings of the whole party.  Having brought a quantity of seacoal from the ship, they had made a great fire, and after the smoke was exhausted, they had stopped up the chimney and every crevice of the house.  Each man then turned into his bunk for the night, “all rejoicing much in the warmth and prattling a long time with each other.”  At last an unaccustomed giddiness and faintness came over them, of which they could not guess the cause, but fortunately one of the party had the instinct, before he lost consciousness, to open the chimney, while another forced open the door and fell in a swoon upon the snow.  Their dread enemy thus came to their relief, and saved their lives.

As the year drew to a close, the frost and the perpetual snow-tempest became, if that were possible, still more frightful.  Their Christmas was not a merry one, and for the first few days of the new year, it was impossible for them to move from the house.  On the 25th January, the snow-storms having somewhat abated, they once more dug themselves as it were out of their living grave, and spent the whole day in hauling wood from the shore.  As their hour-glasses informed them that night was approaching, they bethought themselves that it was Twelfth Night, or Three Kings’ Eve.  So they all respectfully proposed to Skipper Heemskerk, that, in the midst of their sorrow they might for once have a little diversion.  A twelfth-night feast was forthwith ordained.  A scanty portion of the wine yet remaining to them was produced.  Two pounds weight of flour, which they had brought to make paste with for cartridges, was baked into pancakes with a little oil, and a single hard biscuit was served out to each man to be sopped in his meagre allowance of wine.  “We were as happy,” said Gerrit de veer, with simple pathos, “as if we were having a splendid banquet at home.  We imagined ourselves in the fatherland with all our friends, so much did we enjoy our repast.”