Chapter 24

"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° and 22° below zero; though there is every appearance
of a thaw, and we may have the mercury up to 40° 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 often been mentioned, was
one of these bare spots. It was so placed as to be swept by both the east
and the west winds, which generally cleared it of everything like snow, as
fast as it fell; and this more effectually than could be done by a
thousand brooms. The level of rock usually travelled in going to or from
the wreck, was another of these clear places. It was a sort of shelf, too
narrow to admit of the snow's banking, and too much raked by the