restore animation. Notwithstanding this precaution, which, however, saved many frost-bites, we had an addition of no less than 16 men to the sick-lists of both ships in consequence of the accident. Among these there were four or five cases which kept the patients confined for several weeks; but John Smith, Captain Sabine’s servant, who, together with Serjeant Martin, of the artillery, happened to be in the house at the time the fire broke out, was unfortunate enough to suffer much more severely. In their anxiety to save the dipping-needle, which was standing close to the stove, and of which they knew the value, they immediately ran out with it; and Smith, not having time to put on his gloves, had his fingers in half an hour so benumbed, and the animation so completely suspended, that on his being taken on board by Mr. Edwards, and having his hands plunged into a basin of cold water, the surface of the water was immediately frozen by the intense cold thus suddenly communicated to it; and, notwithstanding the most humane and unremitting attention paid to them by the medical gentlemen, it was found necessary, some time after, to resort to the amputation of a part of four fingers on one hand, and three on the other.”
The 5th of March was the first day to which they could attach the idea of spring, and they now began to flatter themselves, that the season had taken that favorable change for which they had long been looking with extreme anxiety and impatience. This hope was much strengthened on the 7th, by the thawing of a small quantity of snow in a favorable situation upon the black paint work of the ship’s stern, which exactly faced the south, being the first time that such an event had occurred for more than five months. The thermometer had then got up to zero, which it had never before done since the 17th of December. On the 9th, however, the wind blew a hard gale from the N.W., raising a snow-drift which made the day almost as inclement as in the midst of winter; and, on the 14th, the thermometer had once more fallen as low as -28°. On the 23rd, the ice was still 6½ feet thick in the middle of Winter Harbour; and the snow on its surface eight inches deep. the length of the day had now so much increased, that at midnight on the 26th, “there was a very sensible twilight in the northern quarter of the heavens; and,” says Lieutenant Parry, “such was the rapidity with which this part of the season appeared to us to have come round, that we could with difficulty picture to
