It would be worth while to go ashore upon an islet there, near Vogel Sang, to pay a visit to the eider-ducks.

Their nests are so abundant that one cannot avoid treading on them.

When the duck is driven by a hungry fox to leave her eggs, she covers them with down, in order that they may not cool during her absence, and, moreover, glues the down into a case with a secretion supplied to her by Nature for that purpose.

The deserted eggs are safe, for that secretion has an odour very disagreeable to the intruder's nose.
We still sail northward, among sheets of ice, whose boundaries are not beyond our vision from the masthead--these are "floes;" between them we find easy way, it is fair "sailing ice." In the clear sky to the north a streak of lucid white light is the reflection from an icy surface; that is, "ice-blink," in the language of these seas.

The glare from snow is yellow, while open water gives a dark reflection.
Northward still; but now we are in fog the ice is troublesome; a gale is rising.