Chapter 35—A Fête Day
The temperature continued to decrease; the mercurial thermometer, which freezes at 42 degrees below zero, was no longer of service, and the spirit thermometer of the Dobryna had been brought into use. This now registered 53 degrees below freezing-point.
In the creek, where the two vessels had been moored for the winter, the elevation of the ice, in anticipation of which Lieutenant Procope had taken the precautionary measure of beveling, was going on slowly but irresistibly, and the tartan was upheaved fifty feet above the level of the Gallian Sea, while the schooner, as being lighter, had been raised to a still greater altitude.
So irresistible was this gradual process of elevation, so utterly defying all human power to arrest, that the lieutenant began to feel ver
