ioo Chapter IV. 



towards it. Guns and cartridges were got ready, and we 

 looked forward with joyful anticipation to roast goose and 

 other game ; but we had gone but a short distance when 

 the grey woolly fog from the south-east came up and 

 enveloped us. Again we were shut off from the world 

 around us. It was scarcely prudent to make for land, 

 so we set our course eastwards towards Yugor Strait ; 

 but a head wind soon compelled us to beat up under 

 steam and sail, which we went on doing for a couple 

 of days, plunged in a world of fog. Ugh ! that endless, 

 stubborn fog of the Arctic Sea ! When it lowers its 

 curtain, and shuts out the blue above and the blue below, 

 and everything becomes a damp grey mist, day in and 

 day out, then all the vigour and elasticity of the soul is 

 needed to save one from being stifled in its clammy 

 embrace. Fog, and nothing but fog, wherever we turn 

 our eyes. It condenses on the rigging, and drips down 

 on every tiniest spot on deck. It lodges on your clothes, 

 and finally wets you through and through. It settles 

 clown on the mind and spirits, and everything becomes 

 one uniform grey. 



On the evening of July 27th, while still fogbound, we 

 quite unexpectedly met with ice ; a mere strip, indeed, 

 which we easily passed through, but it boded ill. In 

 the night we met with more a broader strip this time, 

 which also we passed through. But next morning I was 

 called up with the information that there was thick, old 

 ice ahead. Well, if ice difficulties were to begin so soon, 



