THREE RANDOM SHOTS. 468 



the snow. I gave him the cartridges and said, l Ninderraaiin, 

 make sure of your game ; that may be the saving of the 

 whole of us.' He said, ' I will do my best.' I was almost 

 smoke-blind at the time and could not see very well, but I 

 watched his movements very eagerly. I could make out his 

 progress, and saw him crawling slowly up. There were sev- 

 eral deer, perhaps a dozen; two or three were grazing and 

 keeping the lookout and the others were resting on the 

 ground. Nindermann got to within two or three hundred 

 yards of them, when one of them caught sight or wind of 

 him and gave the alarm to the rest. I saw Nindermann 

 Btart up, and, seeing the deer making off, he fired three shots 

 at them, hoping to bring down one with a chance shot. But 

 he missed. They all escaped. Nindermann came back 

 much disheartened. ' I could not help it,' he said ; ' I could 

 not do any better.' So we had to put up with it. 



Then we started off again, and made another pretty good 

 stretch till we felt exhausted and determined to seek shelter 

 for the night. The best place we could find was beneath the 

 high bluff, at a place where the earth had fallen away, and 

 here we built a fire, had our alcohol, and there spent the 

 night. We did not sleep much, it was so cold, and most of 

 otir time was occupied in keeping up the fire." (This camp- 

 ing-place was near the place where Captain De Long later 

 built his last signal fire perhaps a mile from the deserted 

 raft.) 



Next morning the two men started out again, believing 

 they were on the south end of Tit Ary Island. The ' point 

 which they were passing was, however, the bluff north of 

 Stalboy. At their feet the wide Bykoff arm of the Lena 

 flowed eastward, and was full of floating ice. A gale from 

 the southeast soon came on. 



"We had to go, says Noros, whichever way the wind 

 blew us, and so we got away to the northwestward some- 

 where. Anyhow that day's travel took us out of our course 

 so far that it took us nearly two days to get back again to a 

 point opposite to the bluff on which we were when the gale 



