A MARVELLOUS ESCAPE 109 



fourth journey over the sea the ice broke up around 

 him and he found himself on a floe with a labyrinth 

 of water lanes hemming him in on every side and a 

 storm coming on from the westward. The storm 

 rapidly increased in fury, and the masses of ice around 

 him were soon dashing against each other and break- 

 ing in all directions. On the floe, which was tossing to 

 and fro on the waves, he gazed in painful inactivity on 

 the conflict, expecting every moment to be swallowed 

 up. For three long hours he had remained unable to 

 move, the mass of ice beneath him holding together, 

 when it was caught by the storm and hurled against a 

 large field of ice. The crash was terrific, as it was 

 shattered into little pieces. At that dreadful moment, 

 when escape seemed impossible, he was saved by the 

 impulse of self-preservation. Instinctively the party 

 sprang on to the sledges and urged the dogs to full 

 speed, and as hard as they could gallop they skimmed 

 across the yielding fragments to the field on which 

 they had been stranded, and safely reached a stretch 

 of firmer ice, where the dogs ceased running among 

 the hummocks, conscious that the danger was past. 



But it is not so much for adventures like this that his 

 account of his work is of continuing interest as for the 

 abundance of its notes and reflections on the country 

 and its life and climate. Once, for instance, when on 

 the Baranicha he was fortunate enough to witness a 

 migration of reindeer. " I had hardly finished the 

 observation," he says, " when my whole attention was 

 called to a highly interesting, and to me a perfectly 

 novel, spectacle. Two large migrating bodies of rein- 

 deer passed us at no great distance. They were de- 



