346 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



with the disposition of the Chukches to go by night, without 

 any serious occasion, in small numbers and provided only with 

 the weapons of the chase, to an encampment with which we 

 were not acquainted. It was not until afterwards that we 

 learned that such a visit was not attended with any danger. 

 Instead of going to the encampment, as the vessel in any case 

 could not weigh anchor this evening, we remained some hours 

 longer on the beach and lighted there an immense log fire of 

 drift-wood, round which we were soon all collected, chatting 

 merrily about the remaining part of the voyage in seas where 

 not cold but heat would trouble us, and where our progress at 

 least would not be obstructed by ice, continual fog, and unknown 

 shallows. None of us then had any idea that, instead of the 

 heat of the tropics, we would for the next ten months be 

 experiencing a winter at the pole -of cold, frozen in on an 

 unprotected road, under almost continual snow-storms, and 

 with a temperature which often sank below the freezing-point 

 of mercury. 



The evening was glorious, the sky clear, and the air so calm 

 that the flames and smoke of the log fire rose high against the 

 sky. The dark surface of the water, covered as it was with a 

 thin film of ice, reflected its light as a fire-way straight as a line, 

 bounded far away at the horizon by a belt of ice, whose in- 

 equalities appeared in the darkness as the summits of a distant 

 high mountain chain. The temperature in the quite draught- 

 free air was felt to be mild, and the thermometer showed only 

 2° under the freezing-point. This slight degree of cold was 

 however sufficient to cover the sea in the course of the night 

 with a sheet of newly-frozen ice, which, as the following days' 

 experience showed, at the opener places could indeed only delay, 

 not obstruct the advance of the Vega, but which however bound 

 together the fields of drift-ice collected off the coast so firmly 

 that a vessel, even with the help of steam, could with difficulty 

 force her way through. 



When on the following day, the 28th September, we had 

 sailed past the headland which bounds Kolyutschin Bay on the 

 east, the channel next the coast, clear of drift-ice, but covered 

 with newly formed ice, became suddenly shallow. The depth 

 was too small for the Vega, for which we had now to seek a 

 course among the blocks of ground-ice and fields of drift-ice in 

 the offing. The night's frost had bound these so firmly together 

 that the attempt failed. We were thus compelled to lie-to at a 

 ground-ice so much the more certain of getting off with the 

 first shift of the wind, and of being able to traverse the few 

 miles that separated-us from the open water at Behring's Straits, 

 as whalers on several occasions had not left this region until the 

 ndddle of October. 



