A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 275 



ships. They might have been two of the fleet of the 

 Flying Dutchman. Fascinated, we watched their slow 

 advance, and as night drew on, saw the twinkling 

 lights kindle at their mastheads. Then came the 

 pronouncement that shattered our hopes for the second 

 time that evening. Those, said the wise men of the 

 Oryol, were not the English ships at all. They were 

 nothinof but the Lena and the Turukhansh return- 

 ing from the Sopochnaya. The captain said so ; 

 the pilot said so ; everyone said so except Joseph 

 Gerasimvitch, who maintained that the lights were 

 too bright to belong to either of the river steamers. 

 My companion and I were depressed beyond words. 

 Before us lay a tedious, uncomfortable, and eminently 

 difficult journey over two continents seething with war. 

 Behind us was the estuary of one of the noblest rivers 

 in the world, guarded as by mighty gates by the twin 

 promontories of Och Marino and the Sopochnaya. 

 Beyond, lay the tremendous skyline of the Arctic 

 Ocean, and the seas that no man has sailed : 



" Gazing hence we see the water that grows iron round the Pole, 

 From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea." 



The OryoVs siren hooted her melancholy farewell to 

 Golchika, already hidden in the gloom, and we slowly 

 moved southwards. I cannot tell with what feelings 

 of disappointment I turned my back upon the North. 

 Seebohm had once, Popham had twice, failed to make 

 the passage of the Kara Sea. I had hoped that I, 

 more fortunate than they, might have followed the 

 course of the great river down to the ocean. The 

 immense horizon, splendid with sunset, lay behind us 



