296 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 



under our bows, stretching away into the dimness as far 

 as the eye could see, was a packed ice-field. It is a 

 curious game — to play chess with the Arctic on the 

 board of the Kara Sea, chequered by alternate patches 

 of ice and open water, and here for the first time our in- 

 visible opponent, throned at the Pole, said : Checkmate. 



The Ragna shivered as the ice ground along her 

 bow, and then the threefold bellow of her siren split 

 the silence. Scarcely had the sound echoed away into 

 the night, than the Shule took up and answered the 

 blast with a shriller roar. We saw her dark hull and 

 haloed lights looming through the mist a cable's length 

 away. The two ships lay side by side for a little while. 

 They seemed like two forwandered and frightened 

 animals, calling to one another in the dusk. And all 

 the while the ice stole past on its journey to the south. 

 Then a lead opened up ahead, and the Ragna crept along 

 it with the edge of the floes tickling her sides. The 

 Skule followed — you would almost have said that they 

 went a- tiptoe. Then the ice closed again. " Stop ! " 

 roared the Ragna s siren, and — "Stop !" screamed the 

 Skule in reply. 



So we advanced hour after hour, and when morning 

 came we lay in the middle of a sea of ice, which 

 stretched unbroken from horizon to horizon. The only 

 way to force a passage was by ramming the floes. Both 

 ships were prepared for such an emergency, and had an 

 ice-bow of stout oak planks, but in the Ragna s case, 

 the dimensions, which had been well enough when the 

 vessel carried a heavy cargo of cement, were not low 

 enough below the waterline when she was loaded with 



