A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 299 



September 23rd, although clear, was the coldest 

 day we had yet known. In spite of the stove, the 

 portholes in the saloon were covered with frost ferns, 

 and an unfortunate pigling, one of a couple who lived 

 in a hutch on the after-deck, was frozen to death during 

 the night. All the forenoon we passed through fields 

 of "pancakes" of every size, from a mere spot of ice 

 no bigger than a handkerchief, to sturdy blocks which 

 were as large as a croquet ground and stood two feet 

 out of the water. Some were curiously crimped at the 

 edges ; others bore, as it were, blossoms of white rime, 

 and as the Ragna pressed on her course and set the 

 whole mass rocking in her wake, she might have been 

 passing through a lake full of water-lilies. Here and 

 there were larger blocks of old ice, which had been 

 carved into all sorts of fantastic shapes in the course 

 of their summer's wandering through the Kara Sea. 

 Some were spiked almost like a porcupine ; others stood 

 like monumental slabs upon two pillars, green as 

 malachite. Here was a floating grotto, surrounded by 

 frost sculpture and filled with yellow water ; there was 

 a block besmirched with mud-stains from the beaches 

 of Novaya Zemlya. And very slowly, the whole ice- 

 field was drifting southwards. For two hours we 

 coasted along its outermost edge and saw a frosty 

 scum spread into the surrounding water, just as grease 

 rises on the surface of a cooling pipkin and congeals 

 into opaque flakes. Gradually the mass was eating like 

 a canker into the open water, and before the long 

 winter night set in, the whole sea from horizon to 

 horizon would be bound down into utter silence and 



