ii6 STELLER'S JOURNAL 



but quite crazed and maddened from the terrifying motion of the 

 sea and ship. There was much praying, to be sure, but the curses 

 piled up during ten years in Siberia prevented any response. 

 Beyond the ship we could not see a fathom out into the ocean 

 because we continuously lay buried among the cruel waves. 

 Furthermore, we could neither cook nor have anything cold to 

 eat except half-burnt biscuits, which were already beginning to 

 run short. Under such conditions no one any longer possessed 

 either courage or counsel. They began too late to regret that 

 matters had not been managed right and that various things 

 had been overlooked. — Let no one imagine that our situation is 

 here represented as too dangerous, let him rather believe that 

 the most eloquent pen would have found itself too weak to de- 

 scribe our misery. 



During October i this terrible southwestern storm continued 

 with equal violence. Now for the first time the officers began to 

 consider that, if God would help in weathering the storm, they 

 should seek a harbor in America, in consideration of the fact that 

 the weather thus late in the fall is too severe and unsettled, that 

 we had already been driven back too far east, and that most of 

 the men were sick and weak. For to go a couple of degrees 

 farther south was too much out of the way for them. But even 

 now I could not believe that they were earnest in their decision, 

 as every one of them had his goods and their caretaker (prikash- 

 chik) in Kamchatka. — Today, and before as early as September 

 24, I observed two phenomena that I had never seen before in 

 my life, namely, the igiies lambentes, or Castor and Pollux, which 

 the sailors call St. Elmo's fire, and then the terribly rapid flight 

 of the clouds which, during the storm with incredible swiftness 

 shot like arrows past our eyes and even met and crossed each 

 other with equal rapidity, often from opposite directions. 



On October 2 it began at last to moderate, which, however, it 

 took the sea more than twenty-four hours to do. Nevertheless, 

 the wind remained southwest and the sky was dark. Since Sep- 

 tember 24 we had been driven back towards the east over fifty 

 miles. We had twenty-four men sick and two dead. — As I had 



