32 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 
I naturally felt very anxious about our first approach 
to this island of ill-fame; knowing that the sea about 
it was, for a very long way out, exceedingly shoal. 
It might be that we should find the ice grounded and 
lying all about the island; or possibly in the shallow sea 
the surf might make it impossible for our small boats to 
take us in. 
The skipper was, I considered, an excellent navigator. 
But he was perhaps not a thoroughly self-reliant man ; 
and after I found that whenever things came to a pinch 
he was in the habit of looking to me for advice, I never, 
at these junctures, left the bridge. And after all, when 
it really is a case of dealing with the unknown and with 
conditions which are changing every minute, it all comes 
to a question of alertness and common sense. In other 
words, there is a good deal which is instinctive in this 
kind of work. 
Well, at any rate, by seven o'clock we were well with- 
in sight of Kolguev; going very cautiously with the lead 
constantly at work, in some thirty fathoms of water; and 
so far meeting no sandbanks. 
Drawing up in this way we arrived by 8 p.m. some 
three miles off the coast, and had about seventeen 
fathoms of water. Then we turned a bit and steamed 
slowly down. 
It was certainly about as miserable and uninviting a 
coast as you can well imagine. Trees you cannot expect 
to find in these latitudes, but often their absence is more 
