60 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 
come. I liked him much for this ; because I knew quite 
well that his friends the sailors, who had formed the 
gloomiest views of the place, had told him in effect that 
he would only be going to his death. However, it was 
settled : Hyland should come too. 
We had this understanding. We should take a 
month’s provisions, which might be made to last five 
weeks. Also one of the little tents, the instruments, and 
a few other necessary things. On landing we should go 
into camp, and then, leaving all we could not carry, walk 
down the coast to the mouth of the Waskina and try for 
the Samoyeds. Should we fail in meeting them there 
then we were to travel on to Stanavoi Scharok (ze. 
Scharok harbour), which we believed to be the place 
where the Russian gunboat had lain last year for a 
few hours, according to information which Powys had 
obtained from the Russian Consul in Vardé, and had in 
writing from him. 
Any plan or change of plan I undertook to put on paper, 
and to bury six feet due north of a cross which I should 
erect at such points as we might reach. And the further 
to protect it from busy hands, I was to write on it 
these words in Russian, ‘ Nicholas the Priest,’ because it 
seemed that this, could it be read, would make any 
aggressor pause. I here calculated on the reverence 
or the superstition of the native mind. 
Then the Saxon, after coaling at Vardé, should run for 
Novaya Zemblya, and returning in a month’s time call 
