110 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 
This night we did not sleep. I have never been out 
ona lovelier night. There was nota trace of fog. Clearas 
it had been all day, the wind died down at morning. And 
over the little lake, half covered with thick broken floes, 
you could look, and far away across the tundra, for there 
was no mirage now. Grey and purple the peat waves of 
the tundra rolled on and on, and the sun as it rose higher 
(it had never set, remember) touched the little distant 
tarns till they twinkled like the dewdrops on the lawn 
at home, or drew off the top of the marshes small soft 
clouds of white. 
We lay under the shadow of the bank while the 
further side of the lake was lit with sunshine. It was 
all worth looking at. I felt it was not a bad thing to 
be houseless on Kolguev just then. 
And soon after midnight, just as the lake itself began 
to steam, we had a visitor. Down from the top of the 
bank on the further side jauntily stepped a little fox, and 
sat looking down at the floe below him. He was patchily 
coloured blue and white; ‘christovatik,’ as the Russians 
call it, because the dark mark on back and shoulders 
shows the form of a cross when the animal is skinned. 
June 28th.—We moved on at 5 a.m. 
You will perhaps recollect that all this time we have 
been steering for Stanavoi Scharok. But last night, 
after thinking over the whole position, I had changed 
my plans. 
