198 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 
summer plumage. He had found it by the harbour-side. 
This was in its way a find. For the sanderling, which 
does not nest with us (though it is believed to have bred 
in Iceland), is suspected of nesting on the mainland; on 
the Petchora, for instance, and I had great hopes of 
finding its nest. 
' But you will be tired of my hopes—they were so often 
disappointments. 
And I do not think I will go into camp details much 
more. 
A big bit of everyday would only read like this :— 
‘Fetched water ; cut up wood—chipping at logs of iron 
with a little single-handed axe; cooked, ate, went out to 
kill for supper; pressed flowers; blew eggs; prepared 
specimens; wrote; wondered about Saxon; watched 
ice.’ 
Somewhere against the ice the breakers hurled them- 
selves with the noise of battle, and again the ice went off 
like guns. I liked this cannonading of the ice. It was a 
fine sound, chiming well with the wild cry of the divers 
and the call of the geese overhead. And when you walk 
along by yourself in a lonely island you—I suppose 
every one does—come to look on all these as your 
creatures or your friends. They are not a bit so, of course ; 
just the opposite. You are probably in their view the 
one thing unresponsive, the one fact with which they 
have no relation—a thing out of all reason, a great 
nail-booted, shot-blazing, contra-natural blot. 
