CHAPTER XXm. 
WE ARRIVE AT ATAN AND FALL IX WITH SOME OLD ACQUAINTANCES — AFTER 
WHICU WE NARROWLY ESCAPE BEING FEASTED TO DEATH BY THE RUSSIANS, 
ARE TOLD SOME “ STUNNING” YARNS, SEE A WHALE STRUCK, AND FINALLY 
GET SAFELY TO SEA. 
At last we were “making the best of our way” for 
Ayan, and it would be almost impossible to imagine 
what a cheerful feeling pervaded the ship at the prospect 
of spending a week in such a port as we supposed that to 
be. When it was first determinately known that we 
were to pass the summer of 1855 along the inhospitable 
and dreary shores of the Okotsk Sea, we were hanging to 
a quiet anchor in the harbor of IIong-Kongj engaged in 
the pleasures of recreation after a stormy cruise of six 
months, as well as in the labour of refitting again for 
sea. 
We immediately began to hunt up authorities on the 
subject of that sea in general, and were surprised that we 
could neither find individual or book possessed of the 
desired information. There was a woeful falling-off, too, 
in the charts of that frozen part of the world; and the 
consequence of all this was that when we left Ilong- 
Kong our only idea of the ground we were going to was 
that it was the Okotsk Sea; that we would be there likely 
to fall in with hundreds of whale-ships; that millions of 
wild geese and ducks, flying from the heat of tropical 
summers, took refuge in its extensive lagoons and 
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