A BKOWN FOG. 
295 
and to entangle ourselves any further in the ice—un¬ 
less it were with the certainty of reaching land—would 
he sheer folly. The only thing to he done was to turn 
hack. Accordingly, to this course I determined at last 
to resign myself, if—after standing on for twelve hours 
longer—nothing should turn up to improve the present 
aspect of affairs. It was now eleven o’clock at night; 
Fitz and Sigurdr went to hed, while I remained on 
deck to see what the night might bring forth. It 
hlew great guns, and the cold was perfectly intolerable ; 
billow upon billow of black fog came sweeping down 
between the sea and sky, as if it were going to swallow 
up the whole universe; while the midnight sun—now 
completely blotted out—now faintly struggling through 
the ragged breaches of the mist—threw down from time 
to time an unearthly red-brown glare on the waste of 
roaring waters. 
For the whole of that night did we continue beating 
up along the edge of the ice, in the teeth of a whole gale 
of wind; at last, about nine o’clock in the morning,— 
but two short hours before the moment at which it had 
been agreed we should bear up, and abandon the attempt, 
—we came up with a long low point of ice, that had 
