458 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
were not acquainted. It was not until afterwards that we 
learned that such a visit was not attended with any danger. 
Instead of going to the encampment, as the vessel in any case 
could not weigh anchor this evening, we remained some hours 
longer on the beach and lighted there an immense log fire of 
drift-wood, round which we were soon all collected, chatting 
merrily about the remaining part of the voyage in seas where 
not cold but heat would trouble us, and where our progress at 
least would not be obstructed by ice, continual fog, and unknown 
shallows. None of us then had any idea that, instead of the 
heat of the tropics, we would for the next ten months be 
experiencing a winter at the pole of cold, frozen in on an 
unprotected road, under almost continual snow-storms, and 
with a temperature which often' sank below the freezing-point 
of mercury. 
The evening was glorious, the sky clear, and the air so calm 
that the flames and smoke of the log fire rose high against the 
sky. The dark surface of the water, covered as it was with a 
thin film of ice, reflected its light as a fire-way straight as a line, 
bounded far away at the horizon by a belt of ice, whose in¬ 
equalities appeared in the darkness as the summits of a distant 
high mountain chain. The temperature in the quite draught- 
free air was felt to be mild, and the thermometer showed only 
2° under the freezing-point. This slight degree of cold was 
however sufficient to cover the sea in the course of the night 
with a sheet of newly-frozen ice, which, as the following days’ 
experience showed, at the opener places could indeed only delay, 
not obstruct the advance of the Vega, but which however bound 
together the fields of drift-ice collected off the coast so firmly 
that a vessel, even with the help of steam, could with difficulty 
force her way through. 
When on the following day, the 28th September, v^e had 
sailed past the headland which bounds Kolyutschin Bay on the 
east, the channel next the coast, clear of drift-ice, but covered 
