Our business in Gizhiga was finally adjusted and settled; our working-parties were all called in; and we were just about to sail in the bark Onward for Okhotsk, when we were suddenly confronted by the deadliest peril that we had encountered in more than two years of arctic experience.  Every explorer who goes into a wild, unknown part of the world to make scientific researches, to find a new route for commerce, or to gratify an innate love of adventure, has, now and then, an escape from a violent death which is so extraordinary that he classifies it under the head of “narrow.”  The peril that he incurs may be momentary in duration, or it may be prolonged for hours, or even days; but in any case, while it lasts it is imminent and deadly.  It is something more than ordinary danger—­it is peril in which the chances of death are a hundred and of life only one.  Such peril advances, as a rule, with terrifying swiftness and suddenness; and if one be unaccustomed to danger, he is liable to be beaten down and overwhelmed by the quick and unexpected shock of the catastrophe.  He has no time to rally his nervous forces, or to think how he will deal with the emergency.  The crisis comes like an instantaneous “Vision of Sudden Death,” which paralyses all his faculties before he has a chance to exercise them.  Swift danger of this kind tests to the utmost a man’s inherited or acquired capacity for instinctive and purely automatic action; but as it generally passes before it has been fairly comprehended, it is not so trying, I think, to the nerves and to the character as the danger that is prolonged to the point of full realisation, and that cannot then be averted or lessened by any possible action.  It is only when a man has time to understand and appreciate the impending catastrophe, and can do absolutely nothing to avert it, that he fully realises the possibility of death.  Action of any kind is tonic, and when a man can fight danger with his muscles or his brain, he is roused and excited by the struggle; but when he can do nothing except wait, watch the suspended sword of Damocles, and wonder how soon the stroke will come, he must have strong nerves long to endure the strain.

Just before we sailed from Gizhiga in the Onward, eight of us had an escape from death in which the peril came with great swiftness and suddenness, and was prolonged almost to the extreme limit of nervous endurance.  On account of the lateness of the season and the rocky, precipitous, and extremely dangerous character of the coast in the vicinity of Gizhiga, the captain of the bark had not deemed it prudent to run into the mouth of the Gizhiga River at the point of the long A-shaped gulf, but had anchored on a shoal off the eastern coast, at a distance from the beacon-tower of nearly twenty miles.  From our point of view on land, the vessel was entirely out of sight; but I knew where she lay, and did not anticipate any difficulty in getting on board as soon as I should finish my work ashore.