For several days the same kind of difficulties had to be overcome, and then they reached the sayba, where the provisions had been placed in the summer.  It was a large rude box, erected on piles, and the whole stock was found safe.  As there was plenty of wood in this place they halted to rest the dogs and re-pack the sledges.  The tent was pitched, and they all thought of repose.  They were now about wholly to quit the land, and to venture in a north-westerly direction on the Frozen Sea.

* * * * *

V.—­ON THE ICE.

Despite the fire made on the iron plate in the middle of the tent, our adventurers found the cold at this point of their journey most poignant.  It was about Christmas; but the exact time of year had little to do with the matter.  The wind was northerly, and keen:  and they often at night had to rise and promote circulation by a good run on the snow.  But early on the third day all was ready for a start.  The sun was seen that morning on the edge of the horizon for a short while, and promised soon to give them days.  Before them were a line of icebergs, seemingly an impenetrable wall; but it was necessary to brave them.  The dogs, refreshed by two days of rest, started vigorously, and a plain hill of ice being selected, they succeeded in reaching its summit.  Then before them lay a vast and seemingly interminable plain.  Along this the sledges ran with great speed; and that day they advanced nearly thirty miles from the land, and camped on the sea in a valley of ice.

It was a singular spot.  Vast sugar-loaf hills of ice, as old perhaps as the world, threw their lofty cones to the skies, on all sides, while they rested doubtless on the bottom of the ocean.  Every fantastic form was there; there seemed in the distance cities and palaces as white as chalk; pillars and reversed cones, pyramids and mounds of every shape, valleys and lakes; and under the influence of the optical delusions of the locality, green fields and meadows, and tossing seas.  Here the whole party rested soundly, and pushed on hard the next day in search of land.

Several tracks of foxes and bears were now seen, but no animals were discovered.  The route, however, was changed.  Every now and then newly-formed fields of ice were met, which a little while back had been floating.  Lumps stuck up in every direction, and made the path difficult.  Then they reached a vast polinas, where the humid state of the surface told that it was thin, and of recent formation.  A stick thrust into it went through.  But the adventurers took the only course left them.  The dogs were placed abreast, and then, at a signal, were launched upon the dangerous surface.  They flew rather than ran.  It was necessary, for as they went, the ice cracked in every direction, but always under the weight of the nartas, which were off before they could be caught by the bubbling waters.  As soon as the solid ice was again reached, the party halted, deep gratitude to Heaven in their hearts, and camped for the night.