But the weather had changed.  What is called here the warm wind had blown all day, and at night a hurricane came on.  As the adventurers sat smoking after supper, the ice beneath their feet trembled, shook, and then fearful reports bursting on their ears, told them that the sea was cracking in every direction.  They had camped on an elevated iceberg of vast dimensions, and were for the moment safe.  But around them they heard the rush of waters.  The vast Frozen Sea was in one of its moments of fury.  In the deeper seas to the north it never freezes firmly—­in fact there is always an open sea, with floating bergs.  When a hurricane blows, these clear spaces become terribly agitated.  Their tossing waves and mountains of ice act on the solid plains, and break them up at times.  This was evidently the case now.  About midnight our travelers, whose anguish of mind was terrible, felt the great iceberg afloat.  Its oscillations were fearful.  Sakalar alone preserved his coolness.  The men of Nijnei Kolimsk raved and tore their hair, crying that they had been brought willfully to destruction; Kolina kneeled, crossed herself, and prayed; while Ivan deeply reproached himself as the cause of so many human beings encountering such awful peril.  The rockings of their icy raft were terrible.  It was impelled hither and thither by even huger masses.  Now it remained on its first level, then its surface presented an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, and it seemed about to turn bottom up.  All recommended themselves to God, and awaited their fate.  Suddenly they were rocked more violently than ever, and were all thrown down by the shock.  Then all was still.

The hurricane lulled, the wind shifted. snow began to fall, and the prodigious plain of loose ice again lay quiescent.  The bitter frost soon cemented its parts once more, and the danger was over.  The men of Nijnei Kolimsk now insisted on an instant return; but Sakalar was firm, and, though their halt had given them little rest, started as the sun was seen above the horizon.  The road was fearfully bad.  All was rough, disjointed, and almost impassable.  But the sledges had good whalebone keels, and were made with great care to resist such difficulties.  The dogs were kept moving all day, but when night came they had made but little progress.  But they rested in peace.  Nature was calm, and morning found them still asleep.  But Sakalar was indefatigable, and as soon as he had boiled a potful of snow, made tea, and awoke his people.

They were now about to enter a labyrinth of toroses or icebergs.  There was no plain ground within sight; but no impediment could be attended to.  Bears made these their habitual resorts, while the wolf skulked every night round the camp, waiting their scanty leavings.  Every eye was stretched in search of game.  But the road itself required intense care, to prevent the sledges overturning.  Toward the afternoon they entered a narrow valley of ice