e upon us, for they would
not understand either Ostjak or the Samoyede dialect, and I don't
suppose they would talk Russian. Anyhow, we may as well be on the safe
side. After coming seven or eight thousand miles we won't run any risk
of a failure in the last hundred. I don't much like the look of the sky
away to the north. I fancy we are going to have a storm. Thank God it
did not come two days earlier."

They landed on the island, hauled up the boat, then Godfrey took some
time in finding a hollow where they could light a fire without risk of
its being seen on the mainland, as, if there were Lapps there, they
might cross in their canoes to see who had made it. They had no trouble
in collecting plenty of drift-wood along the shore, and carefully
choosing the driest, so as to avoid making a great smoke, they lit a
fire and erected the tent to leeward of it, so that the smoke might blow
through it, and so keep out their enemies the mosquitoes. Godfrey's
prediction about the weather was speedily verified. The wind got up
very rapidly, and in two hours was blowing a gale from the north.

"No fear of canoes coming across," Luka said.

"No fear at all. I don't suppose there was any real risk of it in any
case, but I feel more nervous now than I have done all the time. At any
rate the storm has made it perfectly safe. There will soon be a sea on
that no canoe could face."

For three days the storm raged, and they were glad to resume their fur
jackets. Jack lay coiled up in the furs in the tent, and nothing could
persuade him to move except for breakfast and dinner. They waited twelve
hours after the gale ceased to allow the sea to go down and then started
again, hoisting their sail as there was enough wind to help them.

CHAPTER XVIII.

HOME AGAIN.

Godfrey felt in wild spirits as they hoisted their sail, for the end of
the journey was close at hand, and, unless some altogether unforeseen
misfortune were to befall them, they would have accomplished an
undertaking that had been deemed almost impossible. They kept well out
from land, increasing the distance as they sailed west until they were
some ten miles out, for the map showed that some five-and-twenty miles
from the point where they had camped a rocky peninsula jutted out. In
three hours they could make out its outline, for the land was bold and
high, and it took them another four hours before they were abreast of
its eastern point, Cape Navalok. Then they c