s rang from behind
an icy boulder; for my companions had heard and come to my rescue, and
I was saved."

Good luck, however, could not stay with the expedition. First, their
best dogs went mad, not from hydrophobia, but from the strange craze
of the ice, which affects men and dogs alike. Then food failed. The
remaining dogs starved, though they killed their few reindeer to feed
both themselves and the dogs. When nothing remained to kill, they were
glad to eat the refuse of their previous camps. Amid hair-breadth
escapes, suffering from starvation and exhaustion, they wandered back
on foot to their portable house, where the arrival of the Russian
military transport-ship, the "Pakhtoosoff," ended their courageous
preparations for a second wintering. Leaving the house and its stores
to their faithful Samoyeds and carefully packing Borissoff's three
hundred paintings, they steamed back to civilization.

_Borissoff's Revelation of Arctic Color_

When Borissoff arrived at St. Petersburg, the Tsar sent for him. His
impression of the Emperor was of "a quiet gentleman who takes a keen
delight in art." The Empress, herself a painter of portraits, was
immensely interested; and the first exhibition of the paintings took
place in the White Salon of the Winter Palace. Other exhibitions
followed in other capitals of Europe. In Berlin, the exhibit was
patronized by the German Empress; in Munich, by the Prince Regent. In
Paris the French Government bought "In the Kara Sea"; while in London
the court set pointed the way to all good Englishmen to their
exhibition at the Grafton Galleries.

The extraordinary thing about the paintings is, of course, their
revelation of the colors of the frozen world of the polar circle. In a
region which our ignorant imagination shrouds in dull sepia tones,
Borissoff reveals lights that we never dreamed to be on land or sea.
There is an effect of strange, mysterious brilliancy in one of his
largest canvases, entitled "In the Kingdom of Death." Dark icebergs
tower above the open sea; while through heavy purple-black clouds,
melting to blue and mauve, break lines of lurid red light from the
August sunrise, that throw an orange-red glow along steely, blue-black
waters.

"Midnight in the Kara Sea"--selected by the French Government's
experts as Borissoff's most extraordinary production--shows a sky of
glowing orange, and floes of ice drifting on black waters. An
unearthly yellow-green light illumines t