he boat.
The Cossack jumped into the lap of a sailor and received a variety of
epithets for his carelessness. There are fourteen ways in the Russian
language of calling a man a ---- fool, and I think all of them were
used.

[Illustration: ASCENDING THE BAY.]

Wind and tide opposed each other and tossed us rather uncomfortably.
The waves breaking over the bow saturated the Cossack and sprinkled
some of the sailors. At the stern we managed to protect ourselves,
though we caught occasionally a few drops of spray. Wrapped in my
overcoat and holding a bear-skin on my knees, I studied the summer
night in that high northern latitude. At midnight it seemed like day
break, and I half imagined we had wrongly calculated the hours and
were later than we supposed. Between sunset and sunrise the twilight
crept along the horizon from Occident to Orient. Further north the
inhabitants of the Arctic circle were enjoying the light of their long
summer day. What a contrast to the bleak night of cold and darkness
that stretches with faint glimmerings of dawn through nearly half the
year. The shores of the bay were high perpendicular banks, sharply
cut like the bluffs at Vicksburg. There are several head-lands, but
none project far enough to form harbors behind them. The bottom
furnishes good anchoring ground, but the bay is quite open to
southerly winds.

Captain Lund dropped his chin to his breast and slept soundly.
Anossoff raised his coat collar and drew in his head like a tortoise
returning into his shell, but with all his efforts he did not sleep. I
was wakeful and found that time dragged slowly. The light-house had no
light and needed none, as the darkness was far from profound. In
approaching the mouth of the river we discovered a cluster of
buildings, and close at hand two beacons, like crosses, marking the
direction of the channel.

There was a little surf breaking along the beach as our keel touched
the ground. Our blankets came dripping from the bottom of the boat,
and my satchel had taken water enough to spoil my paper collars and a
dozen cigars. My greatest calamity on that night was the sudden and
persistent stoppage of my watch. An occurrence of little moment in New
York or London was decidedly unpleasant when no trusty watchmaker
lived within four thousand miles.

Major Abasa and the Ispravnik of Ghijiga escorted us from the landing
to their quarters, where we soon warmed ourselves with hot tea, and I
took opportunit