or a southerly buster to clear
the coast of ice. And yet notwithstanding our many miseries there were
pleasant days, still and sunlit, when I would stroll to the summit of a
grassy hill near the settlement, where the sward was carpeted with wild
flowers and where the soothing tinkle of many rivulets formed by melting
snow were conducive to lazy reverie. From here one could see for a great
distance along the coast to the westward, and on bright days the snowy
range of cliffs and kaleidoscopic effects of colour cast by cloud and
sunshine over the sea ice formed a charming picture. Stepan passed most
of his time on these cliffs watching in vain, like a male sister Anne,
for ships, for, like most Russians, the Cossack suffered severely from
nostalgia.

But the days crawled wearily away, each more dreary than its
predecessor, and the eternal vista of ice greeted each morning the
anxious gaze of the first man up to survey the ocean. Our Union Jack,
now almost torn to shreds by incessant gales, was hoisted on a long
stick lent by Teneskin for the purpose, but I began to think that the
shred of silk might as well have fluttered at the North Pole for all the
attention it was likely to attract from seaward. So passed a month away,
and the grey hag Despair was beginning to show her ugly face when one
never-to-be-forgotten morning Harding rushed into the hut and awoke me
with the joyful news that a thin strip of blue was visible on the
horizon. A few hours later waves were seen breaking near the land, for
when once ice begins to move it does so quickly. Three days later
wavelets were rippling on the beach, and I felt like a man just released
from a long term of penal servitude when on the 15th of July the hull of
a black and greasy whaler came stealing round the point where Stepan had
passed so many anxious hours.

The whaler proved to be the _William Bayliss_ of New Bedford. We boarded
her with some difficulty on account of the jagged ice floes on the beach
to which she was moored. It was an acrobatic feat to jump from the
slippery ice, lay hold of a jibboom towering overhead, and scramble over
the bows. But once aboard, Captain Cottle loaded us with good things
(including a tin of sorely-needed tobacco), and all would now have
seemed _couleur-de-rose_ had Cottle been able to give us news of the
_Thetis_. This, however, he was unable to do, and when that night the
whaler had sailed away I almost regretted that I had declined her