lopes near the beach in order, so far as the falling darkness
permitted, to examine its natural conditions, when Johnsen came
down; he informed us that from the top of the height one could hear
bustle and noise and see fires at an encampment on the other side of
the headland. He supposed that the natives were celebrating some
festival. I had a strong inclination to go thither in order, as I
thought, "to take farewell of the Chukches," for I was quite certain
that on some of the following days we should sail into the Pacific.
But it was already late in the evening and dark, and we were not yet
sufficiently acquainted with the disposition of the Chukches to go
by night, without any serious occasion, in small numbers and
provided only with the weapons of the chase, to an encampment with
which we were not acquainted. It was not until afterwards that we
learned that such a visit was not attended with any danger. Instead
of going to the encampment, as the vessel in any case could not
weigh anchor this evening, we remained some hours longer on the
beach and lighted there an immense log fire of drift-wood, round
which we were soon all collected, chatting merrily about the
remaining part of the voyage in seas where not cold but heat would
trouble us, and where our progress at least would not be obstructed
by ice, continual fog, and unknown shallows. None of us then had any
idea that, instead of the heat of the tropics, we would for the next
ten months be experiencing a winter at the pole of cold, frozen in
on an unprotected road, under almost continual snow-storms, and with
a temperature which often sank below the freezing-point of mercury.

The evening was glorious, the sky clear, and the air so calm that the
flames and smoke of the log fire rose high against the sky. The dark
surface of the water, covered as it was with a thin film of ice,
reflected its light as a fire-way straight as a line, bounded far away
at the horizon by a belt of ice, whose inequalities appeared in the
darkness as the summits of a distant high mountain chain. The
temperature in the quite draught-free air was felt to be mild, and the
thermometer showed only 2 deg. under the freezing-point. This slight degree
of cold was however sufficient to cover the sea in the course of the
night with a sheet of newly-frozen ice, which, as the following days'
experience showed, at the opener places could indeed only delay, not
obstruct the advance of the _Vega_, but wh