the little round interior, mostly sitting in a cowering attitude, I
wintered, harkening to the large and windy ravings of darkling December
storms above me.

* * * * *

All those months the burden of a thought bowed me; and an unanswered
question, like the slow turning of a mechanism, revolved in my gloomy
spirit: for everywhere around me lay bears, walruses, foxes, thousands
upon thousands of little awks, kittiwakes, snow-owls, eider-ducks,
gulls-dead, dead. Almost the only living things which I saw were some
walruses on the drift-floes: but very few compared with the number
which I expected. It was clear to me that some inconceivable catastrophe
had overtaken the island during the summer, destroying all life about
it, except some few of the amphibia, cetacea, and crustacea.

On the 5th December, having crept out from the den during a southern
storm, I had, for the third time, a distant whiff of that self-same
odour of peach-blossom: but now without any after-effects.

* * * * *

Well, again came Christmas, the New Year--Spring: and on the 22nd May I
set out with a well-stocked kayak. The water was fairly open, and the
ice so good, that at one place I could sail the kayak over it, the wind
sending me sliding at a fine pace. Being on the west coast of Franz
Josef Land, I was in as favourable a situation as possible, and I turned
my bow southward with much hope, keeping a good many days just in sight
of land. Toward the evening of my third day out I noticed a large flat
floe, presenting far-off a singular and lovely sight, for it seemed