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Returning to the Cossack barrack, we spread our bearskins and blankets down on the rough plank floor and went disconsolate to bed. Early the next morning, I was awakened by one of the Cossacks with the welcome news that there was a large square-rigged vessel in the offing, five or six miles beyond Matuga Island.
Leaving the Cossack to take our baggage out of the lodka, we all climbed up to the beacon-tower, with the hope that, as it was still fairly light, we might be able to see with a glass the vessel that had made the smoke; but from the high black cliffs of Matuga Island on one side of the Gulf, to the steep slope of Cape Catherine on the other, there was nothing to break the horizon line except here and there a field of drifting ice.
"We saw dark smoke, like the smoke of a steamer, off Matuga Island just before we fired the cannon, but in a little while it blew away and we have seen nothing since." "If it's a whaler trying out oil," said Robinson, "we'll find her there in the morning."
I cried, half rising from the bottom of the boat in the stern-sheets. "Three or four points off the port bow," the voice replied. "Are you sure?" I demanded. "I'm not quite sure, but I saw the twinkle of something away over on the Matuga Island side. It's gone now," the voice added, after a moment's pause; "but I saw something."
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