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In August they reached the edge of the pack, when the sleighs were abandoned, and the dogs killed, as no room could be spared. The boats then crossed open water to Novaya Zemlya, and at the end of three months from leaving the ship sighted a Russian vessel. The Nickolai brought them to Vardoe in Norway, where the voyagers landed in September, 1874.
At Novaya Zemlya, however, of all places, the conditions were tolerably favourable, and, as we have seen, the trophy of a "flash-spectrograph" was carried off. Some coronal photographs, moreover, taken by the late Sir George Baden-Powell and by M. Hansky, a member of a Russian party, were marked by features of considerable interest.
I looked round and saw Sukhanov, Gorky's friend, formerly one of the cleverest writers on the Novaya Jizn. I jumped up and shook hands with him. "What, have you gone over to the Bolsheviks?" I asked. "Not at all," said Sukhanov, smiling, "but I am working here." "Sukhanov thinks that we do less harm than anybody else," said Pavlovitch, and laughed.
She sailed from Gothenburg on the 21st of July, accompanied by the steamer Lena, commanded by Johannesen from Tromsoe. In the expedition were included many scientific gentlemen, and the crews were composed of picked men. The vessels rounded the North Cape, and on the 29th of July sighted Novaya Zemlya.
The Dutch succeeded no better, none of the voyages undertaken by Barents and others between 1594 and 1597 reaching farther than the Spitzbergen and Novaya Zembla waters. Nor were these limits exceeded by Hendrick Hudson in 1608.
Then they passed the Yergar Strait and entered the Kara Sea, the immense gulf lying between Novaya Zemlya and the north point of the Asiatic continent, Cape Chalyaskin. The vessels which had accompanied the Lena and Vega went up the Yenissei River with cargoes, and returned safely to Norway.
The gallant vessel pushed on, and was beset by the ice very soon on the north coast of Novaya Zemlya, where in many and great dangers the winter passed. On the 29th of October the sun disappeared for 109 days! The winter over, the months of May, June, and July were spent in trying to saw the Tegethoff out of the ice; but all the efforts made were futile.
Barentz, who tried three times, in 1593, 1595, and 1596, was closed up in the ice of Novaya Zemlya, and perished. Henry Hudson tried in 1607-8. The Danes made the attempt in 1653. Captain J. Wood also sailed to the unhospitable shores of Novaya Zemlya, and so terrified people by his descriptions that they gave up the attempt in despair.
The mail brought scores of letters daily informing us of death sentences pronounced against us, of infernal machines, of the expected blowing up of the Smolny, etc. The bourgeois press howled wildly, moved by hatred and terror. Gorki, who had forgotten all about "The Song of the Falcon," continued to prophesy in his Novaya Zhizn the approach of the end of the world.
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