ny signs of land--birds, driftwood, seaweed--that the
commander ordered the ship hove to each night for fear of grounding.

On the thirteenth of July, the council of underlings had so far
relinquished all idea of a Gamaland, that it was decided to steer
continuously north. Sometime between the 16th and 20th, the fog lifted
like a curtain. Such a vision met the gaze of the stolid seamen as
stirred the blood of those phlegmatic Russians. It was the
consummation of all their labor, what they had toiled across Siberia to
see, what they had hoped against hope in spite of the learned jargon of
the geographers. There loomed above the far horizon of the north sea
what might have been an immense opal dome suspended in mid-heaven. One
can guess how the lookout strained keen eyes at this grand, crumpled
apex of snow jagged through the clouds like the celestial tent peak of
some giant race; how the shout of "land" went up, how officers and
underlings flocked round Bering with cries and congratulations. "We
knew it was land beyond a doubt on the sixteenth," says Steller.
"Though I have been in Kamchatka, I have never seen more lofty
mountains." The shore was broken everywhere, showing inlets and
harbors. {26} Everybody congratulated the commander, but he only
shrugged shoulders, saying: "We think we've done big things, eh? but
who knows? Nobody realizes where this is, or the distance we must sail
back. Winds may be contrary. We don't know this land; and we haven't
provisions to winter."

The truth is--the maps having failed, Bering was good enough seaman to
know these uncharted signs of a continent indicated that the _St.
Peter_ was hopelessly lost. Sixteen years of nagging care, harder to
face than a line of cannon, had sucked Bering's capacity of resistance
like a vampire. That buoyancy, which lifts man above Anxious Fright,
had been sapped. The shadowy elemental powers--physical weakness,
disease, despair--were closing round the explorer like the waves of an
eternal sea.

The boat found itself in a wonder world, that beggared romance. The
great peak, which they named St. Elias, hung above a snowy row of
lesser ridges in a dome of alabaster. Icebergs, like floating palaces,
came washing down from the long line of precipitous shore. As they
neared anchorage at an island now known as Kyak, they could see billows
of ferns, grasses, lady's slippers, rhododendrons, bluebells,
forget-me-nots, rippling in the wind. P