b hopelessness settling over the ship, the invisible hand of the
scourge {38} was laid on him, too. He went below decks completely
fordone.

The underling officers still upon their feet, whose false theories had
led Bering into all this disaster, were now quarrelling furiously among
themselves, blaming one another. Only Ofzyn, the lieutenant, who had
opposed the landing, and Steller, the scientist, remained on the lookout
with eyes alert for the impending destruction threatened from the white
fret of the endless reefs. Rocks rose in wild, jagged masses out of the
sea. Deep V-shaped ravines, shadowy in the rising moonlight, seemed to
recede into the rock wall of the coast, and only where a river poured out
from one of these ravines did there appear to be any gap through the long
lines of reefs where the surf boomed like thunder. The coast seemed to
trend from northwest to southeast, and might have been from thirty to
fifty miles long, with strange bizarre arches of rock overhanging endless
fields of kelp and seaweed. The land was absolutely treeless except for
willow brushwood the size of one's finger. Lichens, moss, sphagnum,
coated the rocks. Inland appeared nothing but billowing reaches of
sedges and shingle and grass.

[Illustration: Steller's Arch on Bering Island, named after the scientist
Steller, of Bering's Expedition.]

Suddenly Steller noticed that the ebb-tide was causing huge combing
rollers that might dash the ship against the rocks. Rushing below decks
he besought Bering's permission to sound and anchor. The early darkness
of those northern latitudes had been followed by moon-light bright as
day. Within a mile of the east shore, {39} Steller ordered the anchor
dropped, but by this time, the rollers were smashing over decks with a
quaking that seemed to tear the ship asunder. The sick were hurled from
their berths. Officers rushed on deck to be swept from their feet by
blasts of salt spray, and just ahead, through the moonlight, could be
seen the sharp edge of a long reef where the beach combers ran with the
tide-rip of a whirlpool. There is something inexpressibly terrifying
even from a point of safety in these beach combers, clutching their long
arms hungrily for prey. The confusion of orders and {40} counter-orders,
which no man had strength to carry out, of terrified cries and prayers
and oaths--was indescribable. The numb hopelessness was succeeded by
sheer panic terror. Ofzyn threw