; use the proceeds in the payment of our
debts; discharge our native labourers; gather up our men, and return
to the United States. The Atlantic cable had proved to be a complete
success, and our Company, after sinking about $3,000,000 in the
attempt to build an overland line from America to Europe, had finally
decided to put up with its loss and abandon the undertaking. Letters
from the directors to Major Abaza, stated that they would be willing
to go on with the work, in spite of the success of the Atlantic cable,
if the Russian Government would agree to complete the line on the
Siberian side of Bering Strait; but they did not think they should be
required, under the circumstances, to do all the work on the American
side and half of that on the Russian.

Major Abaza, hoping that he could prevail upon the Russian Minister of
Ways and Communications to take the Asiatic Division off the hands of
the American Company, and thus prevent the complete abandonment of
the enterprise, decided at once to go to St. Petersburg overland. He
therefore sailed in the _Onward_ with me for Okhotsk, intending to
disembark there, start for Yakutsk on horseback, and send me back in
the ship to pick up our working parties along the coast.

The last of July found us becalmed, about fifty miles off the harbour
and river of Okhotsk. I had been playing chess all the evening in the
cabin, and it was almost eleven o'clock when the second mate called to
me down the companionway to come on deck. Wondering if we had taken a
favourable slant of wind, I went up.

It was one of those warm, still, almost tropical nights, so rarely
seen on northern waters, when a profound calm reigns in the moonless
heavens, and the hush of absolute repose rests upon the tired,
storm-vexed sea. There was not the faintest breath of air to stir even
the reef-points of the motionless sails, or roughen the dark, polished
mirror of water around the ship. A soft, almost imperceptible haze
concealed the line of the far horizon, and blended sky and water into
one great hollow sphere of twinkling stars. Earth and sea seemed to
have passed away, and our motionless ship floated, spell-bound, in
vacancy--the only earthly object in an encircling universe of stars
and planets. The great luminous band of the Milky Way seemed to sweep
around beneath us in a complete circle of white, misty light, and far
down under our keel gleamed the three bright stars in the belt of
Orion. Only when