fog soon came on and obscured everything.

And through fog, nothing but fog, we steamed away for four days without
stopping, until, when I came on deck on the morning of the 25th of
July, behold clear weather! The sun was shining in a cloudless sky,
the bright blue sea was heaving with a gentle swell. Again it was
good to be a living being, and to drink in the peacefulness of the
sea in long draughts. Towards noon we sighted Goose Land on Novaya
Zemlya, and stood in towards it. Guns and cartridges were got ready,
and we looked forward with joyful anticipation to roast goose and
other game; but we had gone but a short distance when the gray
woolly fog from the southeast came up and enveloped us. Again we
were shut off from the world around us. It was scarcely prudent to
make for land, so we set our course eastward towards Yugor Strait;
but a head-wind soon compelled us to beat up under steam and sail,
which we went on doing for a couple of days, plunged in a world
of fog. Ugh! that endless, stubborn fog of the Arctic Sea! When it
lowers its curtain, and shuts out the blue above and the blue below,
and everything becomes a damp gray mist, day in and day out, then all
the vigor and elasticity of the soul is needed to save one from being
stifled in its clammy embrace. Fog, and nothing but fog, wherever we
turn our eyes. It condenses on the rigging and drips down on every
tiniest spot on deck. It lodges on your clothes, and finally wets
you through and through. It settles down on the mind and spirits,
and everything becomes one uniform gray.

On the evening of July 27th, while still fog-bound, we quite
unexpectedly met with ice; a mere strip, indeed, which we easily
passed through, but it boded ill. In the night we met with more--a
broader strip this time, which also we passed through. But next
morning I was called up with the information that there was thick,
old ice ahead. Well, if ice difficulties were to begin so soon, it
would be a bad lookout indeed. Such are the chill surprises that
the Arctic Sea has more than enough of. I dressed and was up in
the crow's-nest in a twinkling. The ice lay extended everywhere,
as far as the eye could reach through the fog, which had lifted a
little. There was no small quantity of ice, but it was tolerably
open, and there was nothing for it but to be true to our watchword
and "ga fram"--push onward. For a good while we picked our way. But
now it began to lie closer, with large floes