xiles. I therefore returned to our cheerless quarters in
anything but a pleasant frame of mind, and almost convinced that our
overland expedition was now finally wrecked. The outlook was not a
cheerful one, for the homeward journey would in itself be miserable
enough, without the addition of floods and a possible detention through
a sultry, mosquito-infested summer at Verkhoyansk. It has seldom been my
lot to pass such a depressing evening as that which followed my
interview with the _ispravnik_, but the prospect of an entire summer's
imprisonment in Arctic wilds affected us far less than the failure of
the expedition. Harding probably echoed the feelings of all when he
exclaimed with a gesture of despair: "When we set out on this job the
devil must have taken the tickets!"

Stepan alone was silent and taciturn. When I awoke next morning at
daybreak he had disappeared, presumably to procure reindeer for the
return journey. But the season was now so far advanced that the
_ispravnik_ called during the day to beg me not to risk a spring journey
to Yakutsk. It was far better, he averred, to remain here and travel
back in safety and comparative comfort in the late fall. It would even
be preferable to attempt the summer journey down the Kolyma River and
over the Stanovoi Mountains to Ola on the Okhotsk Sea. The trip had
certainly never been made, but then no more had our projected one to
America, and how infinitely preferable to arrive at Ola, where we might
only have to wait a few days for a steamer, than to start off on a wild
goose chase to Bering Straits which we should probably never reach at
all. "Besides," continued the _ispravnik_, "the Ola trip would be so
easy by comparison with the other. No drivers and dog-sleds to be
procured, merely a flat-bottomed boat which could be put together in a
few days." From my friend's eagerness to avoid trouble of any kind I now
strongly suspected that laziness was the chief cause of our present
dilemma, although this official's demeanour was so much more
conciliatory than on the previous day, that I fancied that a night's
reflection had revealed the unpleasant results that might follow my
unfavourable report of his conduct at Irkutsk. Although we sat for hours
that day consuming tea and innumerable cigarettes, I was no nearer the
solution of the problem at sunset than at dawn. And had I but known it,
all the time I was vainly urging this stolid boor to reconsider his
decision, help