mong them Bering, wan and weak, answering scarce a word
to the happy clamour about him. Before the sailors' astonished gaze,
in the very early light of that northern latitude, lay a turquoise
sea--a shining sheet of water, milky and metallic like a mountain tarn,
with the bright greens and blues of glacial silt; and looming through
the primrose clouds of the horizon hung a huge opal dome in mid-heaven.
At first they hardly realized what it meant. Then shouts went
up--'Land!' 'Mountains!' 'Snow-peaks!' The _St Peter_ glided forward
noiseless as a bird on the wing. Inlets and harbours, turquoise-green
and silent, opened along a jagged, green and alabaster shore. As the
vessel approached the land the explorers saw that the white wall of the
inner harbour was a rampart of solid ice; but where the shore line
extended out between ice and sea was a meadow of ferns and flowers
abloom knee-deep, and grasses waist-high. The spectators shouted and
laughed and cried and embraced one another. Russia, too, had found a
new empire. St Elias they named the {21} great peak that hung like a
temple dome of marble above the lesser ridges; but Bering only sighed.
'We think we have done great things, eh? Well, who knows where this
is? We're almost out of provisions, and not a man of us knows which
way to sail home.'

Steller was down the ship's ladder with the glee of a schoolboy, and
off for the shore with fifteen men in one of the row-boats to explore.
They found the dead ashes of a camp-fire on the sands, and some
remnants of smoked fish; but any hope that the lost ship's crew had
camped here was at once dispelled by the print of moccasined feet in
the fine sand. Steller found some rude huts covered with sea-moss, but
no human presence. Water-casks were filled; and that relieved a
pressing need. On July 21, when the wind began to blow freshly
seaward, Bering appeared unexpectedly on deck, ashen of hue and
staggering from weakness, and peremptorily ordered anchors up. Bells
were rung and gongs beaten to call those ashore back to the ship.
Steller stormed and swore. Was it for this hurried race ashore that he
had spent years toiling across two continents? He wanted to botanize,
to explore, to gather data for science; but the commander had had {22}
enough of science. He was sick unto death, in body and in soul, sick
with the knowledge that they were two thousand miles from any known
port, in a tempestuous sea, on a rickety sh