e
been comparatively shallow and feeble. Beaching at last a break in the
long line of cliff-guarded capes and fiords, where the sea, half
covered with low islands, eats a broad and deep ingress into the
land-belt, I disembarked, and made a day's land journey to the
northward.

The ground was covered with a sheet of hard-frozen snow about eighteen
inches deep, with an upper surface of pure ice. For the ordinary
carriage, here useless, was substituted a sledge, driven from behind
by an instrument something between a paddle-wheel and a screw, worked,
of course, by the usual electric machinery. The cold was far more
intense than I had ever before known it; and the mist that fell at the
close of the very short zyda of daylight rendered it all but
intolerable. The Arctic circular thermometer fell to within a few
points from its minimum of--50 deg. Centigrade [?]. No flesh could endure
exposure to such an atmosphere; and were not the inner mask and
clothing of soft leather pervaded by a constant feeble current of
electricity....

As we made our way back to the open sea, the temptation to disobey the
royal order was all but irresistible. No fewer than three kargyndau
were within shot at one and the same time; plunging from the shore of
an icy island to emerge with their prey--a fish somewhat resembling
the salmon in form and flavour. My companions, however, were terrified
at the thought of disobedience to the law; and as we had but one
mordyta (lightning-gun) among the party, and the uncertainty of the
air-gun had been before proven to my cost, there was some force in
their supplementary argument that, if I did not kill the kargynda, it
was probable that the kargynda might board us; in which event our case
would be summarily disposed of, without troubling the Courts or
allowing time to apply, even by telegraph, for the royal pardon. I was
suggesting, more to the alarm than amusement of the crew, that we
might close the hatches, and either carry the regal beast away
captive, or, at worst, dive and drown him--for he cannot swim very
far--when their objections were enforced in an unexpected manner. We
were drifting beyond shot of the nearest brute, when the three
suddenly plunged at once, and as if by concert, and when they rose,
were all evidently making for the vessel, and within some eighty
yards. I then learnt a new advantage of the electric machinery, as
compared with the most powerful steam-engine. A pressure upon a
butt