It is not to be denied, though, that the Novaya Zemblya scheme had its seductions. There was in Vardö harbour a weird, clumsy craft of the type locally known as "yot," which had visited that island a-many times with a crew of hunters. She had two masts with a square sail (not lug) hoisting on each, and her best point of sailing was more or less before the wind. With the wind anywhere ahead, she just had to run into shelter, or drift, till the breeze chose to veer again. She had no notion whatever of ratching to windward, and was not addicted to making certain or rapid passages. That summer she was laid up. During the previous summer (having sailed in the spring) she had gone out to the Kara Strait, and then pushed up along the Western Novaya Zemblyan coast, following the line of drift-ice as it retreated north. She had an ample crew on board, and these made short expeditions inshore, taking with them powder and shot, and bringing back deer skins and deer meat. They seldom went far inland from the coast, for fear lest the clumsy "yot" should be blown off in some sudden gale, and they would be left without means of retreat; and they went for the commercial business of meat-hunting alone, just as their fellows hunted the seas for fish; and when their holds were full of venison and peltries, it was a case of 'bout-ship with them, and back to Vardö again as fast as they could drive her.
We could not find that any of these hunters had so much as shut the eye of sleep upon the island. Samoyedes were alleged to reside there permanently, shifting their _chooms_ from point to point as the struggle for a lean subsistence prompted; and in the south there certainly was a Russian colony in the leading strings of the Government of Archangel, and visited once a year by an erratic steamer. But, as I say, the great bulk of the island was _terra incognita_; there was no reason why it should be exceptionally impassable; and there was every cause to expect that it would be plentifully rambled over by fowl of all sorts--and possibly the great auk, who knew?--and graciously blessed in the matter of four-footed big game.
The charm of the Arctic (which must be felt to be understood) had got us well in tow, and we licked our lips over the thought of this unknown isle, and drunk up all available yarns concerning it, and made exhaustive plans to explore it in the not very distant future. But we did not allow this mere flirtation to seduce us away from the more immediate business of the present. Lapland was what we wanted, and it was on schemes for crossing Lapland at which we hammered with unremitting industry.