2. To reach the coast of Siberia under these circumstances had become an impossibility, and even in the event of our being liberated, the search for a winter harbour in Novaya Zemlya would be a matter of peril and difficulty. Yet we calculated confidently on this contingency and employed our enforced inactivity in completing our preparations for sledge journeys during the autumn, although we could not but feel, that their importance must be of secondary interest and value in a country so well known as Novaya Zemlya. Meantime we drifted slowly along the coast in a northerly direction and apparently under the influence of a current, which has been often observed on the northern coasts of Novaya Zemlya. But the gloom of our situation, as we became conscious of our captivity, was more distinctly and painfully felt. On the 1st of September the temperature sank nine degrees below zero (12° F.), and the few and limited spaces of open water round our floe disappeared. The sun now remained six hours below the horizon, and the formation of young ice in a single night often reached such a thickness, that we soon perceived that our last hope for this year lay in the setting-in of heavy equinoctial storms to break up the ice-fields.
[Illustration: ATTEMPTS TO GET FREE IN SEPTEMBER.]