if they were overloaded, and it required the utmost caution to avoid falling between these ridges, which had been raised by the waves and driven together by the winds.  The footing once lost, inevitable destruction must follow.  They had not proceeded above an English mile, when, to their great delight, they descried the hut, at a distance of about a mile and a half from the shore.  Its length was thirty-six feet, and its breadth and height eighteen.  It consisted of two rooms.  The antechamber was about twelve feet broad, and had two doors—­one to exclude the outer air, the other by which it communicated with the inner room, in which there was an earthen stove, such as is commonly used in Russia.  A very slight inspection sufficed to shew that the hut had sustained great injury from the weather; but to have found it in any condition was a subject of great joy, and they availed themselves of its shelter for the night.

Eager to communicate the good news to their companions, they set out early the next morning; and as they went on, they chatted cheerfully about the stores of ammunition and provisions, and various requisites which could be conveyed from the ship, to be stored in the hut for winter use.  They pursued their way in the highest spirits, picturing to themselves the delight which they were about to give to their companions.  When they arrived on the shore, not a vestige of the ship was to be seen; no track through the waters marked her path; all was still and silent, desolate and bleak:  no familiar face was seen; not one of their comrades was left to tell the hapless tale!  They stood aghast, looking in mute despair upon the sea.  The ice by which the vessel had been hemmed in had totally disappeared.  The violent storm of the night before, they concluded, might have been the cause of this fatal disaster; the ice might have been disturbed by the agitation of the waves, and beaten violently against the ship, till she was shattered to pieces; or she might, perhaps, have been carried on by the current into the ocean, and there lost.  However it might have been, they were never to see her again.  What a difference a few short moments had made in their feelings and in their fate!  They thought to have re-entered the hut with glad companions; they returned to it the sole inhabitants of that desolate region, disconsolate, and utterly hopeless of ever leaving it.  When they could collect their thoughts, they were anxiously turned to the preservation of their lives, for which it was necessary to provide some kind of sustenance.  The island abounded with reindeer, and they brought down one with every charge of their powder.  They set about devising means to repair the hut, which, from the cracks and crevices produced by the weather, let in the piercingly cold air in various directions.  No wood, or even shrub, grew on that sterile ground.  Nothing could be more dreary than the prospect—­a bleak waste without vegetation; the high mountains with their