Borissoff lived with the Samoyeds until he had painted up all his canvases. Returning to civilization, he was immediately welcomed by enthusiastic amateurs. The sale of seventy-five pictures _en bloc_ to M. Tretiakoff, of Moscow, put him on his feet financially. Count Witte took an interest in his work. The Grand Duke Vladimir remembered that he had been the first to appreciate the painter's possibilities; and the Tsar told him to go ahead with another expedition, offering to defray most of the expenses. _An Ill-Fated Expedition_ So, with the zoologist Timofeieff, and the chemist Filipoff, he soon started on a veritable white man's expedition, with a smart cutter, the "Metchka," a portable dwelling-house, kerosene stoves, scientific instruments, photographic apparatus, guns, ammunition, books, clothing, trading-stores, and food delicacies in abundance. Yet, by a strange irony of fate, the well-stocked little expedition was destined to suffer perils and privations such as Borissoff had never dreamed of among his Samoyeds. They set up their portable dwelling-house on the edge of the Nova Zembla tundra off the Strait of Matochkin Shar, transporting its parts and furnishings by dog-sledge. By the time this was accomplished, the "Metchka" had arrived in the Strait; and they started on a voyage into the Kara Sea. Their object was to distribute materials and provisions along the extreme northeastern coast of Nova Zembla during the fall, and to return to their house to spend the winter. In the spring they hoped to make an early start in sledges along the route of their supplies. _The Abandonment of the Ship_ "It was in navigating the Sea of Kara that we encountered our first acute peril," says Borissoff. "The further north we got, the more numerous were icebergs. Often our small ship was wedged in tight between walls of ice that threatened to crush us. "We decided to turn back; but it was too late. Winter was closing in earlier than we had anticipated; and the broken ice about us was becoming a solid field. After two weeks' battle, we had to surrender. Nature had captured us. We were being carried off into regions of certain death. Our only escape lay in abandoning our ship, and attempting to regain the coast by journeying across the dreadful sea of ice on foot. Gathering what provisions we could carry, our party of nine, including the five sailors, set out with but little expectation of ever reaching land." Everything was put into three canoes, to be pulled along the edges of ice-banks by nine men and some twenty dogs. Soon the free water froze tight; and they had to drag the boats over the ice. The wind made this too difficult. The canoes were abandoned; and the most necessary supplies were placed on sledges made of skis. With the snow up to their waists, they plodded on--until they discovered that they were on a drifting island of ice! _Drifting Out to Sea on Floes of Ice_