"One morning I went out to paint it, shining like silver in the sunlight. I had scarcely finished making the rough sketch," he tells, "when a noise of shuffling and deep breathing attracted my attention. Glancing round, I saw to my horror the shaggy white body of a great polar bear within ten feet of my back. He had been watching me paint. Now, taking my fright for hostility, he lost interest in art and advanced toward me, with a paw uplifted. Springing back, I snatched my rifle, crying: 'Oshkai! Oshkai!' hoping that my companions might hear. Dropping on one knee, I fired; but the bullet only caused the great bear to roar and dash toward me. I fired again. The shot was more effective. It slowed his progress. Then three shots rang from behind an icy boulder; for my companions had heard and come to my rescue, and I was saved." Good luck, however, could not stay with the expedition. First, their best dogs went mad, not from hydrophobia, but from the strange craze of the ice, which affects men and dogs alike. Then food failed. The remaining dogs starved, though they killed their few reindeer to feed both themselves and the dogs. When nothing remained to kill, they were glad to eat the refuse of their previous camps. Amid hair-breadth escapes, suffering from starvation and exhaustion, they wandered back on foot to their portable house, where the arrival of the Russian military transport-ship, the "Pakhtoosoff," ended their courageous preparations for a second wintering. Leaving the house and its stores to their faithful Samoyeds and carefully packing Borissoff's three hundred paintings, they steamed back to civilization. _Borissoff's Revelation of Arctic Color_ When Borissoff arrived at St. Petersburg, the Tsar sent for him. His impression of the Emperor was of "a quiet gentleman who takes a keen delight in art." The Empress, herself a painter of portraits, was immensely interested; and the first exhibition of the paintings took place in the White Salon of the Winter Palace. Other exhibitions followed in other capitals of Europe. In Berlin, the exhibit was patronized by the German Empress; in Munich, by the Prince Regent. In Paris the French Government bought "In the Kara Sea"; while in London the court set pointed the way to all good Englishmen to their exhibition at the Grafton Galleries. The extraordinary thing about the paintings is, of course, their revelation of the colors of the frozen world of the polar circle. In a region which our ignorant imagination shrouds in dull sepia tones, Borissoff reveals lights that we never dreamed to be on land or sea. There is an effect of strange, mysterious brilliancy in one of his largest canvases, entitled "In the Kingdom of Death." Dark icebergs tower above the open sea; while through heavy purple-black clouds, melting to blue and mauve, break lines of lurid red light from the August sunrise, that throw an orange-red glow along steely, blue-black waters.