15. Ominous were the events of that day, for immediately after we had made fast the _Tegetthoff_ to that floe, the ice closed in upon us from all sides and we became close prisoners in its grasp. No water was to be seen around us, and _never again were we destined to see our vessel in water_. Happy is it for men that inextinguishable hope enables them to endure all the vicissitudes of fate, which are to test their powers of endurance, and that they can never see, as at a glance, the long series of disappointments in store for them! We must have been filled with despair, had we known that evening that we were henceforward doomed to obey the caprices of the ice, that the ship would never again float on the waters of the sea, that all the expectations with which our friends, but a few hours before, saw the _Tegetthoff_ steam away to the north, were now crushed; _that we were in fact no longer discoverers, but passengers against our will on the ice_. From day to day we hoped for the hour of our deliverance! At first we expected it hourly, then daily, then from week to week; then at the seasons of the year and changes of the weather, then in the chances of new years! _But that hour never came_, yet the light of hope, which supports man in all his sufferings, and raises him above them all, never forsook us, amid all the depressing influence of expectations cherished only to be disappointed. CHAPTER III. DRIFTING IN THE NOVAYA ZEMLYA SEAS. 1. At the end of August the temperature in the Frozen Ocean is generally at the freezing point of the Centigrade thermometer, but this year (1872) it was constantly six degrees below it. A cold bleak air enveloped us, there was abundance of snow, the sun showed himself rarely, and for some days he had sunk, at midnight, under the horizon. The ship and her rigging were stiff with ice, and everything indicated that for us winter had begun. As the masses of ice which inclosed us consisted only of small floes, we were led to hope that the strong east winds would soon disperse them. But the very contrary really happened, for the low temperatures, the calms, and falls of snow, bound the floes of ice only the more closely together, and within a few days congealed them into one single field, in the midst of which the ship remained fast and immovable. Our surroundings were monotonous beyond description,—one vast unattractive white surface, and even the high-lands of Novaya Zemlya were covered with freshly fallen snow.