In 1871 Weyprecht and Payer were out in the cutter _Isbjörn_, pioneering for their intended voyage to the eastward, which started next year in the _Tegetthoff_, the famous Austro-Hungarian attempt of 1872 which may be described as an unintentional voyage of unexpected discovery. The amount of credit due to a man who starts to find one thing and lights upon another has always been a contentious matter, and this expedition afforded an extreme case for such speculations. The plan was to go east-north-east, the wintering places being undetermined, though they might be Cape Chelyuskin, the New Siberian Islands, or any land that might be discovered; and a return to Europe through Bering Strait lay among the possibilities of the venture, as an endeavour was to be made to reach the coast of Siberia in boats and penetrate south down one of the large rivers of Northern Asia. What happened was that during the afternoon of the 20th of August, when off the north-west coast of Novaya Zemlya in 76° 22´ north, 63° 3´ east, the ship was run into an ice-hole and made fast to a floe, and during the night the ice, instead of parting asunder, closed in and imprisoned her, so that she never steamed or sailed again. In the ice and on the ice she lay perfectly helpless, drifting with the floe, and still in its grip when she was abandoned by her crew on the 20th of May, two years afterwards. It was a wonderful drift. North-easterly in the main to begin with, then north-westerly, then easterly to about 73°, then north, then west, in and out and roundabout, till they reached much the same longitude as they started from and then with a general tendency to the northward. Autumn passed away; the Polar night set in; and still they drifted ice-bound—a miscellaneous company representative of the polyglot empire; "on board the _Tegetthoff_," says Payer, "are heard all the languages of our country, German, Italian, Slavonic, and Hungarian; Italian is, however, the language in which all orders are given," to which we should add the Norwegian of Olaf Carlsen, the ice-master. During the winter there was enough of occupation and amusement, though private theatricals were impossible, as they would have had to be given in four languages to be intelligible to the audience.