The short summer came and went, and August had almost gone when—it was on the 30th, in 79° 43´—there came a surprise. The rays of the sun were fitfully breaking through the gloom when suddenly the gliding mists rolled up like a curtain, revealing in the north-west the outlines of a rocky coast, which in a few minutes grew into a radiant Alpine land. The shore, however, was unattainable, as a rush over the icefield soon showed, but from the edge of the fissure that barred any further progress they could make out its hills and glaciers and imagine the green pastures of its valleys. They called it Kaiser Franz Josef's Land, and along it they drifted during September till its outlines faded as the wind began to drive the floe to the south. But at the end of the month the direction of the floe changed to the north-west, taking the _Tegetthoff_ up to 79° 58´, her highest north, near enough to one of the islands for an effort to be made to land. Six started from the ship over the grinding, groaning, broken walls of ice, and when they were out of sight of the ship a mist settled down which cut them off from the sight of land and then so closely enwrapped them that they could see nothing. Advance they found hopeless, and as they returned they lost their way and were saved by the sagacity of a dog they had with them. All through October the drift continued, and it was not until forenoon of the 1st of November, two months after sighting the country, that they managed to get ashore. This was on Wilczek Island in the same longitude as Admiralty Peninsula in Novaya Zemlya, and in the same latitude as Mossel Bay in Spitsbergen.