Here we used to remain until nearly time for
slack-water again, when we weighed and made for home. We never set out
upon this expedition without a steady side wind for going and
coming--one that we felt sure would not fail us before our return--and
we seldom made a miscalculation upon this point. Twice, during six
years, we were forced to stay all night at anchor on account of a dead
calm, which is a rare thing indeed just about here; and once we had to
remain on the grounds nearly a week, starving to death, owing to a
gale which blew up shortly after our arrival, and made the channel too
boisterous to be thought of. Upon this occasion we should have been
driven out to sea in spite of everything (for the whirlpools threw us
round and round so violently, that, at length, we fouled our anchor
and dragged it) if it had not been that we drifted into one of the
innumerable cross currents--here to-day and gone to-morrow--which
drove us under the lee of Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up.
"I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we
encountered 'on the ground'--it is a bad spot to be in, even in good
weather--but we made shift always to run the gauntlet of the
Moskoe-str?¶m itself without accident; although at times my heart has
been in my mouth when we happened to be a minute or so behind or
before the slack.
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