The coast seemed to
trend from northwest to southeast, and might have been from thirty to
fifty miles long, with strange bizarre arches of rock overhanging endless
fields of kelp and seaweed. The land was absolutely treeless except for
willow brushwood the size of one's finger. Lichens, moss, sphagnum,
coated the rocks. Inland appeared nothing but billowing reaches of
sedges and shingle and grass.
[Illustration: Steller's Arch on Bering Island, named after the scientist
Steller, of Bering's Expedition.]
Suddenly Steller noticed that the ebb-tide was causing huge combing
rollers that might dash the ship against the rocks. Rushing below decks
he besought Bering's permission to sound and anchor. The early darkness
of those northern latitudes had been followed by moon-light bright as
day. Within a mile of the east shore, {39} Steller ordered the anchor
dropped, but by this time, the rollers were smashing over decks with a
quaking that seemed to tear the ship asunder. The sick were hurled from
their berths. Officers rushed on deck to be swept from their feet by
blasts of salt spray, and just ahead, through the moonlight, could be
seen the sharp edge of a long reef where the beach combers ran with the
tide-rip of a whirlpool.
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