Melville bid his shipmates farewell and prepared to head back into the icy barrens of the Lena. It must have taken every ounce of his resolve, for he, too, was frostbitten, exhausted, and starved, his system ravaged by months of half-rancid food. He was returning to the delta at a deadly time of year—as the Siberian winter was enveloping the land, bringing gale-force blizzards, perpetual darkness, and temperatures that would plunge to more than fifty degrees below zero.
