“... A cutting pain tore his chest apart like an ax. And suddenly, through a whistle, a hiss, a squeal: “Hold on... Wrangel lay on the edge of the ice floe. The navigator and the sailor leaned on his legs. Wrangel handed Fyodor that long stick with bells that helped control the sledge. Fyodor, as if in a sheaf of light, saw Wrangel’s wet and terrible face. Fyodor rushed, it seemed as if his tendons had burst... This was what happened in March 1823, when the detachment again went out in search of Andreev Land. This was the last “assignment” from the Admiralty. They had already accomplished the rest: they examined Cape Shelag and dispelled the British hypothesis about the connection of two continents; They put thirty-five degrees of longitude on the map - a thousand-mile coastline; studied the huge Kolyma basin; collected collections and meteorological observations. But Andreeva Land... And here lay half-dead on the ice floe Fyodor Matyushkin, lyceum student “number twelve”, a “round the world” sailor. Now the silhouettes of Wrangel, Kozmin, and sailors appeared from the darkness, then melted into it. Slowly, like tar, the blood flowed through my veins, pushing painfully through my fingers and toes. ..."