A first round of six way talks bringing together North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States in Beijing ended inconclusively in August.
Three previous votes ended inconclusively and today's parliamentary elections being seen as a referendum on whether the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu should stay in power.
Chastened, they sailed on, but en route word reached them that Sumatra had fallen to the French and so they observed the transit inconclusively from the Cape of Good Hope.