FATHER JOHN.
Stung by this news of the pilgrim-boat having sailed, and haunting,
unquietly, the Pilgrim's Court in the upper town, I notice a good many
sheepskin garbs, with wearers of the burnt and hungry sort you meet in
all seasons on the Syrian roads. They are exceedingly devout, and even
in their rags and filth they have a certain grace of aspect and of
mien. A pious purpose seems to inform their gestures and their speech.
Yon poor old man going home with his morsel of dried fish has the air
of an Arab sheikh. These pilgrims, like myself, have been detained by
storms; and a hope shoots up into my heart that as the monks must
either send away all these thirsty souls unslaked, or lodge and feed
them for several months, they may yet contrive to send a boat.
A very small monk, not five feet high, with girl-like hair and
rippling beard, which parts and flows out wildly in the wind, is
standing in the gateway of the Pilgrim's Court; and hardly knowing how
it might be best to put the matter in my feeble Russ, I ask him in
that tongue where a man should look for the Solovetsk boat.
"English?" inquires the girl-like monk.
"Yes, English," I reply, in some surprise; having never before seen a
monk in Russia who could speak in any other tongue than Russ. "The
boat," he adds, "has ceased to run, and is now at Solovetsk laid up in
dock."
In dock! This dwarf must be a wag; for such a conjunction as monks and
docks in a country where you find a quay like that of Solambola is, of
course, a joke. "In dock!"
"Oh yes, in dock."
"Then have you a dock in the Holy Isle?"
"A dock--why not? The merchants of Archangel have no docks, you say?
Well, that is true; but merchants are not monks. You see, the monks of
Solovetsk labor while the merchants of Archangel trade. Slava Bogu! A
good monk does his work; no shuffling, and no waste. In London you
have docks?"
"Yes, many: but they were not built by monks."
"In England you have no monks; once you had them; and then they built
things--eh?"
This dwarf is certainly a wag. What, monks who work, and docks in the
Frozen Sea! After telling me where he learned his English (which is of
nautical and naughty pattern), the manikin comforts me with news that
although the pilgrim-boat has gone back to Solovetsk (where her
engines are to be taken out, and put by in warm boxes near a stove for
the winter months), a provision-boat may sail for the monastery in
about a week.
"Can you tell me where to find the captain of that boat?"
"Hum!" says the dwarf, slowly, crossing himself the while, and lipping
his silent prayer, "_I_ am the skipper!"
My surprise is great. This dwarf, in a monk's gown and cap, with a
woman's auburn curls, the captain of a sea-going ship! On a second
glance at his slight figure, I notice that his eyes are bright, that
his cheek is bronze, that his teeth, though small, are bony and well
set. In spite of his serge gown and his girl-like face, there _is_
about the tiny monk that look of mastery which becomes the captain of
a ship.
"And can you give me a passage in your boat?"
"You! English, and you wish to see the holy tombs? Well, that is
something new. No men of your nation ever sail to Solovetsk. They come
over here to buy, and not to pray. Sometimes they come to fight."
The last five words, spoken in a low key, come out from between his
teeth with a snap which is highly comic in a man so lowly and so
small. A lady living at Onega told me some days ago that once, when
she was staying for a week at Solovetsk with a Russian party, she was
compelled to hide her English birth, from fear lest the monks should
kill her. A woman's fancy, doubtless; but her words came back upon my
mind with a very odd sort of start as the manikin knits his brow and
hisses at the English fleet.
"Where is your boat, and what is she called?"
"She lies in the lower port, by the Pilgrim's Wharf; her name is the
'Vera;' as you would say, the 'Faith.'"
"How do you call your captain?" I inquire of a second monk, who is
evidently a sailor also; in fact, he is the first mate, serving on
board the "Faith."
"Ivan," says the monk; a huge fellow, with hasty eyes and audacious
front; "but we mostly call him Vanoushka, because he is little, and
because we like him." Vanoushka is one of the affectionate forms of
Ivan: Little Ivan, Little John. The skipper, then, is properly Father
John.
As for the next ten days and nights we are to keep company, it may be
best for me to say at once what I came to know of the queer little
skipper in the long gown and with the woman's curls.
Father John is an infant of the soil. Born in a Lapland village, he
had before him from his cradle the hard and hopeless life of a woodman
and cod-fisher--the two trades carried on by all poor people in these
countries, where the modes of life are fixed by the climate and the
soil. In the summer he would cut logs and grass; in the winter he
would hunt the sea in search of seal and cod. But the lad was smart
and lively. He wished to see the world, and hoped in some future time
to sail a boat of his own. In order to rise, he must learn; in order
to become a skipper, he must study the art of guiding ships at sea.
Some thirty miles from the hamlet where he lived stood Kem, an ancient
town established on the Lapland coast by colonists from Novgorod the
Great, in which town there was a school of navigation; rude and simple
as became so poor a place, but better than none at all; and to this
provincial school Father John contrived to go. That movement was his
first great step in life.
From Kem you can see a group of high and wooded islands towards the
rising sun, the shores of which shine with a peculiar light in the
early dawn. They seem to call you, as it were, by a spell, into some
paradise of the north. Every view is green, and every height is
crowned by a church with a golden cross. These islands are the
Solovetsk group; and once, at least, the lad went over from Kem in a
boat to pray in that holy place. The lights, the music, and the ample
cheer appealed to his fancy and his stomach; leaving on his mind an
impression of peace and fullness never to be effaced.
He got his pass as a seaman, came over to Archangel, fell into loose
ways, and meeting with some German sailors from the Baltic, listened
to their lusty songs and merry tales, until he felt a desire to leave
his own country and go with them on a voyage. Now sailors are scarce
in the Russian ports; the Emperor Nicolas was in those days drafting
his seamen into the Black Sea fleets; and for a man to quit Russia
without a pass from the police was a great offense. Such a pass the
lad felt sure he could never get; and when the German vessel was about
to sail he crept on board her in the night, and got away to sea
without being found out by the port police.
The vessel in which he escaped from his country was the "Hero," of
Passenburg, in Hanover, plying as a rule between German and Danish
ports, but sometimes running over to the Tyne and the Thames. Entered
on the ship's books in a foreign name, Father John adopted the tastes
of his new comrades; learned to eat English beef, to drink German
beer, and to carry himself like a man of the world. But the teaching
of his father and his pope was not lost upon him, even in the slums of
Wapping and on the quays of Rotterdam. He began to pine for religion,
as a Switzer pines for his Alp and an Egyptian for his Nile. What
could he do? The thought of going home to Kem was a fearful dream. The
lash, the jail, the mine awaited him--he thought--in his native land.
Cut off from access to a priest of his own religion, he talked to his
fellows before the mast about their faith. Some laughed at him; some
cursed him; but one old sailor took him to the house of a Catholic
priest. For four or five weeks Father John received a lesson every day
in the creed of Rome; but his mind misgave him as to what he heard;
and when his vessel left the port he was still without a church. In
the Levant, he met with creeds of all nations--Greek, Italian,
Lutheran, Armenian--but he could not choose between them, and his mind
was troubled with continual longings for a better life.
Then he was wrecked in the Gulf of Venice, and having nearly lost his
life, he grew more and more uneasy about his soul. A few months later
he was wrecked on the coast of Norway; and for the second time in one
year he found himself at the gates of death. He could not live without
religion; and the only religion to whisper peace to his soul was that
of his early and better days. But then the service of his country is
one of strict observance, and a man who can not go to church can not
exercise his faith. How was he to seek for God in a foreign port?
A chance of coming back to Russia threw itself in his path. The ship
in which he served--a German ship--was chartered by an English firm
for Archangel; and as Father John was the only Russ on board, the
skipper saw that his man would be useful in such a voyage. But the
news was to John a fearful joy. He longed to see his country once
more, to kneel at his native shrines, to give his mother some money he
had saved; but he had now been twelve years absent without leave, and
he knew that for such an offense he could be sent to Siberia, as he
phrased it, "like a slave." His fear overcame his love, and he
answered the skipper that he would not go, and must quit the ship.
But the skipper understood his trade. Owing John some sixteen pounds
for pay, he told him that he had no money where he lay, and could not
settle accounts until they arrived in Archangel, where he would
receive his freight. "Money," says the Russ proverb, "likes to be
counted," and when Father John thrust his hands into empty pockets, he
began to think, after all, it might be better to go home, to get his
wages, and see what would be done.
With a shaven chin and foreign name, he might have kept his secret and
got away from Archangel undiscovered by the port police, had he not
yielded the night before he should have sailed, and gone with some
Germans of the crew to a drinking-den. Twelve years of abstinence from
vodka had caused him to forget the power of that evil spirit; he drank
too much, he lost his senses; and when he woke next day he found that
his mates had left him, that his ship had sailed. What could he do? If
he spoke to the German consul, he would be treated as a deserter from
his post. If he went to the Russian police, he fancied they would
knout him to death. Not knowing what to say or how to act, he was
mooning in the port, when he met an old schoolfellow from Kem, one
Jacob Kollownoff (whom I afterwards came to know). Like most of the
hardy men of Kem, Jacob was prospering in the world; he was a skipper,
with a boat of his own, in which he made distant and daring voyages.
At the moment when he met Father John he was preparing for a run to
Spitzbergen in search of cod, to be salted at sea, and carried to the
markets of Cronstadt. Jacob saw no harm in a sailor drinking a glass
too much, and knowing that John was a good hand, he gave him a place
in his boat and took him out on his voyage. The cod was caught, and
Cronstadt reached; but the return was luckless; and John was cast away
for a third time in his life. A wrecked and broken man, he now made up
his mind to quit the sea, and even to take his chance of what his
people might do with him at home.
Returning to Kem with the skipper, he was seized by the police on the
ground of his papers being out of order, and cast into the common jail
of the town, where he lay for twelve months untried. The life in jail
was not harder than his life on deck; for the Government paid him, as
a prisoner, six kopecks a day; enough to supply his wants. He was
never brought before a court. Once, if not more than once, the elder
hinted that a little money would make things straight, and he might go
his way. The sum suggested as enough for the purpose was seventy-five
rubles--nearly ten pounds in English coin. "Tell him," said John to
his brother, who brought this message to the jail, "he shall not get
from me so much as one kopeck."
A week later he was sent in a boat from Kem to Archangel, under
sentence, he was told, of two years' hard labor in the fort; but
either the elder talked too big, or his message was misread; for on
going up to the police-office in that city, the prisoner was examined
and discharged.
A dream of the summer isles and golden pinnacles came back to him; he
had lived his worldly life, and longed for rest. Who can wonder that
he wished to become a monk of Solovetsk!
To the convent his skill in seamanship was of instant use. A steamer
had just been bought in Glasgow for the carriage of pilgrims to and
fro; and on her arrival in Archangel, Feofan, Archimandrite of
Solovetsk, discharged her Scottish crew and manned her with his monks.
At first these holy men felt strange on deck; they crossed themselves;
they sang a hymn; and as the pistons would not move, they begged the
Scottish engineer to return; since the machine--being made by
heretics--had not grace enough to obey the voice of a holy man. They
made two or three midsummer trips across the gulf, getting hints from
the native skippers, and gradually warming to their work. A priest was
appointed captain, and monks were sent into the kitchen and the
engine-room. All went well for a time; Savatie and Zosima--the local
saints of Solovetsk--taking care of their followers in the fashion of
St. Nicolas and St. George.
Yet Father John was a real God's gift to the convent, for the voyage
is not often to be described as a summer trip; and even so good a
person as an Archimandrite likes to know, when he goes down into the
Frozen Sea, that his saints are acting through a man who has sailed in
the roughest waters of the world.