A PILGRIM-BOAT.
A lady, who knows the country, puts up in a crate such things as a
pilgrim may chance to need in a monastic cell--good tea, calf's
tongue, fresh butter, cheese, roast beef, and indispensable white
bread. These dainties being piled on a drojki, propped on pillows and
covered with quilts--my bedding in the convent and the boat--we rattle
away to the Pilgrim's Wharf.
Yes, there it is, an actual wharf--the only wharf in Archangel along
which boats can lie, and land their passengers by a common sea-side
plank!
Moored to the capstan by a rope, lies the pretty craft; a gilt cross
on her foremast, a saintly pennant on her main. Four large gold
letters tell her name:
В Ѣ Р А
(pronounced Verra), and meaning Faith. Father John is standing on his
bridge, giving orders in a low voice to his officers and crew, many of
whom are monks--mate, steward, cook, and engineer--each and all
arrayed in the cowl and frock.
On the Pilgrim's Wharf, which lies in a yard cut off by gates from the
street, and paved with chips and shavings to form a dry approach,
stands a new pile of monastic buildings; chapels, cells, store-rooms,
offices, stalls, dormitories; in fact, a new Pilgrim's Court. A
steamer can not reach the port in the upper town, where the original
Pilgrim's Court was built; and the fathers, keeping pace with the
times, have let their ancient lodgings in the town, and built a new
house lower down the stream.
Crowds of men and women--pilgrims, tramps, and soldiers--strew the
wharf with a litter of baskets, tea-pots, beds, dried-fish, felt
boots, old rugs and furs, salt-girkins, black bread; through which the
monks step softly and sadly; helping a child to trot on board, getting
a free pass for a beggar, buying rye-loaves for a lame wretch, and
otherwise aiding the poorest of these poor creatures in their need.
For, even though the season is now far spent, nearly two hundred
pilgrims are in waiting on the Pilgrim's Wharf; all hoping to get over
to the Holy Isles. Most of these men have money to pay their fare; and
some among the groups are said to be rich. A dozen of the better sort,
natives of Archangel, too busy to pass over the sea in June, when
their river was full of ships, are taking advantage of the lull in
trade, and of the extra boat. Each man brings with him a basket of
bread and fish, a box of tea, a thick quilt, and a pair of felt
leggings, to be worn over his boots at night. These local pilgrims
carry a staff; but in place of the leathern belt and water-bottle,
they carry a teapot and a cup. One man wears a cowl and gown, who is
not of the crew; a jolly, riotous monk, going back to his convent as a
prisoner. "What has he been doing?" "Women and drink," says Father
John. The fares are low: first-class, six rubles (fifteen shillings);
second-class, four rubles. Third-class, three rubles. This tariff
covers the cost of going out and coming back--a voyage of four hundred
miles--with lodgings in the guest-house, and rations at the common
tables, during a stay of five or six days. A dozen of these poor
pilgrims have no rubles in their purse, and the question rises on the
wharf, whether these paupers shall be left behind. Father John and his
fellow-skipper have a general rule; they must refuse no man, however
poor, who asks them for a passage to Solovetsk in the name of God.
A bell tolls, a plank is drawn, and we are off. As we back from the
wharf, getting clear, a hundred heads bow down, a hundred hands sign
the cross, and every soul commends itself to God. Every time that, in
dropping down the river, we pass a church, the work of bowing and
crossing begins afresh. Each head uncovers; each back is bent; each
lip is moved by prayer. Some kneel on deck; some kiss the planks. The
men look contrite, and the women are sedate. The crews on
fishing-craft salute us, oftentimes kneeling and bowing as we glide
past, and always crossing themselves with uncovered heads. Some beg
that we will pray for them; and the most worldly sailors pause in
their work and hope that the Lord will give us a prosperous wind.
A gale is blowing from west and north. In the river it is not much
felt, excepting for the chill, which bites into your bone. Father
John, with a monk's contempt for caution, gives the Maimax Channel a
free berth, and having a boat in hand of very light draught, drops
down the ancient arm as a shorter passage into the gulf.
Before we quit the river, our provident worshippers have begun to brew
their tea and eat their supper of girkin and black bread.
The distribution on board is simple. Only one passenger has paid the
first-class fare. He has the whole state cabin to himself; a room some
nine feet square, with bench and mat to sleep on; a cabin in which he
might live very well, had it not pleased the monks to stow their
winter supply of tallow in the boxes beneath his couch. Two persons
have paid the second-class fare--a skipper and his wife, who have been
sailing about the world for years, have made their fortunes, and are
now going home to Kem. "Ah!" says the fair, fat woman, "you English
have a nice country to live in, and you get very good tea; but...."
The man is like his wife. "Prefer to live in Kem? Why not? In London
you have beef and stout; but you have no summer and no winter; all
your seasons are the same; never hot, never cold. If you want to enjoy
life, you should drive in a reindeer sledge over a Lapland plain, in
thirty degrees of frost."
The rest of our fellow-pilgrims are on deck and in the hold; rich and
poor, lame and blind, merchant and beggar, charlatan and saint; a
motley group, in which a painter might find models for a Cantwell, a
Torquemada, a St. John. You see by their garb, and hear in their
speech, that they have come from every province of the Empire; from
the Ukraine and from Georgia, from the Crimea and from the Ural
heights, from the Gulf of Finland and from the shores of the Yellow
Sea. Some of these men have been on foot, trudging through summer
sands and winter snows, for more than a year.
The lives of many of my fellow-passengers are like an old wife's
tales.
One poor fellow, having no feet, has to be lifted on board the boat.
He is clothed in rags; yet this poor pilgrim's face has such a patient
look that one can hardly help feeling he has made his peace. He tells
me that he lives beyond Viatka, in the province of Perm; that he lost
his feet by frost-bite years ago; that he lay sick a long time; that
while he was lying in his pain he called on Savatie to help him,
promising that saint, on his recovery, to make a pilgrimage to his
shrine in the Frozen Sea. By losing his legs he saved his life; and
then, in his poverty and rags, he set forth on his journey, crawling
on his stumps, around which he has twisted a coarse leather splinth,
over fifteen hundred miles of broken road.
Another pilgrim, wearing a felt boot on one leg, a bass shoe on the
other, has a most abject look. He is a drunkard, sailing to Solovetsk
to redeem a vow. Lying tipsy on the canal bank at Vietegra, he rolled
into the water, and narrowly escaped being drowned. As he lay on his
face, the foam oozing slowly from his mouth, he called on his saints
to save him, promising them to do a good work in return for such help.
To keep that vow he is going to the holy shrines.
A woman is carrying her child, a fine little lad of six or seven
years, to be offered to the monks and educated for the cowl. She has
passed through trouble, having lost her husband, and her fortune, and
she is bent on sacrificing the only gift now left to her on earth. To
put her son in the monastery of Solovetsk is to secure him, she
believes, against all temporal and all spiritual harm. Poor creature!
It is sad to think of her lot when the sacrifice is made; and the
lonely woman, turning back from the incense and glory of Solovetsk,
has to go once more into the world, and without her child.
An aged man, with flowing beard and priestly mien, though he is
wrapped in rags, is noticeable in the groups among which he moves. He
is a vowed pilgrim; that is to say, a pilgrim for life, as another man
would be a monk for life; his whole time being spent in walking from
shrine to shrine. He has the highest rank of a pilgrim; for he has
been to Nazareth and Bethlehem, as well as to Novgorod and Kief. This
is the third time he has come to Solovetsk; and it is his hope, if God
should spare him for the work, to make yet another round of the four
most potent shrines, and then lay up his dust in these holy isles.
Some of these pilgrims, even those in rags, are bringing gifts of no
small value to the convent fund. Each pilgrim drops his offering into
the box: some more, some less, according to his means. Many bear gifts
from neighbors and friends who can not afford the time for so long and
perilous a voyage, but who wish to walk with God, and lay up their
portion with His saints.
On reaching the river mouth we find a fleet of fishing-boats in dire
distress; and the two ships that we passed a week since, bobbing and
reeling on the bar like tipsy men, are completely gone. The "Thera" is
a Norwegian clipper, carrying deals; the "Olga" a Prussian bark,
carrying oats; they are now aground, and raked by the wash from stem
to stern. We pass these hulls in prayer; for the gale blows dead in
our teeth; and we are only too well aware that before daylight comes
again we shall need to be helped by all the spirits that wait on
mortal men.
With hood and gown wrapped up in a storm-cape, made for such nights,
Father John is standing on his bridge, directing the course of his
boat like an English tar. His monks meet the wind with a psalm, in the
singing of which the pilgrims and soldiers join. The passenger comes
for a moment from his cabin into the sleet and rain; for the voices of
these enthusiasts, pealing to the heavens through rack and roar, are
like no sounds he has ever yet heard at sea. Many of the singers lie
below in the hold; penned up between sacks of rye and casks of grease;
some of them deadly sick, some groaning as though their hearts would
break; yet more than half these sufferers follow with lifted eyes and
strenuous lungs the swelling of that beautiful monkish chant. It is
their even-song, and they could not let the sun go down into the surge
until that duty to their Maker was said and sung.
Next day there comes no dawn. A man on the bridge declares that the
sun is up; but no one else can see it; for a veil of mist droops
everywhere about us, out of which comes nothing but a roar of wind and
a flood of rain.
The "Faith" is bound to arrive in the Bay of Solovetsk by twelve
o'clock; but early in the day Father John comes to tell me (apart)
that he shall not be able to reach his port until five o'clock; and
when five is long since past, he returns to tell me, with a patient
shrug, that we want more room, and must change our course. The
entrance to Solovetsk is through a reef of rocks.
"Must we lie out all night?"
"We must." Two hours are spent in feeling for the shore; Father John
having no objection to use his lead. When anchorage is found, we let
the chain go, and swinging round, under a lee shore, in eight fathoms
of water, find ourselves lying out no more than a mile from land.
Then we drink tea; the pilgrims sing their even-song; and, with a
thousand crossings and bendings, we commit our souls to heaven. Lying
close in shore, under cover of a ridge of pines, we swing and lurch at
our ease; but the storm howls angrily in our wake; and we know that
many a poor crew, on their frail northern barks, are struggling all
night with the powers of life and death. A Dutch clipper, called the
"Ena," runs aground; her crew is saved, and her cargo lost. Two
Russian sloops are shattered and riven in our track; one of them
parting amidships and going down in a trough of sea with every soul on
board.
In the early watch the wind goes down; sunlight streaks the
north-eastern sky; and, in the pink dawn, we catch, in our front, a
little to the west, a glimpse of the green cupolas and golden crosses
of Solovetsk--a joy and wonder to all eyes; not more to pilgrims, who
have walked a thousand miles to greet them, than they are to their
English guest.
Saluting the holy place with prayer, and steaming by a coast-line
broken by rocks and beautified by verdure, we pass, in a flood of soft
warm sunshine, up a short inland reach, in which seals are plashing,
over which doves are darting, each in their happy sport, and, by eight
o'clock of a lovely August morning, swing ourselves round in a
secluded bay under the convent walls.