A CRUEL COAST
A few miles below Nijni-Kolymsk vegetation entirely disappears, and in
winter nothing is visible on all sides but vast and dreary plains of
snow-covered tundra. The first night was passed in a tiny log hut
belonging to a trapper and bearing the name, like any town or village,
of Tchorniusova. It was pleasant to reach even this rude shelter, the
last but one to separate us from the homeless immensity of the Arctic,
for the strong breeze of the morning increased by sunset to a northerly
gale which the dogs would not face. Towards midnight two Yukagirs (a
small tribe inhabiting the country due east of the Kolyma) arrived in a
dog-sled and begged for shelter, having with difficulty reached the hut
after several hours of battling against a furious _poorga_ which had
succeeded a change of wind to a westerly quarter. A _poorga_ is a kind
of Arctic typhoon justly dreaded on this coast, for its fury is only
equalled by the suddenness with which it overtakes the traveller. During
these tempests (which sometimes last two or three days) the snow is
whirled up in such dense clouds that objects a few yards away become
invisible, and it is impossible to make headway, for the dogs,
instinctively aware of peril, generally lie down and howl, regardless of
the severest punishment. The trapper here told me that on one occasion
he observed, after one of these storms, an unusual mound of snow near
his dwelling, and extricated from it the frozen remains of a Yukagir
driver and five dogs. The former had lain down to die within fifty yards
of shelter and salvation.
The weather improved towards daybreak and enabled us to make an early
start. A hard day's travelling followed, for the wind had cleared the
river of snow, and we sledded over slippery black ice, which would have
made a schoolboy's mouth water, but sadly impeded the dogs. Nearing the
ocean the Kolyma widens by several miles, and here we made our first
acquaintance with the ice-hummocks or "torosses" formed by the breakers
of the Polar Sea. Towards sunset a black speck was sighted on the snowy
waste, and two hours later we reached Sukharno, the Tsar's remotest
outpost on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, about eight thousand miles
from Petersburg. Here there was a single hut, so low in stature and
buried in the drifts that we had to crawl into it through a tunnel of
snow. The occupant was an aged Cossack who lived amid surroundings that
would have revolted an English pig, but we often recalled even this
dark, fetid den as a palace of luxury in the gloomy days to come.
We were awakened the following morning by the roaring of the wind, for
another _poorga_ had swooped down during the night, which kept us
prisoners here for the three following days. It was madness to think of
starting in such weather, and there was nothing for it but to wait for
a lull, alternately smoking, sleeping, and cursing Mikouline, the cause
of the delay. Fortunately the hut was weather-proof, and but for
perpetual anxiety I could almost have enjoyed the rest and warmth out of
reach of the icy blast. But who could sit down in peace or sleep for
more than five consecutive minutes when tortured by the thought that the
_poorga_ might rage for an indefinite period and that the journey to
Tchaun Bay must occupy at least three weeks, while our stock of food was
slowly but surely diminishing? Even the scanty allowance I had fixed
upon for each man was doled out by Harding reluctantly, and with a
doubtful glance, as much as to say, "Will it last?" a question which for
the past week had dinned itself into my brain several thousand times
within the twenty-four hours. Here again Mikouline showed signs of
mutiny, and I was compelled to broach our store of _vodka_ to keep him
up to the mark, which I did so successfully that my driver started from
Sukharno in an advanced state of intoxication, after a bout of
fisticuffs with his aged host. But the little scoundrel would certainly
not have started in a sober condition.
We left Sukharno on the morning of April 6, in a strong north-westerly
gale accompanied by driving snow, but later in the day the sky
brightened and we forged ahead as rapidly as rough sea ice would permit.
Soon it became much colder, a favourable sign, for here a falling
thermometer invariably precedes clear, still weather. But it seemed ages
before we lost sight of Sukharno, and while it was still in sight I
often glanced back for a last look at that lonely snow-covered hut, for
it was our last link with civilisation, indeed with humanity. This is,
however, not strictly correct, for later in the day we passed the wooden
beacon erected by the Russian explorer Lieutenant Laptief in the year
1739. The tower, which stands on a prominent cliff, is still in a
remarkable state of preservation and is visible for a great distance
around. And talking of Laptief reminds me of other travellers who have
explored these frozen wastes. I had before leaving Europe ransacked the
book-stores of London and Paris, but had failed to obtain any practical
knowledge of the country which we were about to traverse. Nordenskjold's
"North-East Passage, or the Voyage of the _Vega_," was invariably
produced by every bookseller I questioned, but as the Swedish explorers
never left their ship, this work, as a guide, was quite useless to me.
So far, therefore, as finding the Tchuktchis was concerned I was much in
the position of a wild Patagonian who, set down at Piccadilly Circus, is
told to make his way unassisted to the Mansion House. For although
Mikouline affected a knowledge of the coast, I doubt if he knew much
more than I did. My literary researches showed me that the journey we
were undertaking had only twice been performed by Europeans, or rather
Americans (in a reverse direction) about twenty years ago. This was when
the U.S. surveying ship _Rodgers_ was destroyed by fire in the ice of
Bering Straits, and Captain Berry (her commander) and Mr. W. Gilder
(correspondent of the _New York Herald_) started off in midwinter to
report her loss, travelling through Siberia to Europe, which was
reached, after many stirring adventures, in safety.
The works of the earlier explorers afforded me almost as little
assistance as the "Voyage of the _Vega_." In a volume, however, written
by the famous Russian explorer Admiral Von Wrangell, I gleaned that,
"The first attempt to navigate the Polar Ocean to the east of the Kolyma
was made in 1646 by a company of fur hunters under the guidance of Issai
Ignatiew. The sea was covered with thick drift-ice, nevertheless the
travellers found a narrow passage, through which they advanced for two
days, when they ran into a bay surrounded by rocks and obtained by
barter some walrus teeth from the Tchuktchis dwelling there. Their
ignorance of the language of the natives and the warlike disposition of
the latter made it appear prudent not to venture further, and Ignatiew
returned to the Kolyma. From his imperfect report it is difficult to
judge how far his voyage extended. From the time expended, however, it
is probable that he reached Tchaun Bay."
The subsequent expedition and fate of the Russian explorer Schalarof are
thus chronicled by the same author:
"The ice in the Kolyma did not break up in 1762 until July 21, when
Schalarof put to sea and steered for a whole week on a N.-E. and
N.-E.-by-1/4-E. course. On August 19 the ship was completely beset by
large fields of ice. In this dangerous situation, rendered more alarming
by a dense fog which concealed the shore, they continued until the 23rd,
when they found means to work themselves out of the ice and to gain
open water again. They tacked for some time among the fields of ice, in
the hope of making and doubling Cape Shelagskoi; but being detained by
ice and contrary winds, the advanced season at length obliged Schalarof
to seek for a convenient wintering place. This he hoped to find in an
inlet on the west side of the cape which led into Tchaun Bay, first
visited and surveyed by him. On the 25th he passed between the mainland
and the island of Arautan. On the 26th he struck upon a sand-bank, from
which it cost the crew much labour to get afloat again. Schalarof went
on shore, but finding neither trees nor drift-wood, was obliged to sail
further, in search of some place provided with this indispensable
requisite. He shaped his course along the southern shore of the bay, as
far as the island of Sabadei. Finally, he resolved to return to the
Kolyma, which he entered on September 12, and reoccupied his quarters of
the preceding winter."
"On the return of spring, Schalarof desired to put to sea again, in the
hope of effecting his favourite object, the doubling of Cape Shelagskoi;
but his crew, weary of the hardships and privations they had endured,
mutinied, and left him. This forced him to return to the Lena. He then
went to Moscow, and having obtained some pecuniary assistance from the
Government, undertook, in 1764, another voyage to Cape Shelagskoi, _from
which he never returned_."
"For a long time none but vague rumours circulated respecting his fate.
I was so fortunate in 1823 as to discover the spot, about seventy miles
from Cape Shelagskoi, where Schalarof and his companions landed, after
they had seen their vessel destroyed by the ice. Here, in a black
wilderness, struggling against want and misery, he ended his active
life; but a late posterity renders this well-deserved tribute of
acknowledgment to the rare disinterested spirit of enterprise by which
he was animated."
"On Schalarof's chart, the coast from the Yana to Cape Shelagskoi is
laid down with an accuracy that does honour to its author. He was the
first navigator that examined Tchaun Bay, and since his time no fresh
soundings have been taken there."
Apparently the Russian explorer Laptief only once made an attempt to
travel by land from the Kolyma to Bering Sea, but this was by an
entirely different route to ours.
"Considering it impossible to effect by sea the task assigned him by
surveying the Anadyr River,[50] Laptief resolved on an undertaking
attended by equal danger and difficulty, namely, to proceed overland
with his whole crew, crossing the mountains, and traversing the country
of the hostile Tchuktchis. With this view he left Nijni-Kolymsk on
October 27th, 1741, and directed his course towards the Anadyr, with
forty-five _nartas_ drawn by dogs. On November 4th he arrived at
Lobasnoie, on the Greater Anui. As that river forms the boundary of the
country inhabited by the wandering Tchuktchis, Laptief deemed it
prudent, during his passage through what might in some measure be
considered an enemy's territory, to observe the utmost caution, and to
subject his men to a strict military discipline. They ascended the
Greater Anui, crossed the chain of mountains Yablonoi Khrebet, and
reached the Anadyr Ostrog on November 17th _without having seen a single
Tchuktchi on the way_."
[Footnote 50: Which in those days was supposed to fall into the Polar
Sea.]
Concerning another expedition Von Wrangell writes: "The Geodets
undertook a third excursion over the ice in 1771. Starting from the
Kolyma they arrived on the last of the Bear Islands on March 9th. There
they remained six days on account of bad weather, and then started for
Tchaun Bay. Three days they continued in a due east direction, and
having gone forty-eight versts, turned off to the Baranov rocks, from
which they were fifty versts distant, and where they arrived on the
18th. Having rested there and killed a white bear, they continued their
journey along the coast in an easterly direction, but on the 28th, their
provisions running short, they were forced to return. On April 6th they
arrived again at Nijni-Kolymsk, after driving about 433 versts."
All this was not very encouraging, especially the fact, recorded by Von
Wrangell, that a traveller named Hedenstrom once made an attempt to
reach Shelagskoi about the same time of year as ourselves, but "found
the ice already so thin that he was obliged to renounce the plan. He
even found it difficult to retrace his own track to the Kolyma, where,
however, he arrived in safety and spent the following summer."
This was the sole information which I was able to extract from a score
of volumes dealing with Arctic exploration, and, briefly, it came to
this: Von Wrangell had once travelled in winter, with dogs, from
Nijni-Kolymsk to Koliutchin Bay (about two-thirds of the distance to
Bering Straits). Berry and Gilder had traversed the entire distance,
from the Straits to the Kolyma River, under similar conditions; and why,
therefore, should we not do likewise? There was a "but," however, and a
formidable one. These three travellers had made the coast journey in the
depth of winter (with a good three months of solid ice before them),
while we were about to attempt it in the declining spring.
On the first day, when travelling about two miles out to sea not far
from the mouth of the Kolyma River, Harding, with an exclamation of
surprise, drew my attention to a group of men apparently gathered
together on the brink of a cliff. But a moment's reflection showed me
that, viewed from this distance, these figures, if human beings, must
have been giants of fifty feet high. The resemblance, however, was so
startling that we steered inshore for a closer inspection, and my
glasses then revealed the rocky pinnacles which nature has so weirdly
fashioned in the shape of man. The effect in this desolate and ice-bound
wilderness was uncanny in the extreme. Von Wrangell noticed these
pillars in 1820, and measuring one found it forty-three feet in height.
He describes it as "something like the body of a man, with a sort of cap
or turban on his head, and without arms or legs," but to us they
appeared much more lifelike.
We made good headway during the greater part of the first day in clear
and cloudless weather, but towards evening the sky became overcast and a
rapidly rising wind brought down another shrieking _poorga_, which
compelled us to encamp in haste under the lee of a rocky cliff, luckily
at hand when the storm burst upon us. At this time a breastplate of
solid ice was formed by driving snow on our deerskins, and an idea of
the intense and incessant cold which followed may be gleaned by the fact
that this uncomfortable cuirass remained intact until we entered the
first Tchuktchi hut nearly three weeks later. But this first _poorga_,
although a severe one, was nothing compared to the tempests we
afterwards encountered. Nevertheless, our flimsy tent was twice blown
down before morning, its re-erection entailing badly frozen hands and
faces, for having encamped without finding drift-wood there was no fire
and therefore no food. Cold and hunger precluded sleep, and I passed the
cold and miserable hours vainly endeavouring to smoke a pipe blocked by
frozen nicotine. This may be taken as a fair sample of a night in dirty
weather on that cruel coast. At daybreak we commenced another hunt for
drift-wood, which was not discovered for several hours, when every one
was utterly worn out from the cold and lengthened fast.
Sometimes a _poorga_ would rage all day, and in this case progress was
out of the question. The solitary meal would then consist of frozen fish
or iron-like chunks of _Carnyl_ which were held in the mouth until
sufficiently soft to be swallowed. There was of course no means of
assuaging thirst, from which we at first suffered severely, for the
sucking of ice only increases this evil. And want of water affected even
the sleds, the runners of which should be sluiced at least once a day,
so as to form a thin crust of ice which slides easily over a frozen
surface.
On April 7 we reached a landmark for which Mikouline had been searching
in some anxiety, the Bolshaya-Reka or Big River. All that day we had
been at sea, picking our way through mountainous bergs and hummocks,
some quite sixty feet in height, while the sleds continually broke
through into crevasses concealed by layers of frozen snow. On the right
bank of this river we found a deserted village once occupied by
trappers; half a dozen ruined huts surrounding a roofless chapel. The
place is known as Bassarika, a corruption of Bolshaya-Reka, and
Mikouline had known it ten years ago as the abode of prosperous fur
traders. But one hard season every living being perished from smallpox
and privation, and the priest alone escaped to carry news of the
disaster to Nijni-Kolymsk.[51]
[Footnote 51: Twenty or thirty years ago there were three or four
Russian settlements, and at least as many Tchuktchi villages between the
Kolyma River and Tchaun Bay, but there is now not a solitary being on
the coast throughout the whole distance of nearly six hundred miles.]
Our drivers camped here with reluctance, for the place is said to be
haunted, and its silent, spectral appearance certainly suggested an
abiding-place of evil spirits. But one of the ruined huts, although
pitch dark and partly filled with snow, offered a pleasanter shelter
than our draughty tent, and I insisted upon a halt. Drift-wood was
plentiful (it always was near the mouth of a river), and a fire was soon
kindled, or rather a bad imitation of one, for this fuel only yields a
dull, flickering flame. This latter, however, melted the snow
sufficiently to convert the floor of our shanty into a miniature lake,
and we therefore left it in disgust and adjourned to the deerskin tent
shared by Stepan and the drivers, hard snow being a preferable couch to
several inches of icy-cold water. This happened to be my birthday, and
Harding triumphantly produced a tiny plum pudding, frozen to the
consistency of a cannon-ball, which he had brought all the way from
England in honour of the occasion. But we decided to defer the feast
until we could enjoy it in comparative comfort, perhaps on the shores of
Bering Straits--if we ever reached them! My notes between Bassarika and
Tchaun Bay are very incomplete, for they were generally made at night,
when the temperature inside the tent seemed to paralyse the brain as
completely as it numbed the fingers. Oddly enough there is nothing
colder than paper, and when the bare hand had rested upon it for a few
moments it had to be thrust back into a fur mit to restore circulation.
Imagine a barren, snow-clad Sahara absolutely uninhabited for the first
six hundred miles, and then sparsely peopled by the filthiest race in
creation, and you may faintly realise the region traversed by my
expedition for nearly two months of continuous travel from the last
Russian outpost to Bering Straits. Place a piece of coal sprinkled with
salt on a white tablecloth, a few inches off it scatter some lump sugar,
and it will give you in miniature a very fair presentment of the
scenery. The coal is the bleak coast-line continually swept clear of
snow by furious gales; the sugar, sea-ice, and the cloth the frozen
beach over which we journeyed for over 1600 miles. The dreary outlook
never changed; occasionally the cliffs vanished and our way would lie
across the tundras--marshy plains--which in summer encircle the Polar
Sea with a belt of verdure and wild flowers, but which in winter-time
are merged with the frozen ocean in one boundless, bewildering
wilderness of white. In hazy weather land and sky formed one
impenetrable veil, with no horizon as dividing line, when, even at a
short distance away, men and dog-sleds resembled flies crawling up a
white curtain. But on clear days, unfortunately rare, the blue sky was
Mediterranean, and at such times the bergs out at sea would flash like
jewels in the full blaze of the sunshine, while blocks of dark green
ice, half buried in snow under shadow of the cliffs, would appear for
all the world like _cabochon_ emeralds dropped into a mass of whipped
cream. But the reverse of this picture was depressing in the extreme.
For on cloudy days the snow would assume a dull leaden appearance, and
the sea-ice become a slate grey, with dense banks of woolly, white fog
encircling the dismal scene. Fair and foul weather in the Arctic
reminded me of some beautiful woman, bejewelled and radiant amid lights
and laughter, and the same divinity landing dishevelled, pale, and
sea-sick from the deck of a Channel steamer.
But we had little time, or indeed inclination, to admire the beauties of
nature, which are robbed of half their charms when viewed by the owner
of an empty stomach. Did not Dr. Johnson once truthfully remark that,
"the finest landscape is spoiled without a good inn in the foreground"?
Time also in our case meant not merely money, but life, and we were
therefore compelled to push on day after day, week after week, at the
highest rate of speed attainable by our miserable teams, which, to do
them justice, did their best. The poor beasts seemed to be instinctively
aware that our food would only last for a limited period. When the coast
was visible we steered by it, travelling from 6 A.M. until we struck
drift-wood, the traveller's sole salvation on this coast. Sometimes we
found it and sometimes we didn't, in any case it was seldom more than
sufficient to boil a kettle, and bodily warmth from a good fire was an
unknown luxury. Even a little oil would have been a godsend for heating
purposes, but we had used up every drop we possessed before reaching
Sredni-Kolymsk, where no more was attainable, and I dared not waste the
alcohol brought for the purpose of bartering with the Tchuktchis. I can
safely say I have never suffered, physically or mentally, as I did
during those first two weeks along the shores of North-Eastern Siberia.
We were often compelled to go without food throughout the twenty-four
hours, and sometimes for thirty-six, our frozen provisions being
uneatable uncooked. At night, after a cheerless meal, we would crawl
into sleeping-bags and try to sleep in a temperature varying from 35
deg. to 45 deg. below zero. And sometimes lying sleepless, miserable,
and half frozen under that flimsy tent, I resolved to give it all up and
make an attempt to return to the Kolyma River, although even retreat
would now have been attended with considerable peril. And yet, somehow,
morning always found us on the march again eastward. On the beach we got
along fairly well, but steep, precipitous cliffs often drove us out to
sea, where the sleds had to be pushed and hauled over rough and often
mountainous ice, about the toughest work I know of. We then travelled
about a mile an hour, and sometimes not that. The end of the day
generally found us all cut about, bruised, and bleeding from falls over
the glassy ice; and the wounds, although generally trifling, were made
doubly painful by frost and the absence of hot water. I enter into these
apparently trivial details as at the time they appeared to us of
considerable importance, but the reader may think them unnecessary, just
as the man who has never had toothache laughs at a sufferer. Toothache,
by the way, was another minor evil that greatly increased our sufferings
during those dark days of hunger and incessant anxiety.
And yet, if all had gone well, all these troubles--added to intense cold
and semi-starvation--would have been bearable; but everything went
wrong. First it was the dogs, as famished as ourselves, who dragged
their tired limbs more and more heavily towards evening as the weary
days crawled on, and every morning I used to look at their gaunt flanks
and hungry eyes, and think with despair of the thousand odd miles that
lay between us and Bering Straits. Then the Russian drivers, secretly
backed by Mikouline, threatened almost daily to desert us and return to
the Kolyma. One morning all three burst into my tent and vowed that
nothing should induce them to proceed a mile further. Finally, force had
to be employed to keep these cowards together, and, luckily, we were
well armed, which they were not. But this trouble necessitated a watch
by night, as exhausting as it was painful in the pitiless cold. Only ten
days out from the Kolyma we were living on a quarter of a pound of
_Carnyl_ and a little frozen fish a day, a diet that would scarcely
satisfy a healthy child. Bread, biscuits, and everything in the shape of
flour was finished a week after leaving Kolymsk, but luckily we had
plenty of tea and tobacco, which kept life within us to the last.
Then sickness came. Owing to the frequent dearth of fuel our furs and
foot-gear were never quite dry, and during sleep our feet were often
frozen by the moisture formed during the day. One fireless night De
Clinchamp entirely lost the use of his limbs, and a day's delay was the
result. Four days later he slipped into a crevasse while after a bear
and ruptured himself. This bear, by the way, was the only living thing
we saw throughout that journey of nearly six hundred miles to Tchaun
Bay. Then I was attacked by snow-blindness, the pain of which must be
experienced to be realised. Goggles gave me no relief, and in
civilisation the malady would have necessitated medical care and a
darkened room. Here it meant pushing on day after day half blinded and
in great agony, especially when there was no drift-wood and therefore no
hot water to subdue the inflammation. Sleep or rest of any kind was
impossible for nearly a week, and for two days my eyes closed up
entirely and I lay helpless on a sled, which was upset, on an average,
twice every hour on the rough, jagged ice. At last we struck a fair
quantity of wood and halted for forty-eight hours, and here I obtained
relief with zinc and hot water, while Mikouline proceeded to rub tobacco
into his inflamed optics, a favourite cure on the Kolyma, which oddly
enough does not always fail. About this time one of the dogs was
attacked with rabies, and bit several others before we could shoot it.
We lost over a dozen dogs in this way before reaching Bering Straits,
this being probably due to the casual manner in which Stepan treated the
disease. When one animal had to be destroyed he coolly led it about at
the end of a string to find a suitable spot for its execution, and when
another went mad, and I was for despatching it, suggested that we could
ill spare it from the team for a few days longer! And yet,
notwithstanding these hourly difficulties, privations, and hardships, I
am proud to say that I never once heard a word of complaint from a
single member of my party, although those days of constant toil and
suffering in that grave of nature, the Arctic, might well have tried the
constitution of a Sandow and the patience of a Job! And I may add that
no leader of an expedition could wish for three more courageous and
unselfish companions than the Vicomte de Clinchamp, George Harding, and
last, but not least, the Cossack Stepan Rastorguyeff, whose invaluable
services throughout this journey will, I am informed, be suitably
rewarded by the Russian Government.
About one day in four was bright and sunny, and would have been almost
pleasant under other circumstances. Even our chicken-hearted drivers
would become less gloomy under the genial influence of bright sunshine,
and join together in the weird songs of their country until darkness
again fell, bringing with it disquieting fears of the murderous
Tchuktchi. Most of that memorable journey was made through a constant
succession of snowstorms, gales and _poorgas_. We met three of the
latter between the Kolyma River and Cape North, the last one striking us
on the twentieth day out, as we were crossing Tchaun Bay, on the eastern
shores of which I hoped to find a settlement. Although the weather just
before had been perfectly clear and calm, in five minutes we were at the
mercy of such a tempest that men and dogs were compelled to halt and
crouch under the sleds to escape its fury.
During a temporary lull we got under way again, and for seven of the
longest hours of my life we floundered on. As even a gentle zephyr up
here, blowing against the face, means considerable discomfort, and
anything like a gale, acute distress, the reader may imagine what it
meant to struggle against a howling _poorga_. During those terrible
hours one could only glance hastily to windward, for the hard and frozen
snow cut like a whip into cheeks and eyeballs. Every few minutes the
weak, half-starved dogs would lie down, and were only urged on by severe
punishment which it went to my heart to see inflicted, but to reach land
was a question of life or death. Sometimes the coast would loom ahead
through the blinding snow, but we had to steer by the compass, which,
for some occult reason, was that day useless, for it pointed east and
led us due north towards the sea. At last, after a journey from the
opposite coast of ten hours, with faces, feet and hands badly frozen, we
reached land exhausted, and, for the time being, safe. Some drift-wood
and the shelter of a friendly cave were handy, or that night some of us
must inevitably have perished. But after a painful struggle up a steep
cliff, waist-deep in snow, and a crawl into the cheerless refuge, the
cry was raised, "A sled is lost!" and there was nothing for it but to
face the _poorga_ again in search of the missing _narta_ and its driver,
one of the Kolyma men. For perhaps an hour every man floundered about
the hummocks and crevasses of the bay with a dogged perseverance born of
the knowledge that at this time of the year large floes are often
detached from the main pack and blown out to sea. But at last even
Stepan's pluck and endurance were exhausted (to say nothing of my own),
and I blew the whistle for a general retreat to our cavern, only to find
the missing sled triced up with the others and its occupant snugly
reposing inside the rock. And right glad we were to find not only the
man in charge of it but also the missing sled, which had contained the
last remnants of our provisions!
That night, after the evening meal, every mouthful of food we had left
was two pounds of _Carnyl_ and fourteen frozen fish, and this must
suffice for nine men and sixty ravenous dogs! Hitherto we had joked
about cannibalism. Harding, we had said, as being the stoutest member of
the party, was to be sacrificed, and Stepan was to be the executioner.
But to-night this well-worn joke fell flat. For we had reached the
eastern shores of Tchaun Bay, and this was where we should have found a
Tchuktchi village. When the sun rose next morning, however, not a sign
of human life was visible. Even Stepan's features assumed a look of
blank despair, but the plucky Cossack aroused our miserable drivers as
usual with his cruel _nagaika_[52] and compelled them to make a start,
although the poor wretches would willingly have resigned themselves to a
death which undoubtedly overtook them a few days later.
[Footnote 52: Cossack whip.]
We had lost three dogs during the blizzard on Tchaun Bay, and the rest
were so weary and footsore that it seemed little short of brutal to
drive them on. But to stop here meant starvation, so we struggled
painfully onwards to the eastward, growing weaker and weaker every hour.
At times I felt as if I must lie down in the snow and give way to an
overpowering feeling of drowsiness, and Harding and De Clinchamp
afterwards confessed that they frequently experienced the same feeling.
But Stepan, perhaps more inured to hardships than ourselves, was the
life and soul of our party during that long, miserable day, and it was
chiefly due to his dogged determination (combined with a small slice of
luck) that on that very night, when things seemed to be on the very
verge of a fatal termination, we came upon signs of human life in the
shape of a kayak with a paddle propped against it on the snowy beach. An
hour later we sighted our goal--the first Tchuktchi settlement! And the
relief with which I beheld those grimy, walrus-hide huts can never be
described, for even this foul haven meant salvation from the horrors of
a lingering death.