CLOSING UP THE BUSINESS--A BARGAIN SALE--TELEGRAPH TEACUPS
REDUCED--CHEAP SHOVELS FOR GRAVE DIGGING--WIRE FISH NETS AT A
SACRIFICE--OUR NARROWEST ESCAPE--BLOWN OUT TO SEA--SAVED BY THE
"_Onward_"
We reached Okhotsk about the 1st of August, and after seeing the Major
off for St. Petersburg, I sailed again in the _Onward_ and spent
most of the next month in cruising along the coast, picking up our
scattered working-parties, and getting on board such stores and
material as happened to be accessible and were worth saving.
Early in September, I returned to Gizhiga and proceeded to close
up the business and make preparations for final departure. Our
instructions from the Company were to sell all of our stores that were
salable and use the proceeds in the payment of our debts. I have no
doubt that this seemed to our worthy directors a perfectly feasible
scheme, and one likely to bring in a considerable amount of ready
money; but, unfortunately, their acquaintance with our environment
was very limited, and their plan, from our point of view, was open to
several objections. In the first place, although we had at Gizhiga
fifteen or twenty thousand dollars' worth of unused material, most of
it was of such a nature as to be absolutely unsalable in that country.
In the second place, the villages of Okhotsk, Yamsk, and Gizhiga,
taken together, did not have more than five hundred inhabitants, and
it was doubtful whether the whole five hundred could make up a purse
of as many rubles, even to ensure their eternal salvation. Assuming,
therefore, that the natives wanted our crowbars, telegraph poles,
and pickaxes they had little or no money with which to pay for them.
However orders were orders; and as soon as practicable we opened, in
front of our principal storehouse, a sort of international bazaar,
and proceeded to dispose of our superfluous goods upon the best terms
possible. We put the price of telegraph wire down until that luxury
was within the reach of the poorest Korak family. We glutted the
market with pickaxes and long-handled shovels, which we assured the
natives would be useful in burying their dead, and threw in a lot of
frozen cucumber pickles and other anti-scorbutics which we warranted
to fortify the health of the living. We sold glass insulators by the
hundred as patent American teacups, and brackets by the thousand
as prepared American kindling-wood. We offered soap and candles as
premiums to anybody who would buy our salt pork and dried apples, and
taught the natives how to make cooling drinks and hot biscuits,
in order to create a demand for our redundant lime-juice and
baking-powder. We directed all our energies to the creation of
artificial wants in that previously happy and contented community, and
flooded the whole adjacent country with articles that were of no more
use to the poor natives than ice-boats and mouse-traps would be to the
Tuaregs of the Saharan desert. In short, we dispensed the blessings of
civilisation with a free hand. But the result was not as satisfactory
as our directors doubtless expected it to be. The market at last
refused to absorb any more brackets and pickaxes; telegraph wire did
not make as good fish-nets and dog-harnesses as some of our salesmen
confidently predicted that it would; and lime-juice and water, as
a beverage, even when drunk out of pressed-crystal insulators,
beautifully tinted with green, did not seem to commend itself to
the aboriginal mind. So we finally had to shut up our store. We
had gathered in--if I remember rightly--about three hundred rubles
($150.), which, with the money that Major Abaza had left us, amounted
to something like five hundred. I did not use this cash, however, in
the payment of the Company's debts. I expected to have to return to
the United States through Siberia, and I did not propose to put myself
in such a position that I should be compelled to defray my travelling
expenses by peddling lime-juice, cucumber pickles, telegraph wire,
dried apples, glass insulators, and baking-powder along the road. I
therefore persuaded the Company's creditors, who, fortunately, were
not very numerous, to take tea and sugar in satisfaction of their
claims, so that I might save all the cash I had for the overland trip
from Okhotsk to St. Petersburg.
Our business in Gizhiga was finally adjusted and settled; our
working-parties were all called in; and we were just about to sail in
the bark _Onward_ for Okhotsk, when we were suddenly confronted by
the deadliest peril that we had encountered in more than two years of
arctic experience. Every explorer who goes into a wild, unknown part
of the world to make scientific researches, to find a new route for
commerce, or to gratify an innate love of adventure, has, now and
then, an escape from a violent death which is so extraordinary that he
classifies it under the head of "narrow." The peril that he incurs may
be momentary in duration, or it may be prolonged for hours, or even
days; but in any case, while it lasts it is imminent and deadly. It is
something more than ordinary danger--it is peril in which the chances
of death are a hundred and of life only one. Such peril advances, as
a rule, with terrifying swiftness and suddenness; and if one be
unaccustomed to danger, he is liable to be beaten down and overwhelmed
by the quick and unexpected shock of the catastrophe. He has no time
to rally his nervous forces, or to think how he will deal with the
emergency. The crisis comes like an instantaneous "Vision of Sudden
Death," which paralyses all his faculties before he has a chance to
exercise them. Swift danger of this kind tests to the utmost a man's
inherited or acquired capacity for instinctive and purely automatic
action; but as it generally passes before it has been fairly
comprehended, it is not so trying, I think, to the nerves and to
the character as the danger that is prolonged to the point of full
realisation, and that cannot then be averted or lessened by any
possible action. It is only when a man has time to understand and
appreciate the impending catastrophe, and can do absolutely nothing to
avert it, that he fully realises the possibility of death. Action of
any kind is tonic, and when a man can fight danger with his muscles or
his brain, he is roused and excited by the struggle; but when he can
do nothing except wait, watch the suspended sword of Damocles, and
wonder how soon the stroke will come, he must have strong nerves long
to endure the strain.
Just before we sailed from Gizhiga in the _Onward_, eight of us had
an escape from death in which the peril came with great swiftness and
suddenness, and was prolonged almost to the extreme limit of nervous
endurance. On account of the lateness of the season and the rocky,
precipitous, and extremely dangerous character of the coast in the
vicinity of Gizhiga, the captain of the bark had not deemed it prudent
to run into the mouth of the Gizhiga River at the point of the long
A-shaped gulf, but had anchored on a shoal off the eastern coast, at a
distance from the beacon-tower of nearly twenty miles. From our point
of view on land, the vessel was entirely out of sight; but I knew
where she lay, and did not anticipate any difficulty in getting on
board as soon as I should finish my work ashore.
I intended to go off to the ship with the last of Sandford's party on
the morning of September 11th, but I was detained unexpectedly by the
presentation of a number of native claims and other unforeseen matters
of business, and when I had finally settled and closed up everything
it was four o'clock in the afternoon. In the high latitude of
north-eastern Siberia a September night shuts in early, and I felt
some hesitation about setting out at such an hour, in an open boat,
for a vessel lying twenty miles at sea; but I knew that the captain
of the _Onward_ was very nervous and anxious to get away from that
dangerous locality; the wind, which was blowing a fresh breeze off
shore, would soon take us down the coast to the vessel's anchorage;
and after a moment of indecision I gave the order to start. There were
eight men of us, including Sandford, Bowsher, Heck, and four others
whose names I cannot now recall.
Our boat was an open sloop-rigged sail-boat, about twenty-five feet in
length, which we had bought from a Russian merchant named Phillipeus.
I had not before that time paid much attention to her, but so far as I
knew she was safe and seaworthy. There was some question, however, as
to whether she carried ballast enough for her sail-area, and at the
last moment, to make sure of being on the safe side, I had two of
Sandford's men roll down and put on board two barrels of sugar from
the Company's storehouse. I then bade good-bye to Dodd and Frost, the
comrades who had shared with me so many hardships and perils, took a
seat in the stern-sheets of the little sloop, and we were off.
It was a dark, gloomy, autumnal evening, and the stiff north-easterly
breeze which came to us in freshening gusts over the snow-whitened
crest of the Stanavoi range had a keen edge, suggestive of approaching
winter. The sea, however, was comparatively smooth, and until we got
well out into the gulf the idea of possible danger never so much
as suggested itself to me. But as we left the shelter of the high,
iron-bound coast the wind seemed to increase in strength, the sea
began to rise, and the sullen, darkening sky, as the gloom of night
gathered about us, gave warning of heavy weather. It would have been
prudent, while it was still light, to heave the sloop to and take
a reef, if not a double reef, in the mainsail; but Heck, who was
managing the boat, did not seem to think this necessary, and in
another hour, when the necessity of reefing had become apparent to
everybody, the sea was so high and dangerous that we did not dare to
come about for fear of capsizing, or shipping more green water than we
could readily dispose of. So we staggered on before the rising gale,
trusting to luck, and hoping every moment that we should catch sight
of the _Onward's_ lights.
It has always seemed to me that the most dangerous point of sailing
in a small open boat in a high combing sea is running dead before
the wind. When you are sailing close-hauled, you can luff up into a
squall, if necessary, or meet a steep, dangerous sea bow on; but when
you are scudding you are almost helpless. You can neither luff, nor
spill the wind out of the sail by slackening off the sheet, nor put
your boat in a position to take a heavy sea safely. The end of your
long boom is liable to trip as you roll and wallow through the waves,
and every time you rise on the crest of a big comber your rudder comes
out of water, and your bow swings around until there is imminent
danger of an accidental jibe.
Heck, who managed our sloop, was a fairly good sailor, but as the wind
increased, the darkness thickened, and the sea grew higher and higher,
it became evident to me that nothing but unusually good luck would
enable us to reach the ship in safety. We were not shipping any water,
except now and then a bucketful of foam and spray blown from the crest
of a wave; but the boat was yawing in a very dangerous way as she
mounted the high, white-capped rollers, and I was afraid that sooner
or later she would swing around so far that even with the most skilful
steering a jibe would be inevitable.
It was very dark; I had lost sight of the land; and I don't know
exactly in what part of the gulf we were when the dreaded catastrophe
came. The sloop rose on the back of an exceptionally high, combing
sea, hung poised for an instant on its crest, and then, with a wide
yaw to starboard which the rudder was powerless to check, swooped down
sidewise into the hollow, rolling heavily to port and pointing her
boom high up into the gale. When I saw the dark outline of the leech
of the mainsail waver for an instant, flap once or twice, and then
suddenly collapse, I knew what was coming, and shouting at the top of
my voice, "Look out Heck! She'll jibe!" I instinctively threw myself
into the bottom of the boat to escape the boom. With a quick, sudden
rush, ending in a great crash, the long heavy spar swept across the
boat from starboard to port, knocking Bowsher overboard and carrying
away the mast. The sloop swung around into the trough of the sea, in a
tangle of sails, sheets, halyards, and standing rigging; and the next
great comber came plump into her, filling her almost to the gunwales
with a white smother of foam. I thought for a moment that she had
swamped and was sinking; but as I rose to a crouching posture and
rubbed the saltwater out of my eyes, I saw that she was less than half
full, and that if we did not ship another sea too soon, prompt and
energetic bailing might yet keep her afloat.
"Bail her out, boys! For your lives! With your hats!" I shouted: and
began scooping out the water with my fur hood.
Eight men bailing for life, even with hats and caps, can throw a great
deal of water out of a boat in a very short time; and within five or
ten minutes the first imminent danger of sinking was over. Bowsher,
who was a good swimmer and had not been seriously hurt by the boom,
climbed back into the boat; we cut away the standing rigging, freed
the sloop from the tangle of cordage, and got the water-soaked
mainsail on board; and then, tying a corner of this sail to the stump
of the mast, we spread it as well as we could, so that it would catch
a little wind and give the boat steerage-way. Under the influence of
this scrap of canvas the sloop swung slowly around, across the seas;
the water ceased to come into her; and wringing out our wet caps and
clothing, we began to breathe more freely.
When the first excitement of the crisis had passed and I recovered
my self-possession, I tried to estimate, as coolly as possible, our
prospects and our chances. The situation seemed to me almost hopeless.
We were in a dismasted boat, without oars, without a compass, without
a morsel of food or a mouthful of water, and we were being blown out
to sea in a heavy north-easterly gale. It was so dark that we could
not see the land on either side of the constantly widening gulf; there
was no sign of the _Onward_; and in all probability there was not
another vessel in any part of the Okhotsk Sea. The nearest land was
eight or ten miles distant; we were drifting farther and farther away
from it; and in our disabled and helpless condition there was not the
remotest chance of our reaching it. In all probability our sloop would
not live through the night in such a gale; and even should she remain
afloat until morning, we should then be far out at sea, with nothing
to eat or drink, and with no prospect of being picked up. If the wind
should hold in the direction in which it was blowing, it would carry
us past the _Onward_ at a distance of at least three miles; we had no
lantern with which to attract the attention of the ship's watch, even
should we happen to drift past her within sight; the captain did not
know that we were coming off to the bark that night, and would not
think of looking out for us; and so far as I could discover, there was
not a ray of hope for us in any direction.
How long we drifted out in black darkness, and in that tumbling,
threatening, foam-crested sea, I do not know. It seemed to me many
hours. I had a letter in my pocket which I had written the day before
to my mother, and which I had intended to send down to San Francisco
with the bark. In it I assured her that she need not feel any further
anxiety about my safety, because the Russian-American telegraph line
had been abandoned. I was to be landed by the _Onward_ at Okhotsk; I
was coming home by way of St. Petersburg over a good post-road; and
I should not be exposed to any more dangers. As I sat there in the
dismasted sloop, shivering with cold and drifting out to sea before a
howling arctic gale, I remembered this letter, and wondered what my
poor mother would think if she could read its contents and at the same
time see in a mental vision the situation of the writer.
So far as I can remember, there was very little talking among the men
during these long, dark hours of suspense. None of us, I think, had
any hope; it was hard to make one's voice heard above the roaring of
the wind; and we all sat or cowered in the bottom of the boat, waiting
for an end which could not be very far away. Now and then a heavy sea
would break over us, and we would all begin bailing again with our
hats; but aside from this there was nothing to be done. It did not
seem to me probable that the half-wrecked sloop would live more than
three or four hours. The gale was constantly rising, and every few
minutes we were lashed with stinging whips of icy spray, as a fierce
squall struck the water to windward, scooped off the crests of the
waves, and swept them horizontally in dense white clouds across the
boat.
It must have been about nine o'clock when somebody in the bow shouted
excitedly, "I see a light!"
"Where away?" I cried, half rising from the bottom of the boat in the
stern-sheets.
"Three or four points off the port bow," the voice replied.
"Are you sure?" I demanded.
"I'm not quite sure, but I saw the twinkle of something away over
on the Matuga Island side. It's gone now," the voice added, after a
moment's pause; "but I saw something."
We all looked eagerly and anxiously in the direction indicated; but
strain our vision as we might, we could not see the faintest gleam or
twinkle in the impenetrable darkness to leeward. If there was a light
visible, in that or in any other direction, it could only be the
anchor-light of the _Onward_, because both coasts of the gulf were
uninhabited; but it seemed to me probable that the man had been
deceived by a sparkle of phosphorescence or the gleam of a white
foam-crest.
For fully five minutes no one spoke, but all stared into the thick
gloom ahead. Then, suddenly, the same voice cried aloud in a tone
of still greater excitement, assurance, and certainty, "There it is
again! I knew I saw it! It's a ship's light!"
In another moment I caught sight of it myself--a faint, distant,
intermittent twinkle on the horizon nearly dead ahead.
"It's the anchor-light of the _Onward_!" I shouted in fierce
excitement. "Spread the corner of the mainsail a little more if you
can, boys, so as to give her better steerage-way. We've got to make
that ship! Hold her steady on the light, Heck, even if you have to put
her in the trough of the sea. We might as well founder as drift past!"
The men forward caught up the loose edges of the mainsail and extended
it as widely as possible to the gale, clinging to the thwarts and the
stump of the mast to avoid being jerked overboard by the bellying
canvas. Heck brought the sloop's head around so that the light was
under our bow, and on we staggered through the dark, storm-lashed
turmoil of waters, shipping a sea now and then, but half sailing, half
drifting toward the anchored bark. The wind came in such fierce
gusts and squalls that one could hardly say from what quarter it was
blowing; but, as nearly as I could judge in the thick darkness, it had
shifted three or four points to the westward. If such were the case,
we had a fair chance of making the ship, which lay nearer the eastern
than the western coast of the gulf.
"Don't let her head fall off any, Heck," I cried. "Jam her over to the
eastward as much as you can, even if the sea comes into her. We can
keep her clear with our hats. If we drift past we're gone!"
As we approached the bark the light grew rapidly brighter: but I did
not realise how near we were until the lantern, which was hanging in
the ship's fore-rigging, swung for an instant behind the jib-stay, and
the vessel's illuminated cordage suddenly came out in delicate tracery
against the black sky, less than a hundred yards away.
"There she is!" shouted Sandford. "We're close on her!"
The bark was pitching furiously to her anchors, and as we drifted
rapidly down upon her we could hear the hoarse roar of the gale
through her rigging, and see a pale gleam of foam as the sea broke in
sheets of spray against her bluff bows.
"Shall I try to round to abreast of her?" cried Heck to me, "or shall
I go bang down on her?"
"Don't take any chances," I shouted. "Better strike her, and go to
pieces alongside, than miss her and drift past. Make ready now to hail
her--all together--one,--two,--three! Bark aho-o-y! Stand by to throw
us a line!"
But no sound came from the huge black shadow under the pitching
lantern save the deep bass roar of the storm through the cordage.
We gave one more fierce, inarticulate cry as the dark outline of the
bark rose on a sea high above our heads; and then, with a staggering
shock and a great crash, the boat struck the ship's bow.
What happened in the next minute I hardly know. I have a confused
recollection of being thrown violently across a thwart in a white
smother of foam; of struggling to my feet and clutching frantically at
a wet, black wall, and of hearing some one shout in a wild, despairing
voice: "Watch ahoy! We're sinking! For God's sake throw us a
line!"--but that is all.
The water-logged sloop seesawed up and down past the bark's side, one
moment rising on a huge comber until I could almost grasp the rail,
and the next sinking into a deep hollow between the surges, far below
the line of the copper sheathing. We tore the ends of our finger-nails
off against the ship's side in trying to stop the boat's drift, and
shouted despairingly again and again for help and a line; but our
voices were drowned in the roar of the gale, there was no response,
and the next sea carried us under the bark's counter. I made one last
clutch at the smooth, wet planks; and then, as we drifted astern past
the ship, I abandoned hope.
The sloop was sinking rapidly,--I was already standing up to my knees
in water,--and in thirty seconds more we should be out of sight of the
bark, in the dark, tumbling sea to leeward, with no more chance of
rescue than if we were drowning in mid-Atlantic. Suddenly a dark
figure in the boat beside me,--I learned afterward that it was
Bowsher,--tore off his coat and waistcoat and made a bold leap into
the sea to windward. He knew that it was certain death to drift out of
sight of the bark in that sinking sloop, and he hoped to be able to
swim alongside until he should be picked up. I myself had not thought
of this before, but I saw instantly that it offered a forlorn hope of
escape, and I was just poised in the act of following his example when
on the quarter-deck of the bark, already twenty feet away, a white
ghost-like figure appeared with uplifted arm, and a hoarse voice
shouted, "Stand by to catch a line!"
It was the _Onward's_ second mate. He had heard our cries in his
state-room as we drifted under the ship's counter, and had instantly
sprung from his berth and rushed on deck in his night-shirt.
By the dim light of the binnacle I could just see the coil of rope
unwind as it left his hand; but I could not see where it fell; I knew
that there would be no time for another throw; and it seemed to me
that my heart did not beat again until I heard from the bow of the
sloop a cheery shout of "All right! I've got the line! Slack off till
I make it fast!"
In thirty seconds more we were safe. The second mate roused the watch,
who had apparently taken refuge in the forecastle from the storm; the
sloop was hauled up under the bark's stern; a second line was thrown
to Bowsher, and one by one we were hoisted, in a sort of improvised
breeches-buoy, to the _Onward's_ quarterdeck. As I came aboard,
coatless, hatless, and shivering from cold and excitement, the captain
stared at me in amazement for a moment, and then exclaimed: "Good God!
Mr. Kennan, is that you? What possessed you to come off to the ship
such a night as this?"
"Well, Captain," I replied, trying to force a smile, "it didn't blow
in this way when we started; and we had an accident--carried our mast
away."
"But," he remonstrated, "it has been blowing great guns ever since
dark. We've got two anchors down, and we've been dragging them both. I
finally had them buoyed, and told the mate that if they dragged again
we'd slip the cables and run out to sea. You might not have found us
here at all, and then where would you have been?"
"Probably at the bottom of the gulf," I replied. "I haven't expected
anything else for the last three hours."
The ill-fated sloop from which we made this narrow escape was so
crushed in her collision with the bark that the sea battered her to
pieces in the course of the night, and when I went on deck the next
morning, a few ribs and shattered planks, floating awash at the end of
the line astern, were all of her that remained.
[Illustration: War and Hunting Knives.
Snowbeaters used for beating snow from the clothing.]