Henty George Alfred
Condemned as a Nihilist: A Story of Escape from Siberia

"By Jove!" he said as he closed the aperture, "if it is as bad as that now that it is only just lighted, the meat ought to be smoked as dry as a chip by to-morrow."

Godfrey had nothing to do now but to watch the smoke rising from the opening at the top of the tent, opening the entrance a little whenever it slackened, drawing the sticks together with the iron ramrod, and throwing on a fresh armful of the fuel. Having finished greasing the boat, Luka did the same to the canoe. They spent the next twenty-four hours in alternately sleeping, collecting drift-wood on the river-bank, and attending to the fire, which had to be watched carefully, and some dry splinters added from time to time to get the green wood to keep alight. Every hour or two a piece of meat was taken out and examined, and in thirty hours from the time of lighting the fire Luka pronounced that it was done. The strips had shrivelled to half their former thickness and were almost black in colour.

"They will give us plenty of work for our teeth, Luka," Godfrey said. "They look almost like shoe-leather, but perhaps they will be better than they look. I once tasted some smoked reindeer tongues – at least they called them reindeer tongues, but I do not suppose they were – and they were first-rate. Now there is nothing more to do; let us get ready for another start."

The sail was taken off and the poles chopped into five-feet lengths.

"We will lay them in the bottom of the boat, Luka, four longways and four crossways. As there are sixteen of them, that will make the top line five or six inches above the floor. Then we will lay our firewood on them. In that way it won't get wet with the water, and, what is quite as important, it won't dirty the water."

This was done. The flour and deer's flesh were stowed on similar platforms fore and aft of the firewood and covered with skins. Some twelve buckets of water were then baled in. What remained of the frozen provisions was inspected; but it was agreed that as it had already melted a good deal, it would not be eatable much longer, and as they had food enough to last for some time, it was of no use keeping it. It was therefore broken up, Jack was allowed to eat as much as he wanted, and the rest was left. When everything was packed the canoe was carried down and placed in the water, and they took their places; Jack jumped on board, and a fresh start was made.

As soon as they emerged from the small river, they struck out straight from the land. The wind was light and from the north, and both took their paddles. Their four days' rest had done them good, and the canoe, under the influence of sail and oar, went fast through the water.

"Twenty-four hours ought to take us across," Godfrey said. "The gulf looks from eighty to ninety miles across at the point where the river runs into it. We must head rather to the south, for there is sure to be a current out in the middle, as the Obi is a big river."

It was, however, thirty hours before they reached the opposite shore – Godfrey accounting for the difference on the supposition that the stream must have been a good deal stronger than they expected, and must have drifted them down a long way. They found, indeed, that even inshore they were passing the land at a rate of nearly two miles an hour.

"That is all the better, Luka, for with this north wind our sail will be no good to us. We may as well get it down at once and stow it. The shores are muddy, I see; so we shall not hurt the canoe if we should drift up against it. That is a comfort, for we can both go to sleep. I am sure, after thirty hours' paddling with only two or three long easies, we deserve a rest. First of all we must have a meal. One does not know whether to call it dinner or supper when there is no night and we sleep just when we are tired."

They had caught eight or ten fish as they came across, passing through a great shoal of herrings. In half an hour the kettle was boiling over the fire, the fish were hissing and crackling in the frying-pan over it, and a strip of deer's flesh, with the ramrod run through it, was frizzling. It was pronounced excellent. There was a slight aromatic bitterness that gave a zest and flavour to it, and the flesh inside was by no means so tough as Godfrey had expected to find it. When all three of the voyagers had satisfied their hunger, the brands were as usual extinguished, the embers thrown overboard; then returning to the canoe, they lay down, and were in a very few minutes fast asleep. They slept for six hours, and when they woke the land was no longer in sight.

"It is lucky there is no fog," Godfrey said, "and that we have the sun to act as a compass. We can't be many miles out. We won't make straight for shore, Luka; we will head about north-west, so as to edge in gradually. There must be a good deal of current here, and it will be helping us along."

In an hour the low line of coast was visible, and they then headed still more to the north.

"There must be a good three-mile-an-hour current here," Godfrey observed presently. "We are going along first-rate past the shore. It took us over five days to come up. At this rate we shall go down in two."

They paddled steadily for twelve hours, stopping once only to cook a meal. Then they went close inshore again, had supper, and slept. When they woke they found they were still within a mile of the shore, and the current was now taking them along no more than a mile an hour.

"The gulf must be wide here, Luka. I don't think we should gain anything by going out four or five miles farther, so we will keep about as we are. We ought to be at the point by the end of to-day's work. We were two hundred miles up. I expect we drifted down five-and-twenty miles in crossing, and we must have passed the land at a good five miles an hour yesterday; so that we ought not to be more than thirty or forty miles from the point, for this peninsula does not go as far north as the other by twenty or thirty miles."

After eight hours' paddling they found themselves at the mouth of a deep bay.

"That is all right," Godfrey said, examining his tracing. "That land on the farther side of the bay is the northern point of the gulf. We will paddle across there and anchor by the shore for to-night. To-morrow we shall have a long paddle, for it is seventy or eighty miles nearly due west to a sheltered bay that lies just this side of Cape Golovina. Once round that, we have nearly four hundred miles to go nearly due south into Kara Bay. This long tongue of land we are working round is called the Yamal Peninsula. Once fairly down into Kara Bay, we shall leave Siberia behind us, and the land will be Russia."

They struck across the bay, and landed under shelter of the cape. The land was higher here than any they had before met; and after their sleep Godfrey took his gun, accompanied by Jack, and ascended the hill.

"It is rum," he said to himself, as he gazed over the wide expanse of sea to the north, "that this should be one sheet of ice in the winter. I do not like the look of those clouds away to the north. I think we are going to have either a fog or a gale. We won't make a move till we see. This coast seems rocky, and it won't do to make along it unless we have settled weather."

He returned and told Luka, and then wandered away again, as he had seen that birds were very plentiful, and he returned in three hours to the boat with a dozen grouse, six ptarmigan, and a capercailzie. Godfrey was now a good shot, and the birds, never having been disturbed by the approach of man, were so tame that he had no difficulty whatever in making a bag. As he went down to the boat he congratulated himself that they had not made a start, for the sky was now overcast, and the wind was already blowing strongly.

"We will have some bread to-day, Luka. These birds deserve something to eat with them, and our flour is holding out well. We have not eaten above twenty pounds since we started. I wish we had some yeast or something to make it rise. By the by I have an idea. Don't mix that till I come back, Luka."

Here, as when he landed on the Yenesei, he had seen numbers of rough nests on the ground, the birds being so tame that they often did not fly off even when he passed quite close to them. He returned to a spot where he had seen these nests quite thick, and had no difficulty in collecting a large number of little eggs of a great variety of colour.

"I expect about two out of every three are bad," he said. "We shall have to break them singly to find out the good ones. Fancy making a cake of sparrows' eggs!"

Upon breaking them he found that not more than one in five was good. Still there were quite enough for the purpose. The frying-pan was used as a basin, and in this he made a sort of batter of eggs and flour. By the time he had done this four of the grouse were nearly roasted. He poured the batter into the empty kettle, melted some deer's fat in the pan, and then poured in the batter again. Then he washed out and filled the kettle, and placed it upon the fire.

"Now, by the time the water is boiling, Luka, the batter and the grouse will be cooked. That is what we call a Yorkshire pudding at home; it will go splendidly with the birds."

The pudding turned out really good, and they enjoyed the meal immensely, Jack having the bones of the four birds for his share, together with the solitary fish they had caught the day before. By the time they had finished they were glad to get up their tent, which they pitched with the entrance close to the fire, for even in the sheltered spot where they were fierce gusts of cold wind swept down upon them. The canvas of the tent was fastened down by heavy stones placed upon it, the furs brought in, and everything made snug. For three days the storm raged.

"It is a nuisance losing so much time," Godfrey said. "It was somewhere about the middle of June when we started, and there are only three months of open weather here. Every day is of importance. I sha'n't so much mind when we get to the mouth of the Petchora, for I heard from one of the Russians in the prison that canoes often go as far as that from Archangel to trade, so I shall feel when I get there that we are getting into civilized regions. It is about four hundred miles from Kara Bay, so that we have a good eight hundred miles to travel before we get there. We can certainly paddle forty miles a day by sticking to it steadily; but allowing for another stoppage of four days, and we can't allow less than that, that will be a fortnight. How long have we been now, Luka? There is nothing to count time from."

Luka shook his head.

"Well, it is somewhere above three weeks," Godfrey went on; "so that by the time we get to the mouth of the Petchora, it will be the last week in July. That will give us a couple of months; but I fancy we can't count much on the weather in September. Still, if the canoes go from Archangel to Petchora and back, we ought to be able to do it from Petchora, for the distance from there to Archangel is a good deal less than from the mouth of the Yenesei to the Petchora. There is one thing, if the weather gets very bad on the way, or we get laid up by bad weather for a long time on the way to Petchora, we can go up the river, I hear, to a place called Ust Zlyma, and from there go overland to Archangel. It is about two hundred or two hundred and fifty miles across, and we could walk that in ten days. I am quite sure that we should not be suspected of being anything but what we look; and at Archangel there is sure to be a British consul, and he would put us up to the best plan of getting out of the country. However, there will be plenty of time to see about that as we get on."

The wind fell on the morning of the fourth day, but it would be some hours before the sea would have gone down sufficiently for them to make a start. Godfrey again went out shooting, this time accompanied by Luka.

Godfrey was as fortunate as he had been before, shooting three capercailzie and nineteen grouse; while Luka brought down with his arrows four capercailzie, which he found sitting on stunted trees. On their way back to the boat they collected a great quantity of eggs, and came upon a rabbit warren.

"Do not shoot," Luka said, as Godfrey cocked his gun, "it will frighten them all into their holes. If you will go on with the dog, I will lie down here and will bring you as many rabbits as I can carry."

Two hours later he came down to the tent with two dozen rabbits he had shot. After cooking two of them, and giving one to Jack as his share, they packed up all their belongings and again took to the canoe. They used their paddles until round the cape, and then heading westward hoisted their sail, for what wind there was was still from the north, and the help it afforded was sufficient greatly to reduce the labour of paddling. They kept steadily on, one or other taking occasional snatches of sleep. But with this exception, and that of the time spent by Luka in cooking, they continued to paddle until, forty hours after starting, they reached Cape Golovina, passing between it and Beloc Island. They did not make the halt they had intended under shelter of the cape, for the weather was fine, and Godfrey wanted to take advantage of the north wind as long as it lasted. Once round the cape they headed nearly due south, and the wind freshening a little, drove them along merrily, and they were able to cease paddling, and to take a fair proportion of sleep alternately.

Luka was now getting more accustomed to the management of the sail, and no longer feared an occasional jibe, and night and day – if it could be called night when the sun never set – they continued their voyage along the coast of the Yamal Peninsula. At the end of the fourth day the wind freshened so much that the large sail was taken down and the leg-of-mutton sail substituted for it; but as the wind continued to rise, and the sea to get up fast, Godfrey began to look out for some spot into which to run for shelter. The coast was very indented and broken, and in two hours they passed the mouth of a deep bay into which the boat was at once directed, and was presently moored under the shelter of its northern bank.

"She is a splendid sea-boat," Godfrey said. "If it wasn't for the boat in tow I should not mind what weather I was out in her."

Their stay was of short duration, for in a few hours the wind sank again. "I don't think it is done yet," Godfrey said when they were beyond the shelter of the bay. "I fancy it will blow up again presently; still we may as well push on. I think it is rather more from the east than it was."

For the next twenty-four hours, however, there was no very marked change in the force of the wind, but it had now veered round to the north-east.

"We are getting well down now," Godfrey said. "We have been sailing for five days, and we have certainly been running a good three miles an hour from the time we rounded the cape. So we are three hundred and fifty miles down. I should say we must be entering Kara Bay."

"Very bad weather coming," Luka said looking back.

Godfrey turned round. A heavy black cloud was sweeping up with a misty line below it.

"By Jove, you are right; that is a big squall and no mistake. There is no bay to run to here, Luka, and we could not get there in time if there was. We must do as I talked about. Quick, lower the sail down, there is not a moment to lose. No, wait until I bring her up head to the wind. Now, then, down with it. Now unstep the mast, lash that and the boom, the other sail, and its spar together; that is the way." And with their joint efforts the work was accomplished in a couple of minutes. "Now, then, fasten this rope to your end, Luka; I will tie the other end to mine. That is right. It is long enough to make a good big angle. Now fasten the head-rope to the middle; be sure it is put in the middle, Luka. That is right. Now, launch it overboard."

The work was done as quickly as it is described, and in three minutes from the time the mast was lowered the canoe was riding to the floating anchor.

"Now then, Luka, on with the apron."

"Shall we sit up?"

"No; we will lie down, cover up the holes, and lash them carefully when we are in. It is going to be a drencher, and it is of no use our getting wet through to begin with. We could not do anything with the paddles."

They had scarcely made themselves snug when, with a roar, a deluge of rain fell on the deck and cover, and a moment later even this sound was partly deadened by the howl of the wind. Although their heads were close together, Godfrey felt that it would be utterly useless to make any remark. He felt under no uneasiness, for, with their weight well down and anchored head to sea, he felt sure that the light canoe would ride over anything like a cork bottle. The motion of the boat rapidly increased, but she herself rode lightly over the waves. As these increased the jerking of the boat behind at her rope became more and more violent, and the canoe quivered from end to end with the shocks.

"This will never do," Godfrey said to himself. "The boat will pull the stern out of her. It will be an awful loss to cut her adrift, but it can't be helped."

He unlashed the fastenings of the cover of the circular hole above him, reached his hand forward and got hold of Luka's paddle, and passed it with his own out through the hole. Then he sat up himself. Confident as he felt in the canoe, he was almost frightened at the wild aspect of the sea. The wind was literally howling, driving the rain before it with a force that stung Godfrey's neck as it struck it. He got out a strip of deer-skin lashing, of which there was a supply always close at hand under the deck, lashed the paddles together, and then, leaning aft, lashed them at the centre firmly to the tow-rope. Then with some difficulty he got out his knife and cut the rope close to its fastening; the paddles flew overboard, and the boat drifted rapidly astern, the drag of the paddles being, as Godfrey observed with satisfaction, sufficient to keep her head to wind. Then he wriggled himself down underneath the apron again and lashed down the cover of the hole.

CHAPTER XVI
A SAMOYEDE ENCAMPMENT

The action of the canoe was altogether changed as soon as it was released from the strain of the boat behind. There was no more tugging and jarring, but she rose and fell on the waves almost imperceptibly.

"Well, Jack, old fellow, what do you think of it?" Godfrey said to the dog as it nestled up close to him. "Here we are now, out in a regular storm. It is lucky we have plenty of sea-room, Jack. I reckon it is seventy or eighty miles across to the other side of the gulf, and I don't suppose she can drag those spars through the water much more than a mile an hour. So we have plenty of time before us. We must both put away as much time in sleep as we can. We have lost almost all our provisions, old boy, and our water, which was of still more consequence. It is very lucky I always made a rule of having the kettle filled and put on board here after each meal and of keeping a dozen pounds of meat here. I thought we might be obliged to cast the boat adrift suddenly. Well, if we have luck, we may find it again. We shall both drift in the same line, and there is no reason why she shouldn't live through it. The stock of firewood has gone down, and she has not got above a couple of hundred pounds' weight in her altogether. I am afraid she will take enough salt water on board to spoil our supply of fresh, but I think we are drifting pretty straight for the Kara River. I calculated that it lay dead to leeward of us when the wind went to the north-west."

It was a considerable time before Godfrey went off to sleep owing to the rapid changes of the angle at which he was lying. Sometimes his head was two or three feet higher than his feet, and directly afterwards the position was exactly reversed. The rolling was but slight, and this he scarcely felt, being too tightly packed in along with the furs and the dog to move much. But at last the noise of the water and the roar of the wind lulled him to sleep. He woke once, and then went off again, and his watch told him that he had been altogether asleep twelve hours. When he next woke, he felt at once that the motion was slighter than it had been and that the wind had greatly abated.

"Are you asleep, Luka?" he shouted.

"I am not asleep now," Luka replied drowsily.

"The storm is pretty nearly over; I will get the cover off and look round, and then we will see if we can't boil some water and have some tea. We have never used any of those candles yet; this will be a good opportunity to try them."

Unlashing and removing the cover, Godfrey sat up and looked round. The gale had broken. Black clouds were hurrying past overhead, but there were patches of blue sky. The sea was still very heavy, but it was rarely that the canoe dipped her nose under a wave, so lightly did she rise and fall over them.

"In a few hours we shall have our sail up again, Luka," he said as the Tartar thrust his head up through his opening. It was but for a moment. He instantly dived under again and replaced the cover, appalled at the sea, which was infinitely rougher than anything he had ever before witnessed.

"It looks pretty bad, doesn't it?" Godfrey said, laughing, as he, too, resumed his position of shelter.

"It is terrible," Luka said.

"I expect it has been worse. At any rate, as you can see we have got through it without taking a drop of water on board, thanks to the floating anchor. Now I will pass the kettle forward to you. Be very careful with it, for it is all the water we have."

"All the water! Why, what has become of the boat?" Luka exclaimed.

"I had to cut her adrift half an hour after the squall struck us. Did not you hear me look out when I took your paddle?"

"I felt you take the paddle, but there was too much noise to hear anything, and I was too frightened to listen. I thought that surely we should go to the bottom. Why did you cut her loose?"

"Because she was tugging so hard. She would have pulled us to pieces, and it was better to let her go than to risk that. She will have drifted the same way we have done, only she will have gone three times as fast, for she was a good deal higher out of water, and the paddles which I fastened on to her head-rope won't have anything like the hold on the water that our spars have. We will keep in the same direction when we get our sails up, and if she has lived through it we shall very likely find her ashore somewhere along the coast. Now be sure you lash that kettle securely to the deck-beam, Luka. Put it as near one side as you can get it, then there will be room for you to lie alongside and watch it. But stop! Before you fasten it pour out half a mugful of water for Jack. He doesn't like tea, and there will be nothing but tea for him after we have once made it."

The candle was lighted and fixed under the kettle, but the four wicks gave out such an odour that Godfrey was glad to sit up again and remain outside, until a nudge from Luka told him that the tea was ready. They ate with it some slices of raw bear's ham. Luka offered to cook it, but Godfrey had had the candle put out the moment he got under the cover and would not hear of its being lighted again.

"It is not at all bad raw," he said. "They eat raw ham in Germany, and that last smoking it got was almost as good as cooking it. I expect the sea will have gone down in a few hours, and then we can have a regular meal; but if you were to light that smelly thing again now it would make me ill. Now, Jack, I will light my pipe and look out again, and you shall come out too for a breath of fresh air. I will hold you tight and see that you don't go over."

In twelve hours the sea had almost gone down. The floating anchor was hauled up and unlashed, the masts were stepped, the large sail hoisted, and, free from the dead weight that had hitherto checked her speed, the little craft sped along gaily before the gentle wind, Godfrey keeping her as near as possible dead before it, on the chance that they might catch sight of the boat.

"If we drifted a mile an hour and she drifted three," he said, "she would have gained four-and-twenty miles while we were asleep, and perhaps since then she has been gaining a mile an hour; so she is from thirty-five to forty miles ahead of us, and must be quite half-way across the gulf. Anyhow, we need not begin to look out yet; we are going about four knots an hour, I should think, and I don't suppose she is going more than one. In about ten hours we must begin to look about for her."

Before the end of that time the sea had gone quite down, and the wind had fallen so light that Godfrey thought they were scarce making three knots an hour. "I hope it won't fall altogether," he said, "for as we have no paddles it would be awkward for us."

"Two of the bottom boards will do for paddles."

"Yes, I know that, Luka, I am steering with one of them; but they would do very little good, for they are so thin that they would break off directly we put any strength on to them."

Godfrey occasionally stood up and looked round, but could see no signs of the boat, and indeed could hardly have done so unless he had passed within a couple of miles at most of her.

"The wind may have changed a little," he said, "though I don't think it has done so. Anyhow, I will head a little more to the south, so as to be sure that we shall strike the shore to the east both of the Kara River and the point she is likely to drift to."

Four hours later they made out land ahead of them, some six miles away as they guessed, and holding on reached it in two hours and a half's time. They stepped out as soon as they got into shallow water, carried the canoe ashore, drank a mug of cold tea and ate some raw meat, and then lay down for a long sleep. When they woke they collected some drift-wood and lighting a fire, cooked some meat.

"What are you going to do, Godfrey?" Luka asked. "Are you going to set out at once to look for the boat?"

"No, we had better wait for a few hours. She may not have drifted to the shore yet, though I do not think she can be far off; still it is as well to give her plenty of time. At any rate we can shoot some birds, so the time won't be lost."

Having made a fair bag and been absent from the canoe for five hours they returned, and after cutting up a capercailzie and grilling it over the fire, they got the boat into the water and started.

They had sailed about eight miles to the west when Luka exclaimed, "There is something there by the shore close to that point. It may be the boat; it may be a rock."

It was another quarter of an hour before Godfrey was able to assure himself that it was really the boat. "Thank God for that, Luka!" he exclaimed. "We have reason to thank Him for a great many things. I do so every hour, and I hope you do so too. But finding the boat again safe seems to me the greatest blessing we have had yet; I don't know what we should have done without it."

Another quarter of an hour brought them to the point. The boat lay just afloat, bumping on the sand as each little wave lifted and left her. They sprang out of the canoe into shallow water and threw out the anchor, and then waded to the boat. She had about four inches of water in her, but was entirely uninjured.

"Hurrah!" Godfrey shouted, "she is as good as ever. Now, Luka, get everything out of her as soon as you can, then we can turn her over and empty her, put the things in again, and be off at once. We have got no time to lose, for you must remember there is not much more than a quart of cold tea left in the kettle. I am sure the Kara River can't be very far off, but I can't say whether it is three miles or thirty."

In half an hour they were again afloat and working their paddles to assist the sail. Two hours later Luka said, "Huts on that point ahead of us."

"So there are," Godfrey said. "Six or eight of them and a lot of cattle."

"Reindeer!" Luka corrected. "Samoyede village."

"Why, there must be hundreds of them," Godfrey said in surprise.

"Yes, the Ostjaks told me in our old camp that many of the Samoyedes had five hundred, and some of them a thousand reindeer. They keep them just as we do cattle. Their wealth is counted by their reindeer. They make their clothes of its skin; its milk and flesh are their chief food. It draws their sledges, and when they want money they can sell some of them."

"Did you ask how much they can be sold for?"

"Yes, the Ostjaks said that they were worth here two or three roubles each."

"Then if there are many of these encampments along the shore, Luka, we need not trouble about food; and if anything happens to our boat we can make a couple of sledges, buy four reindeer, and start by land."

"Then we should have to wait until winter," Luka said.

"Yes, that would be a nuisance; but it would not be so very long to wait. I had no idea reindeer were so cheap. If I had I think instead of spending the winter hunting I would have bought some reindeer and started to drive. Still it would have been a terrible journey, and perhaps we have done better as it is. Well, shall we land? What do you think?"

"We don't want anything," Luka said. "The Samoyedes are generally friendly. They are not like the Tunguses and Yuraks. But you see there are but two of us, and we have hatchets and knives and other things they value. If we wanted anything I should say let us land, but as we don't it would be better to go on."

"You are right, Luka. I don't suppose there would be any risk of being robbed; still it is just as well not to run even the smallest chance of trouble when everything is going on so well."

On passing the point on which the encampment was situated they saw a wide opening. "The Kara!" Godfrey exclaimed joyously. "We will cross to the other side, and coast up on that shore till the water becomes fresh."

It required four hours' sailing and paddling before they got beyond the influence of the sea, then they landed, shot and hunted for a couple of days, took in a fresh supply of water, and started again.