Condemned as a Nihilist Part 34

"That is all right," G.o.dfrey 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 sh.o.r.e 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 G.o.dfrey 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. G.o.dfrey 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 pa.s.sed 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 Yorks.h.i.+re 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," G.o.dfrey 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," G.o.dfrey 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. G.o.dfrey again went out shooting, this time accompanied by Luka.

G.o.dfrey 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 quant.i.ty of eggs, and came upon a rabbit warren.

"Do not shoot," Luka said, as G.o.dfrey c.o.c.ked 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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, pa.s.sing 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 G.o.dfrey 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 subst.i.tuted for it; but as the wind continued to rise, and the sea to get up fast, G.o.dfrey 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 pa.s.sed 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," G.o.dfrey 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," G.o.dfrey 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," G.o.dfrey 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.

G.o.dfrey 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 ap.r.o.n."

"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, G.o.dfrey felt that it would be utterly useless to make any remark. He felt under no uneasiness, for, with their weight well down and anch.o.r.ed 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," G.o.dfrey 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.dfrey's neck as it struck it. He got out a strip of deer-skin las.h.i.+ng, 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 G.o.dfrey observed with satisfaction, sufficient to keep her head to wind. Then he wriggled himself down underneath the ap.r.o.n 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?" G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey 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."

Unlas.h.i.+ng and removing the cover, G.o.dfrey 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?" G.o.dfrey said, laughing, as he, too, resumed his position of shelter.

"It is terrible," Luka said.