Condemned as a Nihilist Part 40

"Lots of them in the wood," he said; "if stop here three or four days, get lots of skins."

"I don't think they would be much good to us, Luka, though those you shot will be useful for food; but I have been obliged to stand with my head over the smoke of the fire to keep off these rascally mosquitoes, and my face was so swelled with their bites when I woke that I could hardly see out of my eyes till I bathed my face with cold water. The sooner we are off the better, if we don't want to be eaten alive."

Accordingly, as soon as the meal was finished they packed up and continued their voyage. After eight hours' paddling they came upon the mouth of a river.

"This must be the Seriberka," G.o.dfrey said. "That is the only river marked in the map anywhere about here. We will paddle a mile or two up and fill our kettles. If it is that river, we shall come upon an island a few miles off the coast, in another twenty or thirty miles. See, Luka, how near we are getting to the end of the map. We are not very much more than a hundred miles from this line; that is the division between Russia and Norway. Once we land on the other side of that line we are free."

In seven or eight hours after leaving the river, G.o.dfrey said, "There is Kildina Island, Luka. We will land over there instead of upon this sh.o.r.e. There may be some Laplanders about, and there is a Russian place called Kola about twenty miles up a river a little way past the island, and the natives might take us there if they came upon us, for they would not understand either Ostjak or the Samoyede dialect, and I don't suppose they would talk Russian. Anyhow, we may as well be on the safe side. After coming seven or eight thousand miles we won't run any risk of a failure in the last hundred. I don't much like the look of the sky away to the north. I fancy we are going to have a storm. Thank G.o.d it did not come two days earlier."

They landed on the island, hauled up the boat, then G.o.dfrey took some time in finding a hollow where they could light a fire without risk of its being seen on the mainland, as, if there were Lapps there, they might cross in their canoes to see who had made it. They had no trouble in collecting plenty of drift-wood along the sh.o.r.e, and carefully choosing the driest, so as to avoid making a great smoke, they lit a fire and erected the tent to leeward of it, so that the smoke might blow through it, and so keep out their enemies the mosquitoes. G.o.dfrey's prediction about the weather was speedily verified. The wind got up very rapidly, and in two hours was blowing a gale from the north.

"No fear of canoes coming across," Luka said.

"No fear at all. I don't suppose there was any real risk of it in any case, but I feel more nervous now than I have done all the time. At any rate the storm has made it perfectly safe. There will soon be a sea on that no canoe could face."

For three days the storm raged, and they were glad to resume their fur jackets. Jack lay coiled up in the furs in the tent, and nothing could persuade him to move except for breakfast and dinner. They waited twelve hours after the gale ceased to allow the sea to go down and then started again, hoisting their sail as there was enough wind to help them.

CHAPTER XVIII.

HOME AGAIN.

G.o.dfrey felt in wild spirits as they hoisted their sail, for the end of the journey was close at hand, and, unless some altogether unforeseen misfortune were to befall them, they would have accomplished an undertaking that had been deemed almost impossible. They kept well out from land, increasing the distance as they sailed west until they were some ten miles out, for the map showed that some five-and-twenty miles from the point where they had camped a rocky peninsula jutted out. In three hours they could make out its outline, for the land was bold and high, and it took them another four hours before they were abreast of its eastern point, Cape Navalok. Then they coasted along the peninsula until they arrived at Cape Kekour, its western point. They had now been paddling nearly twelve hours, for G.o.dfrey was too impatient to be content with the sail only. Just before they arrived at the cape, Luka, seeing a good place for landing, suggested a halt.

"No, no," G.o.dfrey said, "we will not risk another landing. We have been marvellously fortunate up to now, and it would be folly to run even the slightest risk when we are so near the end of our journey. We will keep on. There are only thirty or forty more miles to go, and then we shall enter the Voranger Fiord. Then we shall be in Norway. Think of that, Luka! We can snap our fingers at the Russians, and tell everyone we meet that we have escaped from their prisons."

"Who shall we meet?" Luka asked.

"Ah, that is more than I can tell you. The sooner we meet some one the better. Norway is not like this country we have been pa.s.sing along; it is all covered with great mountains and forests. I don't know anything about the coast, but I fancy it is tremendously rocky, and we should have a poor chance there if caught in another storm from the north.

There are Laplanders, who are people just like the Samoyedes, and who have got reindeer; if we find any of them, as I hope we shall, we ought to be all right. We have got a hundred silver roubles, and if you show a man money and make signs you want to go somewhere, and don't much care where, he is pretty safe to take you. Now you take a sleep, Luka. I will steer. There is no occasion to paddle, the wind is taking us along nearly three miles an hour, and time is no particular object to us now.

You get three hours, then I will take three, and then we will set to with the paddles again."

Eight hours later they could make out high land on the starboard bow, and knew that they were approaching the entrance to the fiord. They had not taken to their paddles again, for the wind had freshened, and they were going fast through the water. Luka cooked a meal, and as it was growing dark the land closed in on both sides to a distance of about eight miles.

An hour later they saw lights on their right hand. "Hurrah!" G.o.dfrey exclaimed, "there is a village there. We won't land to-night. We might find it difficult to get a place to sleep in. One night longer on board won't do us any harm. Thank G.o.d we are fairly out of Russia at last, and shall land as free men in the morning."

They drew in towards the sh.o.r.e a mile or so above the lights, and paddled cautiously on until close to the land. There they dropped their anchor overboard, and, wearied out by their long row, were speedily sound asleep.

It was broad daylight when they woke. G.o.dfrey, when he sat up, gave a loud cheer, which set Jack off barking wildly. "Look!" G.o.dfrey shouted, "it is a town, and there are two steamboats lying there. Thank G.o.d, our troubles are all over. You had better get breakfast, Luka. It is of no use going ash.o.r.e till people are awake."

Breakfast over the anchor was at once pulled up, and in a quarter of an hour they were alongside a quay. Their appearance was so similar to that of the Lapps that they themselves would have attracted but little notice, but the canoe was so different in its appearance to those used by these people that several persons stood on the little quay watching them as they came alongside. Their surprise at the boat was increased when G.o.dfrey came up on to the quay. No Laplander or Finn of his height had ever been seen, and moreover, his face and hands were clean. They addressed him in a language that he did not understand. He replied first in English, then in Russian. Apparently they recognized the latter language, and one of them motioned to G.o.dfrey to follow him.

"You wait here till I come back, Luka. I daresay the people are honest enough, but I don't want any of our furs or things stolen now that we have got to the end of our journey."

He then followed his conductor to a large house in the princ.i.p.al street, where he went in to a sort of office and spoke to a man sitting there.

Then he went out, and in a minute returned with a gentleman.

"Do you speak English, sir?" G.o.dfrey said.

"I speak it a little," the gentleman replied in surprise at hearing the language from one who looked like a Laplander.

"Do you speak Russian better?" G.o.dfrey next asked.

"Yes," he replied in that language. "I know Russian well. And who are you?"

"I am an Englishman. I was resident in St. Petersburg when I was seized and condemned to exile in Siberia as a Nihilist, although I was perfectly innocent of the charge. I was taken to the mines of Kara in the east of Siberia, but made my escape, descended the Yenesei, and have coasted from there in a canoe."

The man looked at him incredulously.

"I am not surprised that you doubt my story," G.o.dfrey said. "If you will come down with me to the wharf you will see the canoe in which I made the journey. I built it on the Yenesei. I have with me a Tartar who escaped with me and shared my fortunes."

The merchant put on his hat and walked down to the wharf.

"It is a strange craft," he said, "though I have seen some at Christiania similar in form but smaller, built of wood, that Englishmen have brought over. And is it possible that you have sailed from the mouth of the Yenesei in her?"

"There has been no great difficulty about it," G.o.dfrey said. "We have kept near the coast, and have generally landed when bad weather came on.

I have a gun, and with that and fis.h.i.+ng there has been no difficulty about food. The journey has been a long one. It is seventeen months since I left Kara. I am provided with Russian money, sir, and shall be glad if you can tell me what is my best way of getting back to England."

"It is fortunate indeed that you did not arrive here two days later, for the last steamer will sail for Hamburg to-morrow. She touches at many ports on her way, but I don't know that you can do better than go to Hamburg, whence there is a steamer nearly every day to England. If you had been two days later you would have lost her, for the season is just over, and you would then have had to travel by land and river down to Tornea on the Gulf of Bothnia. But come up with me to my house; I am the agent here for the steamer. What are you going to do with your canoe?"

"I shall take her home with me just as she stands," G.o.dfrey said.

"And the Tartar?"

"Yes, the Tartar and the dog."

"Very well. Stay here for ten minutes," he said to Luka, "I will send a man down to help you up with the canoe. We may as well put it in my yard," he went on as he started back with G.o.dfrey. "The people are as honest as the day, but they might be pulling it about and examining it, and it is just as well to stow it away safe. Well, this is a wonderful escape of yours! During the twenty years I have been here, it has never happened before."

"I wonder it has not been done many times," G.o.dfrey said. "Canoes go from Archangel to the Petchora, which is quite half-way to the mouth of the Obi, and there is no more difficulty between the Petchora and the Yenesei than there is on this side. The first thing to do now is to get some clothes."

"The first thing to do, I think, is to get some breakfast," the trader said.

"I have already had some breakfast on board," G.o.dfrey said; "but I daresay I can eat another."

"I will warrant you can. Your breakfast was probably of the roughest."

"It was," G.o.dfrey admitted. "I have not eaten a piece of real bread for more than a year. We haven't had much of anything made of flour since we started in the canoe in June; but one gets to do without bread very well."

"I have not asked you your name yet," the trader said.

"It is G.o.dfrey Bullen. My father is head of a firm in London that does a good deal of trade with Russia. He was Living in St. Petersburg a good many years. That is how it is that I speak the language."

"I was wondering how it was that you spoke it so well. Now, then, let me introduce you to my wife and family. This is an English gentleman, wife," he said in his own language to a pleasant-looking lady. "He does not look like it, but when I tell you that he has made his escape from Siberia in a canoe it will account for it."

G.o.dfrey found that his early meal had in no way abated his appet.i.te. The breakfast was an excellent one, but he confined himself to bread and b.u.t.ter, and thought he had never tasted anything so good in his life. He learned that his host was an importer of goods of all kinds, and did the princ.i.p.al trade at Vadso, besides supplying all the villages on the fiord.