North To The Arctic

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Title:     North To The Arctic
Author: S. R. Crockett [More Titles by Crockett]

At home 'tis sunny September,
Though here 'tis a waste of snows,
So bleak that I scarce remember
How the scythe through the cornland goes.

With an aching heart I wander
Through the cold and curved wreaths,
And dream that I see meander
Brown burns amid purple heaths:

That I hear the stags on the mountains
Bray loud in the early morn,
And that scarlet gleams by the fountains
The red-berried wild-rose thorn.

"It was bad enough in the Free Command," said Constantine, leaning back in his luxurious easy-chair and joining his thin fingers easily before him as though he were measuring the stretch between thumb and middle finger. "But, God knows, it was Paris itself to the hell on earth up at the Yakut Yoort."

It was a strange sentence to hear, sitting thus in the commonplace drawing-room of a London house with the baker's boy ringing the area bell and the last edition of the Pall Mall being cried blatantly athwart the street.

But no one could look twice at Constantine Nicolai and remain in the land of the commonplace. I had known him nearly two years, and we had talked much--usually on literary and newspaper topics, seldom of Russia, and never of his experiences. Constantine and I had settled down together as two men will sometimes do, who work together and are drawn by a sympathy of unlikeness which neither can explain. Both of us worked on an evening paper of pronounced views upon moral questions and a fine feeling for a good advertising connection.

We had been sitting dreamily in the late twilight of a gloomy November day. Work was over, and we were free till Monday morning should call us back again to the Strand. We sat silent a long while, till Constantine broke out unexpectedly with the words which startled me.

I looked up with a curiosity which I tried to make neither too apparent nor yet too lukewarm.

"You were speaking of the time you spent in Siberia?" I said, as though we had often discussed it.

"Yes; did I ever tell you how I got away?"

Constantine took out his handkerchief and flicked a speck of dust from his clothes. He was an exception to the rule that revolutionaries care nothing about their persons--Russian ones especially. He said that it was because his mother was an English-woman, and England is a country where they manufacture soap for the world.

"Yes," he continued thoughtfully, "the Free Command was purgatory, but the Yoort was Hell!" Then he paused a moment, and added, "I was in the Yoort." He went on--

"There were three of us in the cage which boated us along the rivers. Chained and manacled we were, so that our limbs grew numb and dead under the weight of the iron. All Kazan University men, I as good as an Englishman. The others, Leof and Big Peter, had been students in my class. They looked up to me, for it was from me that they had learned to read Herbert Spencer. They had taught themselves to plot against the White Czar. Yet I had been expatriated because it could not be supposed that I could teach them Spencer without Anarchy."

Constantine paused and smiled at the stupidity of his former rulers.

"Well," he continued, "the two who had plotted to blow up his Majesty were sent to the Free Command. They could come and go largely at their own pleasure--in fact, could do most things except visit their old teacher, who for showing them how to read Spencer was isolated in the Yakut Yoort.' Not that the Yakuts meant to be unkind. They were a weak and cowardly set--cruel only to those who could not possibly harm them. They had the responsibility of my keeping. They were paid for looking after me, therefore it was to their interest to keep me alive. But the less this cost them, the greater gainers were they. They knew also that if, by accident, they starved the donkey for the lack of the last straw, a paternal Government would not make the least trouble.

"At first I was not allowed to go out of their dirty tents or still filthier winter turf-caves, than which the Augean stables were a cleaner place of abode. Within the tent the savages stripped themselves naked. The reek of all abominations mingled with the smoke of seal-oil and burning blubber, and the temperature even on the coldest day climbed steadily away up above a hundred. Sometimes I thought it must be the smell that sent it up. The natives had apparently learned their vices from the Russians and their habits of personal cleanliness from monkeys. For long I was never allowed to leave the Yoort for any purpose, even for a moment, without a couple of savages coming after me with long fish-spears.

"But for all that, much is possible, even in Siberia, to a man who has a little money. By-and-by my hosts began to understand that when the inspector visited us to see me in the flesh, there was money enclosed in the letters (previously carefully edited by the Government official), money which could be exchanged at Bulun Store for raw leaf-tobacco. After this discovery, things went much better. I was allowed a little tent to myself within the enclosure, and close to the great common tent in which the half-dozen families lived, each in its screened cubicle, with its own lamp and common rights on the fire of driftwood and blubber in the centre. This was of course much colder than the great tent, but with skins and a couple of lamps I did not do so badly.

"One day I had a letter stealthily conveyed to me from Big Peter, to say that he and Leof were resolved on escaping. They had a boat, he said, concealed about eight miles up the Lena under some willows on a stagnant backwater. They intended to try for the north as soon as the water opened, and hoped then to go towards the west and Wrangell Island, where they felt pretty sure of being picked up by American sealers by the month of August or September.

"This letter stirred all my soul. I did not believe rightly in their chance. It is seldom, I knew, that whalers come that way, or enter far through the Straits of Behring. Still, undoubtedly, a few did so every year. It was worth risking, any way, for any kind of action was better than that ghastly wearing out of body and fatty degeneration of soul. One or two more letters passed, stimulated by the tobacco-money, and the day of rendezvous was fixed.

"Leof and Big Peter were to make their own way down the river, hiding by day and travelling by night. I was to go straight across country and meet them at the tail of the sixth island above Bulun. So, very quietly, I made my preparations, and laid in a store of frozen meat and fish, together with a fish-spear, which I cached due south of my Yoort, never by any chance allowing myself to take a walk towards the north, the direction in which I would finally endeavour to escape. It was very lonely, for I had no one to consult, and no friend to whom to intrust any part of my arrangements. But the suspicion of the Yakuts was now very considerably allayed, for, said they, he is now well fed. A dog in good condition does not go far from home to hunt. He will therefore stay. They knew something about dogs, for they tried their hunting condition by running a finger up and down the spine sharply. If that member was not cut, the dog was in good condition.

"At last, in the dusk of a night in early summer, when the mosquitos were biting with all their first fury and it was still broad day at ten o'clock, I started, walking easily and conspicuously to the south, sitting down occasionally to smoke as though enjoying the night air before turning in, lest any of my hosts should chance to be awake. Once out of sight of the Yoort, I went quickly to my cache of provisions, and, shouldering the whole, I turned my face towards the river and the Northern Ocean.

"I had not gone far when I struck the track which led along the riverside in the direction of Bulun. There, to my intense horror, I saw a man sitting still in a Siberian cart within a few hundred yards, apparently waiting for me to descend. I gave myself up for lost, but, nevertheless, made my way down to him. He was a young man with an uncertain face and weak, shifty eyes.

"'Halloo!' I cried, in order to have the first word, 'what will you take to drive me to Maidy, where I wish to fish?'

"'I cannot drive you to Maidy,' he returned, 'for I am carrying provisions to my father, who has the shop in Bulun; but for two roubles I will give you a lift to Wiledote, where you can cross the river to Maidy in a boat.'

"It was none so evil a chance after all which took me in his way. He was a useless fellow enough, and intolerably conceited. He was for ever asking if I could do this and that, and jeering at me for my incapacity when I disclaimed my ability.

"'You cannot kill a wild goose at thirty paces when it is coming towards you--plaff--so fast! You could not shoot as I. Last week I killed thirty ducks with one discharge of my gun.'

"At this point he drove into a ditch, and we were both spilled out on the tundra, an unpleasant thing in summer when the peaty ground is one vast sponge. At Maidy we met this young man's father. Here I found that it was a good thing for me that I had been isolated at the Yoort, for had I been in the Free Command I should certainly have been spotted. The wily old merchant knew every prisoner in the Command; but as I had always obtained all my supplies indirectly through Big Peter, my name and appearance were alike unknown to him. He approached me, however, with caution and circumspection, and asked for a drink of vodka for the ride which his son had given me.

"'Why should I give thee a drink of vodka?' I asked, lest I should seem suspiciously ready to be friendly.

"'Because my son drove you thirteen versts and more.'

"'But I paid your son for all he has done--two roubles, according to bargain. Why should I buy thee vodka? Thou art better without vodka. Vodka will make thee drunk, and thou shalt be brought before the ispravnik.'

"The dirty old rascal drew himself up.

"'I, even I, am ispravnik, and the horses were mine and the tarantass also.'

"'But thy son drove badly and upset us in the ditch.'

"'Then,' whispered the old scoundrel, coming close up with a look of indescribable cunning on his face, 'give my son no vodka--give me all the vodka.'

"Being glad on any terms to get clear of the precious couple, I gave them both money for their vodka, and set off along the backwaters towards the place described by Leof and Big Peter. I found them there before me, and we lost no time in embarking. I found that they had the boat well provendered and equipped. Indeed, the sight of their luxuries tempted us all to excess; but I reminded them that we were still in a country of game, and that we must save all our supplies till we were out in the ocean. The Lena was swollen by the melting snows, and the boat made slow progress, especially as we had to follow the least frequented arms of the vast delta. We found, however, plenty of fish--specially salmon, which were in great quantities wherever, in the blind alleys of the backwaters, we put down the fish-spear. We were not the only animals who rejoiced in the free and open life of the delta archipelago. Often we saw bears swimming far ahead, but none of them came near our boat.

"One night when the others were sleeping I strayed away over the marshy tundra, plunging through the hundred yards of black mud and moss where the willow-grouse and the little stint were feeding. I came upon a nest or two of the latter, and paused to suck some of the eggs, one of the birds meanwhile coming quite close, putting its head quaintly to the side as though to watch where its property was going, with a view to future recovery. A little farther along I got on the real tundra, and wandered on in the full light of a midnight sun, which coloured all the flat surface of the marshy moorland a deep crimson, and laid deep shadows of purple mist in the great hollow of the Lena river.

"In a little I sat down, and, putting up the collar of my coat--for the air was beginning to bite sharply--I meditated on the chances of our life. It did not seem that we had much more than one chance in a hundred, yet the hundredth chance was indubitably worth the risk--better than inaction, and better than the suicide which would inevitably come with the weakening brain, after another winter such as that we had just passed through.

"Meditating so, I heard a noise behind me, and, turning, found myself almost face to face with a great she-bear, with two cubs of the year running gambolling about her. I had not even so much as a fish-spear with me. With my heart leaping like the piston-rod of an engine, I sat as still as though I had been a pillar of ice carved out of the hummock. The cubs were within twenty paces, and the mother would have passed by but for the roystering youngsters. They came galloping awkwardly up, and nosed all over me, rubbing themselves against my clothes with just such a purring noise as a cat might make. There was no harm in them, but their whining caused the old bear to halt, then abruptly to turn round and come slowly toward me.

"As I sat motionless I saw that she stood on the ground beside me, her nose quite on a level with my face. She came and smelled me over as if uncertain. Then she took a walk all round me. One of the cubs put his long thin snout into the pocket of my fur coat, and nuzzled delightedly among the crumbs. His mother gave him a cuff with her paw which knocked him sprawling three or four paces.

"Having finished her own survey, the bear-mother called away her offspring. The young bear which had first taken the liberty of search, waited till his mother was a few steps off, and then came slyly round and sunk his nose deep in the corresponding pocket on the other side. It was a false move and showed bad judgment. A fish-hook attached itself sharply to his nostril, and he withdrew his head with a howl of pain. The mother turned with an impatient grunt, and I gave myself up for lost. She came back at a great stretching gallop, to where the cub was lying on the snow pawing at his nose. His mother, having turned him over two or three times as if he were a bag of wool, and finding nothing wrong, concluded that he had been stung by a gadfly, or that he was making a fuss about nothing, paying no attention to me whatever. Having finished her inspection, she cuffed him well for his pains, as a troublesome youngster, and disappeared over the tundra. I sat there for the matter of an hour, not daring to move lest the lady-bruin might return. Then fearfully and cautiously I found my way back to the boat and my companions.

"Our voyage after this was quiet and uneventful. Siberia is like no other country in the world, except the great Arctic plains which fence in the Pole on the American side. The very loneliness and vastness of the horizon, like the changeless plain of the sea, envelop you. As soon as you are off the main roads, wide, untrodden, untouched, virgin space swallows you up.

"Specially were we safe in that we had chosen to go to the north. Had we fled to the east, we should have been pursued by swift horses; to the west, the telegraph would have stopped us; to the south, the Altai and Himalaya, to say nothing of three thousand miles, barred our way. But no escape had ever been made to the north, and, so far as we knew, no attempt.

"One evening, while I was rowing, bending a back far too weary to be conscious of any additional fatigue, Leof, who happened to be resting, cried out suddenly, 'The Arctic Ocean!' And there, blue and clear, through the narrow entrance of a channel half-filled with drift-ice, lay the mysterious ocean of which we had thought so long. The wind had been due from the north, and therefore in our teeth, so that not till now had we had any chance of sailing. Now, however, we rigged a sail, and, passing over the bar, we felt for the first time the lift of the waves of the Polar Sea.

"Day by day we held on to the eastward, coasting along almost within hail of the lonely shore. Often the ice threatened to close in upon us. Sometimes the growling of the pack churned and crackled only a quarter of a mile out. One night as we lay asleep--it was my watch, but in that great silence I too had fallen asleep--Big Peter waked first, and in his strong emphatic fashion he rose to take the oars. But there before us were three boats' crews within half a mile, all rowing toward us, while a mile out from shore, near the edge of the pack, lay a steamer, blowing off steam through her escape-valves, as though at the end of her day's run.

"As we woke our first thought was, 'Lost!' For we had no expectation that any other vessel save a Russian cruiser could be in these waters. But out from the sternsheets of the leading cutter fluttered the blessed Stars and Stripes. My companions did not know all the happiness that was included in the sight of that ensign. Leof had reached for his case-knife to take his life, and I snatched it from him ere I told him that of all peoples the Americans would never give us up.

"We were taken on board the U.S. search-vessel Concord, commissioned to seek for the records of the lost American Polar expedition. There we were treated as princes, or as American citizens, which apparently means the same thing. That is all my yarn. The Czar's arm is long, but it does not reach either London or New York."

"And Leof and Big Peter?" I asked, as Constantine ceased speaking. As though with an effort, he recalled himself.

"Big Peter," he said, "is at St. Louis. He is in the pork trade, is married, and has a large family."

"And Leof?"

"Ah, Leof! he went back to Russia at the time of the former Czar's death, and has not been heard of since."

"And you, Constantine, you will never put your nose in the lion's den again--you will never go back to Russia?"

Almost for the first time throughout the long story, Constantine looked me fixedly in the eyes. The strange light of another world, of the fatalist East, looked plainly out of his eyes. Every Russian carries a terrible possibility about with him like a torch of tragic flame, ready to be lighted at any moment.

"That is as may be," he said very slowly; "it is possible that I may go back--at the time of other deaths, and--also--not--return--any--more."

[The end]
S. R. Crockett's short story: North To The Arctic

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