CHAPTER XXVII
WITH BARON KLEIST TO EMMA HARBOR
At Emma Town I found the brother of the Mr. Caraieff whom I had met at Cape North. I presented my letter of introduction and was hospitably received. Mr. Caraieff, I found, was a graduate of a college at Vladivostock. He was able to carry on a conversation with me in quite intelligible English and had no difficulty in understanding me. He invited me to stay at his home as long as I liked. I thanked him but said that I must get over to the American shore as soon as possible.
We talked over ways and means. The ice in Bering Strait, I found, had broken up so that I should be unable to get across by sledge; later on I could get a whale-boat, he said, with some Eskimo, to take me across to the Diomede Islands and from there another whale-boat or a skin-boat to get across to Cape Prince of Wales. That would be some time in May, just when would depend entirely on the amount of ice in the waters of the Strait. The present was a kind of between-season time when it was too late for sledges and too earlyfor boats. It would be June before any ships would get to East Cape.
It seemed to me that my best chance of getting immediately in touch with Ottawa would be to go south to Anadyr and send a message from the wireless station there. Mr. Caraieff was inclined to think that the season was already so advanced that I would not really save any time in that way, because the ice would be breaking up in the rivers that I must cross on the way and there was an even chance that when I reached Anadyr I might find that the wireless was out of commission, in which event my journey would be in vain. At Emma Harbor on Providence Bay was a Mr. Thompson, he said, who had a schooner with a gasoline engine. He would be leaving for Nome the first week in June and would take me with him.
Thinking things over I felt that the trip to Anadyr would be worth the risk, for even if the wireless were out of commission there I could still get across to Nome, so the next day, with Mr. Caraieff’s assistance, I made all arrangements with some natives to take me to Indian Point, where I could get some other natives to take me on to Anadyr. We planned to start in a day or so and I considered the matter settled, when over night, so to speak, came a rapidly increasing swelling in my legs and feet, due, I suppose, to the punishmentthey had received, and before I realized it I found myself a helpless invalid, forced to accept Mr. Caraieff’s kind hospitality.
My host had a Russian servant by the name of Koshimuroff, who was most assiduous in his efforts to restore my legs to their normal condition, massaging them faithfully at Mr. Caraieff’s direction. He filled a large pork-barrel about half full of warm water and I took the first bath I had had since I left Shipwreck Camp. He also cut my hair, what there was left of it; the constant use of the hood had literally worn much of it off the top of my head; several months elapsed before it grew out again. I also shaved, and when I saw myself in the looking-glass, after shaving and having my hair cut, I hardly recognized myself.
My stay here was made pleasant by the opportunity I had, when my eyes became more nearly normal, to read the magazines which Mr. Charles Carpendale, an Australian-born trader, with a station at the same place as Mr. Caraieff’s, brought me. These had been sent across from Nome the previous summer and were not what might be described in the language of the train-boy as “all the latest magazines,” but they were a pleasure to me, just the same, as they are to all the traders who are scattered up and down the Siberian coast.
The third day after my arrival I was sittingalone in the front room of Mr. Caraieff’s house when in walked a Russian gentleman who shook hands with me and introduced himself in English as Baron Kleist, the Supervisor of Northeastern Siberia. He passed on in search of my host and shortly afterwards returned with him and we all sat and talked, while I showed the Baron my charts. I had been looking for him for several days, for I knew that he had left his home at Emma Harbor shortly after New Year’s Day and had been on an inspection trip, across country to Koliuchin Bay and eastward along the coast, ever since. He was now bound home again.
He had heard of me from Mr. Olsen at Koliuchin Bay and had been told by him that I was a man of fifty-five or so. “I see that you are much younger than I was told you were,” he said. Later on in the progress of our pleasant acquaintance, as I began to show the good effects of rest and substantial food, he said, “You’re getting younger every day. After all there is not much difference in our ages.” He was a man of about forty, only a few years older than myself.
He told us all the news. It was two months old but I had heard hardly any news of the outside world for nearly a year. Nothing unusual had happened or seemed likely to happen. Peace reigned everywhere. He told us of the discoverythe previous year of Nicholas II Land off the Taimir Peninsula by the Russian shipsTaimirandVaigatchunder the command of Captain Vilkitski, an achievement of which as a Russian he might be justly proud.
Baron Kleist discussed with me the best course for me to pursue in getting word to the Canadian Government. He planned to leave about May 10 for Emma Harbor, he said, and he asked me to go along with him and be his guest at his home. Mr. Caraieff from Cape North had come to East Cape about the time the baron arrived, and I had made arrangements for him to take me to Emma Harbor, so it was arranged that we should all travel together. Kataktovick I would leave at East Cape; we had taken him on at Point Barrow, but he said he wanted to go to Point Hope. I could give him provisions and outfit enough to last him for some time and, after navigation opened, he could get a ship to take him across to Point Hope.
Corrigan went back to Cape Serdze. Before he left he begged very hard for my binoculars, so I finally gave them to him on condition that he would never part with them; this he promised faithfully.
My rest was gradually putting me in condition to travel again. At first I was almost as helpless as a child. I suffered no pain, but the swelling inmy legs and feet was severe and I seemed to have lost every bit of energy I had ever possessed. My eyes were bloodshot and I was so stiff I could hardly move hand or foot. Kataktovick had little swelling but suffered a good deal of pain in his legs. We were both pretty thin; I had lost thirty or forty pounds and Kataktovick was equally worn down.
Before I began to recover from this swelling of the legs, I developed an acute attack of tonsilitis. It was the first trouble of the kind that I had experienced in all my Arctic work. I recall that on the North Pole expedition, while we were encamped at Cape Sheridan and most of us were away on hunting trips, MacMillan and Doctor Goodsell opened a case of books and both came down with violent head colds. The books were brand new books, too; apparently they had been packed by a man with a cold. The baron had a clinical thermometer with him and he found that my temperature was well above normal. My throat was ulcerated and sore but I used peroxide and alum and after a time the infection subsided.
When the tenth of May came, however, the tonsilitis was still with me and I was conscious that it had weakened my whole system for the time being, in addition to the physical weariness of which the swelling in my legs and feet was a symptom.The baron was anxious to get away, for the season was advancing, and, at any moment, a thaw might set in which would break up the ice in the rivers and interfere with the journey. My legs and feet had more strength in them by now but I could not walk as well as usual. So it was decided that, as we were now ready, we might as well start.
Kataktovick saw us off; we were parting, here. I thanked him, as I bade him good-by, for all that he had done, and told him how greatly I was indebted to him for his constant help and for his faith and trust in me. The money due him would be paid to him later on, I said, after I had got back to civilization. I asked Mr. Carpendale to tell the Chukches what a good boy Kataktovick was. I gave him the rifle we had carried on our journey and some other things we had with us, and then we shook hands warmly and parted.
The day was not a cold one; the thermometer, in fact, was about freezing and there was a good deal of fog. Consequently, the travelling was not so easy as it might have been but we had good dogs and good drivers, and, as we had postponed our start until the late afternoon when the snow was beginning to get harder, we made considerable progress before we stopped at tenP.M.at an aranga for tea and bear meat. We then kept on our way until four o’clock in the morning—thelight was sufficient now for travelling all through the twenty-four hours—and then we reached another aranga, where we slept. We had intended to make an aranga still further on before stopping but the snow was soft and the fog was so thick that we had difficulty in telling where we were, so we decided not to risk too much in the face of such adverse weather conditions but to stop while we could.
We drank our tea and turned in. At about elevenA. M.we awoke and breakfasted on some things we had brought with us from East Cape. It was now snowing very hard and there was no use in setting out, so we decided to wait until night. At sixP. M.it was snowing harder than ever, so there was nothing to do but to have supper and turn in again. During the day I read a good deal. Mr. Carpendale had given the baron some books and now, as later on in the journey, when I could not sleep I would read. I recall that at this time I was absorbed in Robert Hichens’s “Bella Donna.” The light inside the aranga was poor so I bundled myself up in my furs and sat in the outer apartment among the dogs and sledges where I could see.
My own dogs I had left with Mr. Caraieff at East Cape. He agreed to keep them until I should want them again. The problem of feedingour dogs along the way to Emma Harbor promised to be a fairly pressing one and so it proved; in fact, the baron was constantly worried by it. The season had advanced and the supply of meat which the natives had laid in during the previous fall was beginning to be exhausted.
The snow turned again to rain during the night of the twelfth and it looked very much as if we should be unable to travel. My throat was gradually getting better but was still sore and painful. We ate a good supper of reindeer meat well cooked by the baron and went to bed.
Not long after midnight the rain held up and the wind, which had shifted to the northwest, cleared the air and lowered the temperature, so that a crust formed on the snow and the going was fairly good. We got away at about two o’clock on the morning of May 13, and for a while made good time, but before long the wind dropped and veered to the southeast, bringing in a pelting rain from Bering Sea. I had tried to get an oilskin coat at East Cape but could find none to fit me; my fur clothing got soaked through after a while and, though it was a rather warm rain, I was afraid of a recurrence of the tonsilitis. Occasionally I dropped off the sledge for exercise to keep warm but my legs were still weak and I could not keep up with the dogs, so I had to get on again and ride. As the temperaturegrew colder the rain turned to a very wet snow-storm, accompanied by a thick fog. We could hardly see ahead of the dogs and steered altogether by compass.
We were bound for a reindeer settlement half way along the north side of St. Lawrence Bay and after a while we brought up at what seemed to the natives a place they knew; on looking around, however, they discovered that they were uncertain where they were. Working our way along slowly, we finally got out to the slopes of the bay shore and stopped. The Eskimo were deep in a discussion of where they were and, as the baron told me, seemed clear enough about it, when suddenly the dogs started, pell-mell. I managed to drop on to the sledge and before I could do more than catch my breath we were tearing down hill at a terrific pace. The dogs had scented the reindeer and had started in their direction without more ado. How we got along without being flung bodily against the numerous boulders that lined our pathway and killed outright, I never knew; we reached the bottom of the slope without a mishap. Here we came across a trail which brought us to the settlement.
The reindeer here were the first I had seen in Siberia; they had spent the winter inland, but now that spring was opening they had come out to thecoast. The two young men who owned them were fine, tall fellows, somewhat resembling North American Indians; they had been out with their reindeer in all weathers during the winter, sometimes, the baron told me, for three days in succession, and their faces were burned almost black with cold and exposure. They were very hospitable and, as they had just cooked some reindeer meat as we dropped in, they gave us an enjoyable meal. My appetite was beginning to come back and my throat, in spite of the rain and fog, was better.
Refreshed and reassured as to our progress we started on our way again, crossing the ice of St. Lawrence Bay and following its shores to the east. We then went across the land for several miles and out on to the ice in the mouth of Mechigme Bay. This journey was full of interest to me. I rode most of the time and could give myself up to the enjoyment of the wild country through which we were passing. The distance from East Cape to Emma Harbor is about the same as that from New York to Boston. We averaged four or five miles an hour. Our dog-drivers were skilful and knew what they were about; their conversation was unintelligible to me but I had every confidence in their ability.
One of our drivers was about four feet tall; in an Anglo-Saxon community, I suppose, he would havebeen known as Goliath, but among these more literal-minded Siberians he was called “Little.” He had a small motor-boat at Indian Point and, if I could not get a ship at Emma Harbor, it would be a great convenience for Little if I went across to Alaska in his motor-boat, because he wanted to go over to Nome, anyway, when the season was far enough advanced for the voyage and I could be navigator, an arrangement which, as a possibility, was quite agreeable to me.
Little, like Artemus Ward’s bear, was “an amoosin’ little cuss.” He could manage to understand pidgin English and was well pleased with himself over it. “Me make baron speak plenty English,” he would say.
From Mechigme Bay we followed the coast west for a short distance and then crossed the mouth of the bay to the south shore; following the coast for about twenty miles we went across the land to Neegchan. It was foggy all the time and when we reached a group of arangas at a place called Mesigman and stopped to sleep, I was wet to the skin. The aranga where we were entertained, however, was warm and comfortable; I took off my clothes, wrapped myself in a nice deerskin robe and went to sleep.
At six o’clock in the afternoon we started on again. The weather had cleared up and the surfaceof the snow was hard, so the going was wonderfully good. For some time we travelled over the sea-ice and had to make a wide detour to avoid a long lane of open water. We stopped once at an aranga on the way for tea and at four o’clock reached a place called Elewn. Here we stayed until six o’clock in the afternoon, when we again got away for an all-night journey.
We were now on the last lap and the dogs knew it, so they travelled at even greater speed than before. At one point as we were going along, we met a Chukch woman driving a team of dogs. Our drivers stopped and talked with her. The baron asked me what I thought about her; his question rather puzzled me but I replied that I supposed the woman was driving the dogs and doing other things that men do, just as I had been accustomed to see women doing among the other Eskimo whom I had known. Then he said that, on the contrary, this was really not a woman at all but a man who had, so to speak, turned himself into a woman. It was, it seemed, a custom among these Siberians to do this and a man who thus transformed himself acted like a woman, dressed like a woman, talked like a woman and was looked upon by the other Chukches as a woman. The baron knew the whys and wherefores of this extraordinary custom butwhen he tried to explain it to me his English proved unequal to the occasion.
Several times during the day we stopped to have tea. At one place the Eskimo told us that they had seen or heard of a whaler at Indian Point. The master was Captain Pederson, they said, but when they described the ship, their account did not tally with the description of theElvira, the ship that Captain Pederson commanded when theKarlukleft Nome. It was afterwards to be made known to me that theElvirahad been crushed and sunk off the northern coast of Alaska the previous fall, during the stormy season when we were being driven offshore in theKarluk, and that Captain Pederson had made his way overland to Fairbanks, had thence gone to San Francisco and taken command of another ship, theHerman.
After we left the ice of Chechokium we crossed the divide to Emma Harbor. The mist lay low over the high mountains on the peninsula between Emma Harbor and Providence Bay. From time to time the wind would roll this mist away and reveal the peaks, stern and forbidding. The going up the divide was steep and we had a hard climb; when we got to the top I could look down to Emma Harbor and see open water out into Providence Bay. The land was white with snow and theice nearer shore was unbroken, so that the open water beyond seemed as black as coal-tar, shining against the white. We went down the other side of the ridge at a terrific rate, the dogs running free and the sledge, with the brake-pole grinding hard, careening from side to side in a way that almost took a man’s breath away.
It was at seven o’clock on the morning of May 16 that we reached Emma Harbor and the home of Baron Kleist. We had been six days coming from East Cape and two months had gone by since I had parted from the men on Icy Spit, Wrangell Island. If all went well I should be back for them in two months more and I hoped they were holding out all right and would be in good shape when I reached them again. Their suspense, I knew, would be acute until they were sure that I had succeeded in crossing Long Strait to Siberia and getting over to Alaska.
Baron Kleist had a fine house at Emma Harbor. It was well built of heavy timbers, the materials having been brought from Vladivostock five years before. It cost about fifteen thousand dollars, I believe, and was warm and comfortable. The baron had an excellent chef and we enjoyed a substantial breakfast, which in almost no time after our arrival had been prepared for us. Then the baron’s own physician, Doctor Golovkoff, who hadbeen with him through the Russo-Japanese War, looked after my legs and throat. He took me under his especial care during my stay and had me in pretty good condition by the time I left.
It was a pleasure for me to find myself once more in a comfortable home. The baroness was spending the winter visiting her relatives in Russia but the numerous touches of a feminine hand were unmistakable throughout the establishment.
At Emma Harbor I met Mr. Thompson, who had a trading-store there. Born on the Baltic, he had been a sea-faring man in his earlier days, serving in German, French and English ships, and could speak English very well. He told me that Captain Pederson had been in the neighborhood with his new ship, theHerman, and through him I got a Chukch to take a letter to the captain, telling him where I was and asking him if it would be possible for him to call for me and take me across to the American shore.
Mr. Caraieff had a brother at Indian Point and the latter came over from his trading-station there to see us. He stayed a day or two and when he went home he took a letter for Captain Pederson. I sent out several other letters by Chukches to catch Captain Pederson and, in this way, the news of my desire to get in touch with him spread among the natives along the coast.