CLOSING UP THE BUSINESS—A BARGAIN SALE—TELEGRAPH TEACUPS
REDUCED—CHEAP SHOVELS FOR GRAVE DIGGING—WIRE FISH NETS AT A
SACRIFICE—OUR NARROWEST ESCAPE—BLOWN OUT TO SEA—SAVED BY THE
"Onward"
We reached Okhotsk about the 1st of August, and after seeing the Major off for St. Petersburg, I sailed again in the Onward and spent most of the next month in cruising along the coast, picking up our scattered working-parties, and getting on board such stores and material as happened to be accessible and were worth saving.
Early in September, I returned to Gizhiga and proceeded to close up the business and make preparations for final departure. Our instructions from the Company were to sell all of our stores that were salable and use the proceeds in the payment of our debts. I have no doubt that this seemed to our worthy directors a perfectly feasible scheme, and one likely to bring in a considerable amount of ready money; but, unfortunately, their acquaintance with our environment was very limited, and their plan, from our point of view, was open to several objections. In the first place, although we had at Gizhiga fifteen or twenty thousand dollars\' worth of unused material, most of it was of such a nature as to be absolutely unsalable in that country. In the second place, the villages of Okhotsk, Yamsk, and Gizhiga, taken together, did not have more than five hundred inhabitants, and it was doubtful whether the whole five hundred could make up a purse of as many rubles, even to ensure their eternal salvation. Assuming, therefore, that the natives wanted our crowbars, telegraph poles, and pickaxes they had little or no money with which to pay for them. However orders were orders; and as soon as practicable we opened, in front of our principal storehouse, a sort of international bazaar, and proceeded to dispose of our superfluous goods upon the best terms possible. We put the price of telegraph wire down until that luxury was within the reach of the poorest Korak family. We glutted the market with pickaxes and long-handled shovels, which we assured the natives would be useful in burying their dead, and threw in a lot of frozen cucumber pickles and other anti-scorbutics which we warranted to fortify the health of the living. We sold glass insulators by the hundred as patent American teacups, and brackets by the thousand as prepared American kindling-wood. We offered soap and candles as premiums to anybody who would buy our salt pork and dried apples, and taught the natives how to make cooling drinks and hot biscuits, in order to create a demand for our redundant lime-juice and baking-powder. We directed all our energies to the creation of artificial wants in that previously happy and contented community, and flooded the whole adjacent country with articles that were of no more use to the poor natives than ice-boats and mouse-traps would be to the Tuaregs of the Saharan desert. In short, we dispensed the blessings of civilisation with a free hand. But the result was not as satisfactory as our directors doubtless expected it to be. The market at last refused to absorb any more brackets and pickaxes; telegraph wire did not make as good fish-nets and dog-harnesses as some of our salesmen confidently predicted that it would; and lime-juice and water, as a beverage, even when drunk out of pressed-crystal insulators, beautifully tinted with green, did not seem to commend itself to the aboriginal mind. So we finally had to shut up our store. We had gathered in—if I remember rightly—about three hundred rubles ($150.), which, with the money that Major Abaza had left us, amounted to something like five hundred. I did not use this cash, however, in the payment of the Company\'s debts. I expected to have to return to the United States through Siberia, and I did not propose to put myself in such a position that I should be compelled to defray my travelling expenses by peddling lime-juice, cucumber pickles, telegraph wire, dried apples, glass insulators, and baking-powder along the road. I therefore persuaded the Company\'s creditors, who, fortunately, were not very numerous, to take tea and sugar in satisfaction of their claims, so that I might save all the cash I had for the overland trip from Okhotsk to St. Petersburg.
Our business in Gizhiga was finally adjusted and settled; our working-parties were all called in; and we were just about to sail in the bark Onward for Okhotsk, when we were suddenly confronted by the deadliest peril that we had encountered in more than two years of arctic experience. Every explorer who goes into a wild, unknown part of the world to make scientific researches, to find a new route for commerce, or to gratify an innate love of adventure, has, now and then, an escape from a violent death which is so extraordinary that he classifies it under the head of "narrow." The peril that he incurs may be momentary in duration, or it may be prolonged for hours, or even days; but in any case, while it lasts it is imminent and deadly. It is something more than ordinary danger—it is peril in which the chances of death are a hundred and of life only one. Such peril advances, as a rule, with terrifying swiftness and suddenness; and if one be unaccustomed to danger, he is liable to be beaten down and overwhelmed by the quick and unexpected shock of the catastrophe. He has no time to rally his nervous forces, or to think how he will deal with the emergency. The crisis comes like an instantaneous "Vision of Sudden Death," which paralyses all his faculties before he has a chance to exercise them. Swift danger of this kind tests to the utmost a man\'s inherited or acquired capacity for instinctive and purely automatic action; but as it generally passes before it has been fairly comprehended, it is not so trying, I think, to the nerves and to the character as the danger that is prolonged to the point of full realisation, and that cannot then be averted or lessened by any possible action. It is only when a man has time to understand and appreciate the impending catastrophe, and can do absolutely nothing to avert it, that he fully realises the possibility of death. Action of any kind is tonic, and when a man can fight danger with his muscles or his brain, he is roused and excited by the struggle; but when he can do nothing except wait, watch the suspended sword of Damocles, and wonder how soon the stroke will come, he must have strong nerves long to endure the strain.
Just before we sailed from Gizhiga in the Onward, eight of us had an escape from death in which the peril came with great swiftness and suddenness, and was prolonged almost to the extreme limit of nervous endurance. On account of the lateness of the season and the rocky, precipitous, and extremely dangerous character of the coast in the vicinity of Gizhiga, the captain of the bark had not deemed it prudent to run into the mouth of the Gizhiga River at the point of the long A-shaped gulf, but had anchored on a shoal off the eastern coast, at a distance from the beacon-tower of nearly twenty miles. From our point of view on land, the vessel was entirely out of sight; but I knew where she lay, and did not anticipate any difficulty in getting on board as soon as I should finish my work ashore.
I intended to go off to the ship with the last of Sandford\'s party on the morning of September 11th, but I was detained unexpectedly by the presentation of a number of native claims and other unforeseen matters of business, and when I had finally settled and closed up everything it was four o\'clock in the afternoon. In the high latitude of north-eastern Siberia a September night shuts in early, and I felt some hesitation about setting out at such an hour, in an open boat, for a vessel lying twenty miles at sea; but I knew that the captain of the Onward was very nervous and anxious to get away from that dangerous locality; the wind, which was blowing a fresh breeze off shore, would soon take us down the coast to the vessel\'s anchorage; and after a moment of indecision I gave the order to start. There were eight men of us, including Sandford, Bowsher, Heck, and four others whose names I cannot now recall.
Our boat was an open sloop-rigged sail-boat, about twenty-five feet in length, which we had bought from a Russian merchant named Phillipeus. I had not before that time paid much attention to her, but so far as I knew she was safe and seaworthy. There was some question, however, as to whether she carried ballast enough for her sail-area, and at the last moment, to make sure of being on the safe side, I had two of Sandford\'s men roll down and put on board two barrels of sugar from the Company\'s storehouse. I then bade good-bye to Dodd and Frost, the comrades who had shared with me so many hardships and perils, took a seat in the stern-sheets of the little sloop, and we were off.
It was a dark, gloomy, autumnal evening, and the stiff north-easterly breeze which came to us in freshening gusts over the snow-whitened crest of the Stanavoi range had a keen edge, suggestive of approaching winter. The sea, however, was comparatively smooth, and until we got well out into the gulf the idea of possible danger never so much as suggested itself to me. But as we left the shelter of the high, iron-bound coast the wind seemed to increase in strength, the sea began to rise, and the sullen, darkening sky, as the gloom of night gathered about us, gave warning of heavy weather. It would have been prudent, while it was still light, to heave the sloop to and take a reef, if not a double reef, in the mainsail; but Heck, who was managing the boat, did not seem to think this necessary, and in another hour, when the necessity of reefing had become apparent to everybody, the sea was so high and dangerous that we did not dare to come about for fear of capsizing, or shipping more green water than we could readily dispose of. So we staggered on before the rising gale, trusting to luck, and hoping every moment that we should catch sight of the Onward\'s lights.
It has always seemed to me that the most dangerous point of sailing in a small open boat in a high combing sea is running dead before the wind. When you are sailing close-hauled, you can luff up into a squall, if necessary, or meet a steep, dangerous sea bow on; but when you are scudding you are almost helpless. You can neither luff, nor spill the wind out of the sail by slackening off the sheet, nor put your boat in a position to take a heavy sea safely. The end of your long boom is liable to trip as you roll and wallow through the waves, and every time you rise on the crest of a big comber your rudder comes out of water, and your bow swings around until there is imminent danger of an accidental jibe.
Heck, who managed our sloop, was a fairly good sailor, but as the wind increased, the darkness thickened, and the sea grew higher and higher, it became evident to me that nothing but unusually good luck would enable us to reach the ship in safety. We were not shipping any water, except now and then a bucketful of foam and spray blown from the crest of a wave; but the boat was yawing in a very dangerous way as she mounted the high, white-capped rollers, and I was afraid that sooner or later she would swing around so far that even with the most skilful steering a jibe would be inevitable.
It was very dark; I had lost sight of the land; and I don\'t know exactly in what part of the gulf we were when the dreaded catastrophe came. The sloop rose on the back of an exceptionally high, combing sea, hung poised for an instant on its crest, and then, with a wide yaw to starboard which the rudder was powerless to check, swooped down sidewise into the hollow, rolling heavily to port and pointing her boom high up into the gale. When I saw the dark outline of the leech of the mainsail waver for an instant, flap once or twice, and then suddenly collapse, I knew what was coming, and shouting at the top of my voice, "Look out Heck! She\'ll jibe!" I instinctively threw myself into the bottom of the boat to escape the boom. With a quick, sudden rush, ending in a great crash, the long heavy spar swept across the boat from starboard to port, knocking Bowsher overboard and carrying away the mast. The sloop swung around into the trough of the sea, in a tangle of sails, sheets, halyards, and standing rigging; and the next great comber came plump into her, filling her almost to the gunwales with a white smother of foam. I thought for a moment that she had swamped and was sinking; but as I rose to a crouching posture and rubbed the saltwater out of my eyes, I saw that she was less than half full, and that i............