Vikings of the Pacific Part 2

[12] Berg says Bering's two sons, Thomas and Unos, were also with him in Siberia.

[13] _Sauer_ relates this incident.

[14] See _Muller_, p. 93, 1764 edition: "The men, notwithstanding want, misery, sickness, were obliged to work continually in the cold and wet, and the sickness was so dreadful that the sailors who governed the rudder were obliged to be led to it by others, who could hardly walk.

They durst not carry much sail, because there was n.o.body to lower them in case of need, and they were so thin a violent wind would have torn them to pieces. The rain now changed to hail and snow."

{37}

CHAPTER II

1741-1743

CONTINUATION OF BERING, THE DANE

Frightful Sufferings of the Castaways on the Commander Islands--The Vessel smashed in a Winter Gale, the Sick are dragged for Refuge into Pits of Sand--Here, Bering perishes, and the Crew Winter--The Consort s.h.i.+p under Chirikoff Ambushed--How the Castaways reach Home

Without pilot or captain, the _St. Peter_ drifted to the swirling current of the sea along a high, rocky, forbidding coast where beetling precipices towered sheer two thousand feet above a white fret of reefs, that gave the ocean the appearance of a ploughed field. The sick crawled mutely back to their berths. Bering was past caring what came and only semiconscious. Waxel, who had compelled the crew to vote for landing here under the impression born of his own despair,--that this was the coast of Avacha Bay, Kamchatka,--saw with dismay in the sh.o.r.es gliding past the keel momentary proofs that he was wrong. Poor Waxel had fought desperately against the depression that precedes scurvy; but now, with a dumb hopelessness settling over the s.h.i.+p, the invisible hand of the scourge {38} was laid on him, too. He went below decks completely fordone.

The underling officers still upon their feet, whose false theories had led Bering into all this disaster, were now quarrelling furiously among themselves, blaming one another. Only Ofzyn, the lieutenant, who had opposed the landing, and Steller, the scientist, remained on the lookout with eyes alert for the impending destruction threatened from the white fret of the endless reefs. Rocks rose in wild, jagged ma.s.ses out of the sea. Deep V-shaped ravines, shadowy in the rising moonlight, seemed to recede into the rock wall of the coast, and only where a river poured out from one of these ravines did there appear to be any gap through the long lines of reefs where the surf boomed like thunder. The coast seemed to trend from northwest to southeast, and might have been from thirty to fifty miles long, with strange bizarre arches of rock overhanging endless fields of kelp and seaweed. The land was absolutely treeless except for willow brushwood the size of one's finger. Lichens, moss, sphagnum, coated the rocks. Inland appeared nothing but billowing reaches of sedges and s.h.i.+ngle and gra.s.s.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Steller's Arch on Bering Island, named after the scientist Steller, of Bering's Expedition.]

Suddenly Steller noticed that the ebb-tide was causing huge combing rollers that might dash the s.h.i.+p against the rocks. Rus.h.i.+ng below decks he besought Bering's permission to sound and anchor. The early darkness of those northern lat.i.tudes had been followed by moon-light bright as day. Within a mile of the east sh.o.r.e, {39} Steller ordered the anchor dropped, but by this time, the rollers were smas.h.i.+ng over decks with a quaking that seemed to tear the s.h.i.+p asunder. The sick were hurled from their berths. Officers rushed on deck to be swept from their feet by blasts of salt spray, and just ahead, through the moonlight, could be seen the sharp edge of a long reef where the beach combers ran with the tide-rip of a whirlpool. There is something inexpressibly terrifying even from a point of safety in these beach combers, clutching their long arms hungrily for prey. The confusion of orders and {40} counter-orders, which no man had strength to carry out, of terrified cries and prayers and oaths--was indescribable. The numb hopelessness was succeeded by sheer panic terror. Ofzyn threw out a second anchor that raked bottom.

Then, another mountain roller thundering over the s.h.i.+p with a crash--and the first cable snapped like a pistol shot. The s.h.i.+p rebounded; then drove before the back-wash of the angry sea. With no fate possible but the wall of rocks ahead, the terrorized crew began heaving the dead overboard in the moonlight; but another roaring billow smashed the _St.

Peter_ squarely broadside. The second hawser ripped back with the whistling rebound of a whip-lash, and Ofzyn was in the very act of dropping the third and last anchor, when straight as a bullet to the mark, as if hag-ridden by the northern demons of sailor fear, hurled the _St. Peter_ for the reef! A third time the beach combers crashed down like a falling mountain. When the booming sheets of blinding spray had cleared and the panic-stricken sailors could again see, the _St. Peter_ was staggering stern foremost, sh.o.r.e ahead, like a drunken s.h.i.+p. Quick as shot, Ofzyn and Steller between them heaved over the last anchor. The flukes gripped--raked--then caught--and held.

The s.h.i.+p lay rocking inside a reef in the very centre of a sheltered cove not six hundred yards from land. The beach comber had either swept her through a gap in the reef, or hurled her clear above the reefs into shelter.

{41} For seven hours the s.h.i.+p had battled against tide and counter-current. Now, at midnight, with the air clear as day, Steller had the small boat lowered and with another--some say Waxel, others Pleneser, the artist, or Ofzyn, of the Arctic expedition--rowed ash.o.r.e to reconnoitre. Sometime between the evening of November 5 and the morning of November 6, their eyes met such a view as might have been witnessed by an Alexander Selkirk, or Robinson Crusoe. The exact landing was four or five miles north of what is now known as Cape Khitroff, below the centre of the east coast of Bering Island.[1] Poor Waxel would have it, they were on the coast of Kamchatka, and spoke of sending messengers for help to Petropaulovsk on Avacha Bay; but, as they were to learn soon enough, the nearest point in Kamchatka was one hundred miles across the sea.

Avacha Bay was two hundred miles away. And the Spanish possessions of America, three thousand. They found the landing place literally swarming with animal life unknown to the world before. An enormous mammal, more than three tons in weight, with hind quarters like a whale, snout and fore fins resembling a cow, grazed in herds on the fields of sea-kelp and gazed languidly without fear on the newcomer--Man. This was the famous sea-cow described by the enthusiastic Steller, but long since extinct.

Blue foxes swarmed round the very feet of the {42} men with such hungry boldness that half a dozen could be clubbed to death before the others scampered. Later, Steller was to see the seal rookeries, that were to bring so much wealth to the world, the sea-lions that roared along the rocks till the surf shook, the sea-otter whose rare pelt, more priceless than beaver or sable, was to cause the exploration and devastation of the northern half of the Pacific coast.

The land was as it had appeared to the s.h.i.+p--utterly treeless except for trailing willows. The brooks were not yet frozen, and snow had barely powdered the mountains; but where the coves ran in back between the mountains from the sea were gullies or ditches of sand and sedge. When Steller presently found a broken window casing of Kamchatka half buried in the sand, it gave Waxel some confidence about being on the mainland of Asia; but before Steller had finished his two days' reconnoitre, there was no mistaking the fact--this was an island, and a barren one at the best, without tree or shelter; and here the castaways must winter.

The only provisions now remaining to the crew were grease and mouldy flour. Steller at once went to work. Digging pits in the narrow gullies of sand, he covered these over with driftwood, the rotten sail-cloth, moss, mud, and foxskins. Cracks were then c.h.i.n.ked up with clay and more foxskins. By the 8th of November he was ready to have the crew landed; but the s.h.i.+p rolled helpless as a log to the tide, and the few well {43} men of the staff, without distinction of officers from sailors, had to stand waist-deep in ice-slush to steady the stretchers made of mast poles and sail-cloth, that received the sick lowered over decks. Many of the scurvy stricken had not been out of their berths for six weeks. The fearful depression and weakness, that forewarn scurvy, had been followed by the pains, the swollen limbs, the blue spots that presage death. A spongy excrescence covered the gums. The teeth loosened. The slightest noise was enough to throw the patient into a paroxysm of anguished fright; and some died on the decks immediately on contact with the cuttingly cold air. Others expired as they were lowered to the stretchers; others, as they were laid along the strip of sandy sh.o.r.e, where the bold foxes were already devouring the dead and could scarcely be driven off by the dying. In this way perished nine of the _St.

Peter's_ crew during the week of the landing.

By November 10, all was in readiness for Bering's removal from the s.h.i.+p.

As the end approached, his irritability subsided to a quieted cheerfulness; and he could be heard mumbling over thanks to G.o.d for the great success of his early life. Wrapped in furs, fastened to a stretcher, the Dane was lowered over the s.h.i.+p, carried ash.o.r.e, and laid in a sand pit. All that day it had been dull and leaden; and just as Bering was being carried, it began to snow heavily. Steller occupied the sand pit next to the commander; and in {44} addition to acting as cook and physician to the entire crew, became Bering's devoted attendant.

By the 13th of November, a long sand pit had been roofed over as a sort of hospital with rug floor; and here Steller had the stricken sailors carried in from the sh.o.r.e. Poor Waxel, who had fought so bravely, was himself carried ash.o.r.e on November 21.

Daily, officers tramped inland exploring; and daily, the different reconnoitring parties returned with word that not a trace of human habitation, of wood, or the way to Kamchatka had been discovered.

Another island there was to the east--now known as Copper Island--and two little islets of rock; but beyond these, nothing could be descried from the highest mountains but sea--sea. Bering Island, itself, is some fifty miles long by ten wide, very high at the south, very swampy at the north; but the Commander Group is as completely cut off from both Asia and America as if it were in another world. The climate was not intensely cold; but it was so damp, the very clothing rotted; and the gales were so terrific that the men could only leave the mud huts or _yurts_ by crawling on all fours; and for the first three weeks after the landing, blast on blast of northern hurricane swept over the islands.

The poor old s.h.i.+p rode her best at anchor through the violent storms; but on November 28 she was seen to snap her cable and go staggering drunkenly to open sea. The terror of the castaways at this spectacle {45} was unspeakable. Their one chance of escape in spring seemed lost; but the beach combers began rolling landward through the howling storm; and when next the spectators looked, the _St. Peter_ was driving ash.o.r.e like a hurricane s.h.i.+p, and rushed full force, nine feet deep with her prow into the sands not a pistol shot away from the crew. The next beach comber could not budge her. Wind and tide left her high and dry, fast in the sand.

But what had become of Chirikoff, on board the _St. Paul_, from the 20th of June, when the vessels were separated by storm? Would it have been any easier for Bering if he had known that the consort s.h.i.+p had been zigzagging all the while less than a week's cruise from the _St. Peter_?

When the storm, which had separated the vessels, subsided, Chirikoff let the _St. Paul_ drift in the hope that Bering might sight the missing vessel. Then he steered southeast to lat.i.tude 48 degrees in search of the commander; but on June 23 a council of officers decided it was a waste of time to search longer, and ordered the vessel to be headed northeastward. The wind was light; the water, clear; and Chirikoff knew, from the pilot-birds following the vessel, from the water-logged trees churning past, from the herds of seal floundering in the sea, that land must lie in this direction. A bright lookout was kept for the first two weeks of July. Two hundred and forty miles were traversed; and on a calm, {46} clear night between the 13th and 15th of July, there loomed above the horizon the dusky heights of a wooded mountainous land in lat.i.tude 55 degrees 21 minutes. Chirikoff was in the Alexander Archipelago. Daybreak came with the _St. Paul_ only four miles off the conspicuous heights of Cape Addington. Chirikoff had discovered land some thirty-six hours before Bering. The new world of mountains and forests roused the wildest enthusiasm among the Russians. A small boat was lowered; but it failed to find a landing. A light wind sprang up, and the vessel stood out under shortened sails for the night. By morning the wind had increased, and fog had blurred out all outlines of the new-found land. Here the ocean currents ran northward; and by morning of the 17th, when the sun pierced the washed air and the mountains began to appear again through jagged rifts of cloud-wraith, Chirikoff found himself at the entrance of a great bay, girt by forested mountains to the water's edge, beneath the high cone of what is now known as Mount Edgec.u.mbe, {47} in Sitka Sound. Sitka Sound is an indentation about fifteen miles from north to south, with such depths of water that there is no anchorage except south and southwestward of Mount Edgec.u.mbe.

Impenetrable woods lined the mountains to the very sh.o.r.e. Great trunks of uprooted trees swept past the s.h.i.+p continually. Even as the clouds cleared, leaving vast forests and mountain torrents and snowy peaks visible, a hazy film of intangible gloom seemed to settle over the shadowy harbor.[2]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Glacier]

Chirikoff wished to refill his water-casks. Also, he was ambitious to do what the scientists cursed Bering for not doing off St. Elias--explore thoroughly the land newly found. The long-boat was lowered with Abraham Dementieff and ten armed men. The crew was supplied with muskets, a bra.s.s cannon, and provisions for several days. Chirikoff arranged a simple code of signals with the men--probably a column of smoke, or sunlight thrown back by a tin mirror--by which he could know if all went well. Then, with a cheer, the first Russians to put foot on the soil of America bent to the oar and paddled swiftly away from the _St. Paul_ for the shadow of the forested mountains etched from the inland sh.o.r.e. The long-boat seemed smaller as the distance from the _St. Paul_ increased.

Then men and boat disappeared behind an {48} elbow of land. A flash of reflected light from the hidden sh.o.r.e; and Chirikoff knew the little band of explorers had safely landed. The rest of the crew went to work putting things s.h.i.+pshape on the _St. Paul_. The day pa.s.sed with more safety signals from the sh.o.r.e. The crew of the _St. Paul_ slept sound out in mid-harbor unsuspicious of danger. Another day pa.s.sed, and another night. Not so many signals! Had the little band of Russians gone far inland for water, and the signals been hidden by the forest gloom? A wind was singing in the rigging--threatening a landward gale that might carry the _St. Paul_ somewhat nearer those rocky sh.o.r.es than the Russians could wish. Chirikoff sent a sailor spying from the lookout of the highest yard-arm. No signals at all this day; nor the next day; nor the next! The _St. Paul_ had only one other small boat. Fearing the jolly-boat had come to grief among the rocks and counter-currents, Chirikoff bade Sidor Savelief, the bo'swain, and six armed sailors, including carpenters to repair damages, take the remaining boat and go to Dementieff's rescue. The strictest orders were given that both boats return at once. Barely had the second boat rounded the elbow of sh.o.r.e where the first boat had disappeared when a great column of smoke burst from the tree-tops of the hidden sh.o.r.e. To Chirikoff's amazement, the second crew made no signal. The night pa.s.sed uneasily. Sailors were on the watch. s.h.i.+p's rigging was put in shape. Dawn was witnessed {49} by eager eyes gazing sh.o.r.eward. The relief was inexpressible when two boats--a long and a short one like those used by the two crews--were seen rounding the elbow of land. The landward breeze was now straining the _St. Paul's_ hawsers. Glad to put for open sea to weather the coming gale, Chirikoff ordered all hands on deck and anchors up. The small boats came on with a bounce over the ocean swell; but suddenly one of Chirikoff's Russians pointed to the approaching crafts. There was a pause in the rattle of anchor chains. There was a pause in the bouncing of the small boats, too. They were _not_ the Russian jolly-boats. They were canoes; and the canoes were filled with savages as dumb with astonishment at the apparition of the _St. Paul_ as the Russians were at the canoes. Before the Russians had come to their senses, or Chirikoff had time to display presents to allure the savages on board as hostages, the Indians rose in their places, uttered a war-whoop that set the rocks echoing, and beating their paddles on the gun'els, scudded for sh.o.r.e.

Gradually the meaning dawned on Chirikoff. His two crews had been destroyed. His small boats were lost. His supply of fresh water was running low. The fire that he had observed had been a fire of orgies over mutilated men. The _St. Paul_ was on a hostile sh.o.r.e with such a gale blowing as threatened destruction on the rocks. There Was nothing to do but scud for open sea. When the gale abated, Chirikoff returned to Sitka and cruised {50} the sh.o.r.e for some sign of the sailors: but not a trace of the lost men could be descried. By this time water was so scarce, the men were wringing rain moisture out of the sails and distilling sea-water. A council was called. All agreed it would be worse than folly to risk the entire crew for the twelve men, who were probably already dead. There was no small boat to land for more water; and the _St. Paul_ was headed about with all speed for the northwest.[3]

Slant rain settled over the sea. The wind increased and grew more violent. The _St. Paul_ drove ahead like a ghost form pursued through a realm of mist. Toward the end of July, when the weather cleared, stupendous mountains covered with snow were seen on the northwestward horizon like walls of ice with the base awash in thundering sea.

Thousands of cataracts, clear as crystal, flashed against the mountain sides; and in places the rock wall rose sheer two thousand feet from the roaring tide. Inlets, gloomy with forested mountain walls where impetuous streams laden with the milky silt of countless glaciers tore their way through the rocks to the sea, could be seen receding inland through the fog. Then the foul weather settled over the sea again; and by the first {51} week of August, with baffling winds and choppy sea, the _St. Paul_ was veering southwestward where Alaska projects a long arm into the Pacific. Chirikoff had pa.s.sed the line where forests dwarf to willows, and willows to sedges, and sedges to endless leagues of rolling tundras. Somewhere near Kadiak, land was again sighted. When the fog lifted, the vapor of far volcanoes could be seen hanging lurid over the mountain tops.

Wind was followed by dead calm, when the sails literally fell to pieces with rain-rot in the fog; and on the evening of September 8 the becalmed crew were suddenly aroused by the tide-rip of roaring breakers. Heaving out all anchors at once, Chirikoff with difficulty made fast to rocky bottom. In the morning, when the fog lifted, he found himself in the centre of a shallow bay surrounded by the towering cliffs of what is now known as Adakh Island. While waiting for a breeze, he saw seven canoe loads of savages put out from sh.o.r.e chanting some invocation. The Russians threw out presents, but the savages took no notice, gradually surrounding the _St. Paul_. All this time Chirikoff had been without any water but the stale casks brought from Kamchatka; and he now signalled his desperate need to the Indians. They responded by bringing bladders full of fresh water; but they refused to mount the decks. And by evening fourteen canoe loads of the taciturn savages were circling threateningly round the Russians. Luckily, {52} at nightfall a wind sprang up.

Chirikoff at once slipped anchor and put to sea.

By the third week of August, the rations of rye meal had been reduced to once a day instead of twice in order to economize water. Only twelve casks of water remained; and Chirikoff was fifteen hundred miles from Kamchatka. Cold, hunger, thirst, then did the rest. Chirikoff himself was stricken with scurvy by the middle of September, and one sailor died of the scourge. From the 26th, one death a day followed in succession.

Though down, Chirikoff was not beaten. Discipline was maintained among the hungry crew; and each day Chirikoff issued exact orders. Without any attempt at steering, the s.h.i.+p drifted westward. No more land was seen by the crew; but on the 2d of October, the weather clearing, an observation was taken of the sun that showed them they were nearing Kamchatka. On the 8th, land was sighted; but one man alone, the pilot, Yelagin, had strength to stay at the helm till Avacha Bay was approached, when distress signals were fired from the s.h.i.+p's cannon to bring help from land. Poor Croyere de l'Isle, kinsman to the map makers whose mistakes had caused disaster, sick unto death of the scurvy, had kept himself alive with liquor and now insisted on being carried ash.o.r.e. The first breath of clear air above decks was enough. The scientist fell dead within the home harbor. Chirikoff was landed the same day, all unaware that at times in the mist and {53} rain he had been within from fifteen to forty miles of poor Bering, zigzagging across the very trail of the afflicted sister s.h.i.+p.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sea Cows.]

By December the entire crew of Bering's castaways, prisoners on the sea-girt islands of the North Pacific, were lodged in five underground huts on the bank of a stream. In 1885, when these mud huts or _yurts_ were examined, they were seen to have walls of peat three feet thick. To each man was given a pound of flour. For the rest, their food must be what they caught or clubbed--mainly, at first, the sea-otter, whose flesh was unpalatable to the taste and tough as leather. Later, Steller discovered that the huge sea-cow--often thirty-five feet long--seen pasturing on the fields of sea-kelp at low tide, afforded food of almost the same quality as the land cow. Seaweed grew in miniature forests on the island; and on this pastured the monster bovine of the sea--true fish in its hind quarters but oxlike in its head and its habits--herding together like cattle, snorting like a horse, moving the neck from side to side as it grazed, with the hind leg a fin, the fore fin a leg, udder between the fore legs, and in place of teeth, plates. Nine hundred or more sea-otter--whose pelts afterward brought a fortune to the crew--were killed for food by Steller and his companions; but two sea-cows provided the castaways with food for six weeks. On November 22d died the old mate, who had weathered northern seas for fifty {54} years. In all, out of a crew of seventy-seven, there had perished by January 6, 1742, when the last death occurred, thirty-one men.

Steller's hut was next to Bering's. From that November day when he was carried from the s.h.i.+p through the snow to the sand pit, the commander sank without rallying. Foxskins had been spread on the ground as a bed; but the sand loosened from the sides of the pit and kept rolling down on the dying man. Toward the last he begged Steller to let the sand rest, as it kept in the warmth; so that he was soon covered with sand to his waist. White billows and a gray sky followed the hurricane gale that had hurled the s.h.i.+p in on the beach. All night between the evening of the 7th and the morning of the 8th of December, the moaning of the south wind could be heard through the tattered rigging of the wrecked s.h.i.+p; and all night the dying Dane was communing with his G.o.d. He was now over sixty years of age. To a const.i.tution already broken by the nagging cares of eight years and by hards.h.i.+ps indescribable, by scurvy and by exposure, was added an acute inflammation. Bering's power of resistance was sapped. Two hours before daybreak on December 8, 1741, the brave Dane breathed his last. He was interred on the 9th of December between the graves of the mate and the steward on the hillside; and the bearded Russians came down from the new-made grave that day bowed and hopeless.

A plain Greek cross was placed above {55} his grave; and a copy of that cross marks the same grave to-day.

The question arises--where does Bering stand among the world heroes? The world loves success better than defeat; and spectacular success better than duty plainly done. If success means accomplis.h.i.+ng what one sets out to do in spite of almost insuperable difficulties--Bering won success.

He set out to discover the northwest coast of America; and he perished doing it. But if heroism means a something more than tangible success; if it means that divine quality of fighting for the truth independent of reward, whether one is to be beaten or not; if it means setting to one's self the task of peris.h.i.+ng for a truth, without the slightest hope of establis.h.i.+ng that truth--then, Bering stands very high indeed among the world's heroes. Steller, who had cursed him for not remaining longer at Mount St. Elias, bore the highest testimony to his integrity and worth.

It may be said that a stronger type of hero would have scrunched into nothingness the vampire blunderers who misled the s.h.i.+p; but it must be remembered that stronger types of heroes usually save their own skins and let the underlings suffer. While Bering _might_ have averted the disaster that attended the expedition, it must not be forgotten that when he perished, there perished the very soul of the great enterprise, which at once crumbled to pieces.

On a purely material plane, what did Bering accomplish?

{56} He dispelled forever the myth of the Northeast Pa.s.sage if the world would have but accepted his conclusions. The coast of j.a.pan was charted under his direction. The Arctic coast of Asia was charted under his direction. A country as large as from Maine to Florida, or Baltimore to Texas, with a river comparable only to the Mississippi, was discovered by him. The furs of this country for a single year more than paid all that Russia spent to discover it; all that the United States later paid to Russia for it.

A dead whale thrown up on the sh.o.r.e proved a G.o.dsend to the weak and famis.h.i.+ng castaways. As their bodies grew stronger, the spirit of merriment that gilds life's darkest clouds began to come back, and the whale was jocularly known among the Russians as "our magazine of provisions."

Then parties of hunters began going out for the sea-otter, which hid its head during storm under the kelp of the sea fields. Steller knew the Chinese would pay what in modern money is from one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars for each of these sea-otter skins; and between nine hundred and one thousand were taken by the wrecked crew. The same skin of prime quality sells in a London auction room to-day for one thousand dollars. And in spring, when the sea-otter disappeared, there came herds--herds in millions upon millions--of another visitant to the sh.o.r.es of the Commander Islands--the fur seal, {57} which afforded new hunting to the crew, and new wealth to the world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Seals in a Rookery on Bering Island.]

The terrible danger now was not from starvation, but mutiny, murder, or ma.s.sacre among the branded criminals of the discontented crew. Waxel, as he recovered, was afraid of tempting revolt with orders, and convened the crew by vote to determine all that should be done. Officers and men--there was no distinction. By March of 1742 the ground had cleared of snow. Waxel called a meeting to suggest breaking up the packet vessel to build a smaller craft. A vote {58} was asked. The resolution was called, written out, and signed by every survivor, but afterward, when officers and men set themselves to the well-nigh impossible task of untackling the s.h.i.+p without implements of iron, revolt appeared among the workers. Again Waxel avoided mutiny. A meeting was called, another vote taken, the recalcitrants shamed down. The crew lacked more than tools.

There was no s.h.i.+p's carpenter. Finally a Cossack, who was afterward raised to the n.o.bility for his work, consented to act as director of the building, and on the 6th of May a vessel forty feet long, thirteen beam, and six deep, was on the stocks. All June, the noise of the planking went on till the mast raised its yard-arms, and an eight-oared single-master, such as the old Vikings of the North Sea used, was well under way.

The difficulties of such s.h.i.+pbuilding can hardly be realized. There was no wood but the wood of the old s.h.i.+p, no rigging but the old hemp, no tar but such as could be melted out of the old hemp in earth pits; and very few axes. The upper part was calked with tallow of the sea-cow, the under with tar from the old hull. The men also constructed a second small boat or canoe.