Tent Life in Siberia Part 18

"Does it work?" I asked, with a sinking heart.

"Works like a s.n.a.t.c.h-tackle," he responded heartily. "The 'Frisco papers are publis.h.i.+ng every morning the London news of the day before.

I've got a lot of 'em on board that I'll give you. Perhaps you'll find something in them about your Company."

I think the captain must have noticed, from the sudden change in the expression of our faces, that his news about the Atlantic cable was a staggering blow to us, for he immediately dropped the subject and suggested the expediency of going below.

We all went down into the cosy, well-furnished cabin, where refreshments were set before us by the steward, and where we talked for an hour about the news of the world, from whaling in the South Pacific to dog-driving in Arctic Asia, and from Weston's walk across the North American continent to Karakozef's attempt to a.s.sa.s.sinate the Tsar. But it was, on our side at least, a perfunctory conversation.

The news of the complete success of the Atlantic cable was as unexpected as it was disheartening, and it filled our minds to the exclusion of everything else. The world would have no use for an overland telegraph-line through Alaska and Siberia if it already possessed a working cable between London and New York.

We left the hospitable cabin of the _Sea Breeze_ about noon, and prepared to return to Gizhiga. Captain Hamilton, with warm-hearted generosity, not only gave us all the newspapers and magazines he had on board, but literally filled our boat with potatoes, pumpkins, bananas, oranges, and yams, which he had brought up from the Sandwich Islands. I think he saw that we were feeling somewhat disheartened, and wanted to cheer us up in the only way he could--by giving us some of the luxuries of civilised life. We had not seen a potato, nor tasted any other fresh vegetable or fruit, in nearly two years.

We left the s.h.i.+p reluctantly, at last, giving three cheers and a "tiger" for Captain Hamilton and the _Sea Breeze_, as we went over the side.

When we had pulled three or four miles away from the bark, Lewis suggested that instead of returning at once to the mouth of the river we should go ash.o.r.e at the nearest point on the coast, and look over the newspapers while the Cossacks made a fire and roasted some potatoes. This seemed to us all a good plan, and half an hour later we were sitting around a fire of driftwood on the beach, each of us with a newspaper in one hand and a banana or an orange in the other, and all feeding mind and body simultaneously. The papers were of various dates from September, 1866, to March, 1867, and were so mixed up that it was impossible to follow the course of events chronologically or consecutively. We were not long, however, in ascertaining not only that the new Atlantic cable had been successfully laid, but that the broken and abandoned cable of 1865 had been picked up in mid-ocean, repaired, and put in perfect working order. I think this discouraged us more than anything else. If cables could be found in the middle of the Atlantic, picked up in ten or twelve thousand feet of water, and repaired on the deck of a steamer, the ultimate success of submarine telegraphy was a.s.sured, and we might as well pack up our trunks and go home. But there was worse news to come. A few minutes later, Lewis, who was reading an old copy of the San Francisco _Bulletin_, struck his knee violently with his clenched fist and exclaimed;

"Boys! The jig is up! Listen to this!

"'Special Dispatch to the _Bulletin_

"'New York, October 15.

"'In consequence of the success of the Atlantic cable, all work on the Russian-American telegraph line has been stopped and the enterprise has been abandoned.'"

"Well!" said Robinson, after a moment of thoughtful silence, "that seems to settle it. The cable has knocked us out."

Late in the afternoon, we pulled back, with heavy hearts, to the beacon-tower at the mouth of the river, and on the following day returned to Gizhiga, to await the arrival of a vessel from San Francisco with an official notification of the abandonment of the enterprise.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Women's Knives used in making clothing]

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

OFFICIAL CONFIRMATION OF THE BAD NEWS--THE ENTERPRISE ABANDONED--A VOYAGE TO OKHOTSK--THE AURORA OF THE SEA

On the 15th of July, the Company's bark _Onward_ (which should have been named _Backward_) arrived at Gizhiga with orders to sell all of our stores that were salable; use the proceeds in the payment of our debts; discharge our native labourers; gather up our men, and return to the United States. The Atlantic cable had proved to be a complete success, and our Company, after sinking about $3,000,000 in the attempt to build an overland line from America to Europe, had finally decided to put up with its loss and abandon the undertaking. Letters from the directors to Major Abaza, stated that they would be willing to go on with the work, in spite of the success of the Atlantic cable, if the Russian Government would agree to complete the line on the Siberian side of Bering Strait; but they did not think they should be required, under the circ.u.mstances, to do all the work on the American side and half of that on the Russian.

Major Abaza, hoping that he could prevail upon the Russian Minister of Ways and Communications to take the Asiatic Division off the hands of the American Company, and thus prevent the complete abandonment of the enterprise, decided at once to go to St. Petersburg overland. He therefore sailed in the _Onward_ with me for Okhotsk, intending to disembark there, start for Yakutsk on horseback, and send me back in the s.h.i.+p to pick up our working parties along the coast.

The last of July found us becalmed, about fifty miles off the harbour and river of Okhotsk. I had been playing chess all the evening in the cabin, and it was almost eleven o'clock when the second mate called to me down the companionway to come on deck. Wondering if we had taken a favourable slant of wind, I went up.

It was one of those warm, still, almost tropical nights, so rarely seen on northern waters, when a profound calm reigns in the moonless heavens, and the hush of absolute repose rests upon the tired, storm-vexed sea. There was not the faintest breath of air to stir even the reef-points of the motionless sails, or roughen the dark, polished mirror of water around the s.h.i.+p. A soft, almost imperceptible haze concealed the line of the far horizon, and blended sky and water into one great hollow sphere of twinkling stars. Earth and sea seemed to have pa.s.sed away, and our motionless s.h.i.+p floated, spell-bound, in vacancy--the only earthly object in an encircling universe of stars and planets. The great luminous band of the Milky Way seemed to sweep around beneath us in a complete circle of white, misty light, and far down under our keel gleamed the three bright stars in the belt of Orion. Only when a fish sprang with a little splash out of one of these submarine constellations and shattered it into trembling fragments of broken light could we realise that it was nothing but a mirrored reflection of the heavens above.

Absorbed in the beauty of the scene, I had forgotten to ask the mate why he had called me on deck, and started with surprise as he touched me on the shoulder and said: "Curious thing, ain't it?"

"Yes," I replied, supposing that he referred to the reflection of the heavens in the water, "it's the most wonderful night I ever saw at sea. I can hardly make myself believe that we _are_ at sea--the s.h.i.+p seems to be hanging in s.p.a.ce with a great universe of stars above and below."

"What do you suppose makes it?" he inquired.

"Makes what--the reflection?"

"No, that light. Don't you see it?"

Following the direction of his outstretched arm, I noticed, for the first time, a bank of pale, diffused radiance, five or six degrees in height, stretching along the northern horizon from about N.N.W. to E.N.E. and resembling very closely the radiance of a faint aurora. The horizon line could not be distinguished; but the luminous appearance seemed to rise in the haze that hid it from sight.

"Have you ever seen anything like it before?" I inquired.

"Never," the mate replied; "but it looks like the northern lights on the water."

Wondering what could be the nature of this mysterious light, I climbed into the shrouds, in order to get a better view. As I watched it, it suddenly began to lengthen out at both ends, like a rapidly spreading fire, and drew a long curtain of luminous mist around the whole northern horizon. Another similar light then appeared in the south-east, and although it was not yet connected with the first, it also seemed to be extending itself laterally, and in a moment the two luminous curtains united, forming a great semicircular band of pale, bluish-white radiance around the heavens, like a celestial equator belting a vast universe of stars. I could form, as yet, no conjecture as to the cause or nature of this strange phenomenon which looked and behaved like an aurora, but which seemed to rise out of the water.

After watching it five or ten minutes, I went below to call the captain.

Hardly had I reached the foot of the companionway when the mate shouted again; "O Kennan! Come on deck quick!" and rus.h.i.+ng hastily up I saw for the first time, in all its glorious splendour, the phosph.o.r.escence of the sea. With almost incredible swiftness, a mantle of bluish-white fire had covered nearly all the dark water north of us, and its clearly defined edge wavered and trembled for an instant, like the arch of an aurora, within half a mile of the s.h.i.+p. Another lightning-like flash brought it all around us, and we floated, literally, in a sea of liquid radiance. Not a single square foot of dark water could be seen, in any direction, from the maintop, and all the rigging of the s.h.i.+p, to the royal yards, was lighted up with a faint, unearthly, blue glare. The ocean looked like a vast plain of snow, illuminated by blue fire and overhung by heavens of almost inky blackness. The Milky Way disappeared completely in the blaze of light from the sea, and stars of the first magnitude twinkled dimly, as if half hidden by fog.

Only a moment before, the dark, still water had reflected vividly a whole hemisphere of spangled constellations, and the outlines of the s.h.i.+p's spars were projected as dusky shadows against the Milky Way.

Now, the sea was ablaze with opaline light, and the yards and sails were painted in faint tints of blue on a background of ebony. The metamorphosis was sudden and wonderful beyond description! The polar aurora seemed to have left its home in the higher regions of the atmosphere and descended in a sheet of vivid electrical fire upon the ocean. As we stood, silent with amazement, upon the quarter-deck, this sheet of bluish flame suddenly vanished, over at least ten square miles of water, causing, by its almost instantaneous disappearance, a sensation of total blindness, and leaving the sea, for a moment, an abyss of blackness. As the pupils of our eyes, however, gradually dilated, we saw, as before, the dark s.h.i.+ning mirror of water around the s.h.i.+p, while far away on the horizon rose the faint luminous appearance which had first attracted our attention, and which was evidently due to the lighting up of the haze by areas of phosph.o.r.escent water below the horizon line.

In a moment the mate shouted excitedly: "Here it comes again!" and again the great tide of fire came sweeping up around the vessel, and we floated in a sea of radiance that extended in every direction beyond the limits of vision.

As soon as I had recovered a little from the bewildered amazement into which I was thrown by the first phosph.o.r.escent flash, I observed, as closely and carefully as possible, the nature and conditions of the extraordinary phenomenon. In the first place, I satisfied myself beyond question, that the radiance was phosph.o.r.escent and not electrical, although it simulated the light of the aurora in the rapidity of its movements of translation from one area to another.

When it flashed around the s.h.i.+p the second time, I got down close to the luminous surface and discovered that what seemed, from the deck, to be a mantle of bluish fire was, in reality, a layer of water closely packed with fine bright spangles. It looked like water in which luminous sand was constantly being stirred or churned up. The points of light were so numerous that, at a distance of ten or twelve feet, the eye failed to notice that there was any dark water in the inters.p.a.ces, and received merely an impression of diffused and unbroken radiance.

In the second place, I became convinced that the myriads of microscopic organisms which pervaded the water did not light up their tiny lamps in response to a mechanical shock, such as would be produced by agitation of the medium in which they floated. There was no breeze, at any time, nor was there the faintest indication of a ripple on the gla.s.sy surface of the sea. Between the flashes of phosph.o.r.escence, the polished mirror of dark water was not blurred by so much as a breath. The sudden lighting up of myriads of infusorial lamps over vast areas of unruffled water was not due, therefore, to mechanical agitation, and must have had some other and more subtle cause. What the nature was of the impulse that stimulated whole square miles of floating protoplasm into luminous activity so suddenly as to produce the visual impression of an electric flash, I could not conjecture. The officers of the U. S. revenue cutter _McCulloch_ observed and recorded in Bering Sea, in August, 1898, a display of phosph.o.r.escence which was almost as remarkable as the one I am trying to describe [Footnote: _N.Y. Sun_, Nov. 11 1899.]; but in that case the sea was rough; there were no sudden flashes of appearance and disappearance; and the excitation of the light-bearing organisms may have been due--and probably was due--to mechanical shock.

In the third place, I observed that in the intervals between the flashes, when the water was dark, all objects immersed in that water were luminous. The s.h.i.+p's copper was so bright that I could count every tack and seam; the rudder was lighted to its lowest pintle; and medusae, or jelly-fish, drifting past, with slow pulsations, at a depth of ten or twelve feet, looked like submerged moons. It thus appeared that protozoa floating freely in the water lighted their lamps only in response to excitation, of some sort, which affected, almost instantaneously, areas many square miles in extent; while those that were attached to, or in contact with, solid matter kept their lamps lighted all the time.

During one of the periods of illumination, which lasted several minutes, I hauled up a bucketful of the phosph.o.r.escent liquid and took it into the cabin. Nothing whatever could be seen in it by artificial light, but when the light had been removed, the inside of the bucket glowed, although the water itself remained dark.

The sea in the vicinity of the s.h.i.+p became phosph.o.r.escent three or four times; the sheet of fire in every case, sweeping down upon us from the north at a rate of speed that seemed to be about equal to the speed of sound-waves in air. The duration of the phosph.o.r.escence, at each separate appearance, was from a minute and a half to three or four minutes, and it vanished every time with a flash-like movement of translation to another and remoter area. The whole display, so far as we were concerned, was over in about twenty minutes; but long after the sheet of phosph.o.r.escence disappeared from the neighbourhood of the s.h.i.+p, we could see it lighting up the overhanging haze as it moved swiftly from place to place beyond the horizon line. At one time, there were three or four such areas of bright water north of us, but as they were below the curve of the earth's convexity we could not see them, and traced them only by the s.h.i.+fting belts or patches of irradiated mist.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Reindeer Bridle Snow Shovel]

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

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. a.s.suming, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sured the natives would be useful in burying their dead, and threw in a lot of frozen cuc.u.mber pickles and other anti-s...o...b..tics which we warranted to fortify the health of the living. We sold gla.s.s 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, cuc.u.mber pickles, telegraph wire, dried apples, gla.s.s 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 cla.s.sifies 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 pa.s.ses 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.