{32} The three Russians succeeded in gaining Waxel's boat, but the Indians grabbed the mooring ropes and seized the Chukchee interpreter, whom Waxel had brought from Siberia. Waxel ordered the rope cut, but the Chukchee interpreter called out pitifully to be saved. Quick as flash, the Russians fired two muskets in midair. At the crash that echoed among the cliffs, the Indians fell prostrate with fear, and the interpreter escaped; but six days had been wasted in this futile visit to the natives.
Scarcely had they escaped this island, when such a hurricane broke over the St. Peter for seventeen days that the ship could only scud under bare poles before a tornado wind that seemed to be driving north-northwest. The ship was a chip in a maelstrom. There were only fifteen casks of water fit to drink. All food was exhausted but mouldy sea-biscuits. One sailor a day was now dying of scurvy, and those left were so weak that they had no power to man the ship. The sailors were so emaciated they had to be carried back and forward to the rudder, and the underling officers were quarrelling among themselves. The crew dared not hoist sails, because not a man of the St. Peter had the physical strength to climb and lower canvas.[14]
{33} The rain turned to sleet. The sleet froze to the rotting sails, to the ice-logged hull, to the wan yardarms frost-white like ghosts. At every lurch of the sea slush slithered down from the rigging on the shivering seamen. The roar of the breakers told of a shallow sea, yet mist veiled the sky, and they were above waters whose shallows drop to sudden abysmal depths of three thousand fathoms. Sheets of smoking vapor rose from the sea, sheets of flame-tinged smoke from the crevasses of land volcanoes which the fogs hid. Out of the sea came the hoarse, strident cry of the sea-lion, and the walrus, and the hairy seal. It was as if the poor Russians had sailed into some under-world. The decks were slippery as glass, the vessel shrouded in ice. Over all settled that unspeakable dread of impending disaster, which is a symptom of scurvy, and saps the fight that makes a man fit to survive.
Waxel, alone, held the vessel up to the wind. Where were they? Why did this coasting along unknown northern islands not lead to Kamchatka?
The councils were no longer the orderly conferences of savants over cut-and-dried maps. They were bedlam. Panic was in the marrow of every man, even the passionate Steller, who thought all the while they were on the coast of Kamchatka and made loud complaint that the expedition had been misled by "unscrupulous leaders."
At eight o'clock on the morning of October 30 it was seen that the ice-clogged ropes on the starboard {34} side had been snapped by the wind like dry sticks. Offerings, vows, prayers went up from the stricken crew. Piety became a very real thing. The men prayed aloud and conferred on ways to win the favor of God. The colder weather brought one relief. The fog lifted and the air was clear. The wind veered northeast, and on November 4, to their inexpressible joy, a dim outline sharpened to hard, clear horizon; and the gazing crew gradually saw a high, mountainous coast become clear beyond doubt directly ahead sixteen miles. Surely, this was Kamchatka? Surely, God had heard their vows? The sick crawled on hands and knees above the hatchway to see land once more, and with streaming eyes thanked Heaven for the escape from doom. Grief became joy; gruff, happy, hilarious laughter; for a few hidden casks of brandy were brought out to celebrate the end of their miseries, and each man began pointing out certain headlands that he thought he recognized. But this ecstasy was fool joy born of desperation. As the ship rounded northeastward, a strangeness came over the scene; a chill over the good cheer—a numbing, silent, unspeakable dread over the crew. These turbulent waters running a mill-race between reefs looked more like a channel between two islands than open coast. The men could not utter a word. They hoped against hope. They dare not voice their fears. That night, the St. Peter stood off from land in case of storm. Topsails were furled, and the wind had ripped the other {35} sails to tatters, that flared and beat dismally all night against the cordage. One can imagine the anxiety of that long night with the roar of the breakers echoing angrily from shore, the whistle of the wind through the rotten rigging, the creaking of the timbers to the crash and growl and rebound of the tide. Clear, refulgent with sunshine like the light of creation's first day, the sting of ozone in the air, and the freshness of a scene never before witnessed by human eyes—dawned the morning of November 5.
The shore was of black, adamant rock rising sheer from the sea in a rampart wall. Reefs, serried, rank on rank, like sentinels, guarded approach to the coast in jagged masses, that would rip the bottom from any keel like the teeth of a saw; and over these rolled the roaring breakers with a clutch to the back-wash that bade the gazing sailors beware. Birds, birds in myriads upon myriads, screamed and circled over the eerie heights of the beetling cliffs. This did not look like Kamchatka. These birds were not birds of the Asiatic home port. These cliffs were not like the snow-rimmed mountains of Avacha Bay.
Waxel called a council.
Officers and men dragged themselves to Bering's cabin. Waxel had already canvassed all hands to vote for a landing to winter on these shores. This, the dying Bering opposed with all his might. "We roust be almost home," he said. "We still have six casks of water, and the foremast. Having risked so {36} much, let us risk three days more, let us risk everything to reach Avacha Bay." Poor Bering! Had his advice been followed, the saddest disaster of northern seas might have been averted; for they were less than ten days' run from the home harbor; but inspired by fool hopes born of fear, like the old marsh lights that used to lure men to the quicksands—Waxel and Khitroff actually persuaded themselves this was Kamchatka, and when one lieutenant, Ofzyn, who knew the north well from charting the Arctic coast, would have spoken in favor of Bering's view, he was actually clubbed and thrown from the cabin. The crew voted as a man to land and winter on this coast. Little did they know that vote was their own death warrant.
[1] See Life of Peter the Great, by Orlando Williams, 1859; Peter the Great, by John Lothrop Motley, 1877; History of Peter I, by John Mottley, 1740; Journal of Peter the Great, 1698; Voltaire's Pierre le Grand; Ségur's Histoire de Russie et de Pierre le Grand.