A wilder, more dangerous location for a camp than that which we occupied could hardly be found in Siberia, and I watched with the greatest uneasiness the signs of the weather as it began to grow dark. The huge sloping snow-drift upon which we stood rose directly out of the water, and, so far as we knew, it might have no other foundation than a narrow strip of ice. If so, the faintest breeze from any direction except north would roll in waves high enough to undermine and break up the whole escarpment, and either precipitate us with an avalanche of snow into the open sea, or leave us clinging like barnacles to the bare face of the precipice, seventy-five feet above it. Neither alternative was pleasant to contemplate, and I determined, if possible, to find a place of greater security. Leet, with his usual recklessness, dug himself out what he called a "bedroom" in the snow about fifty feet above the water, and promised me "a good night's sleep" if I would accept his hospitality and share his cave; but under the circumstances I thought best to decline. His "bedroom," bed, and bedding might all tumble into the sea before morning, and his "good night's sleep" be indefinitely prolonged. Going back a short distance in the direction of the Viliga, I finally discovered a place where a small stream had once fallen over the summit of the cliff, and had worn out a steep narrow channel in its face. In the rocky, uneven bed of this little ravine the natives and I stretched ourselves out for the night, our bodies inclined at an angle of forty-five degrees—our heads, of course, up-hill.
If the reader can imagine himself camping out on the steep sloping roof of a great cathedral, with a precipice a hundred feet high over his head and three or four fathoms of open water at his feet, he will be able, perhaps, to form some idea of the way in which we spent that dismal night.
With the first streak of dawn we were up. While we were gloomily making preparations to return to the Viliga, one of the Koraks who had gone to take a last look at the gap of open water came hurriedly climbing back, shouting joyfully, "Mozhno perryékat, mozhno perryékat!"—"It is possible to cross." The tide, which had risen during the night, had brought in two or three large cakes of broken ice, and had jammed them into the gap in such a manner as to make a rude bridge. Fearing, however, that it would not support a very heavy weight, we unloaded all our sledges, carried the loads, sledges, and dogs across separately, loaded up again on the other side, and went on. The worst of our difficulties was past. We still had some road-cutting to do through occasional snow-drifts; but as we went farther and farther to the westward the beach became wider and higher, the ice disappeared, and by night we were thirty versts nearer to our destination. The sea on one side, and the cliffs on the other, still hemmed us in; but on the following day we succeeded in making our escape through the valley of the Kánanaga River.
The twelfth day of our journey found us on a great steppe called the Málkachán, only thirty miles from Yamsk; and although our dog-food and provisions were both exhausted, we hoped to reach the settlement late in the night. Darkness came on, however, with another blinding snow-storm, in which we again lost our way; and, fearing that we might drive over the edges of the precipices into the sea by which the steppe was bounded on the east, we were finally compelled to stop. We could find no wood for a fire; but even had we succeeded in making a fire, it would have been instantly smothered by the clouds of snow which the furious wind drove across the plain. Spreading down our canvas tent upon the ground, and capsizing a heavy dog-sledge upon one edge of it to hold it fast, we crawled under it to get away from the suffocating snow. Lying there upon our faces, with the canvas flapping furiously against our backs, we scraped our bread-bag for the last few frozen crumbs which remained, and ate a few scraps of raw meat which Mr. Leet found on one of the sledges. In the course of fifteen or twenty minutes we noticed that the flappings of the canvas were getting shorter and shorter, and that it seemed to be tightening across our bodies, and upon making an effort to get out we found that we were fastened down. The snow had drifted in such masses upon the edges of the tent and had packed there with such solidity that it could not be moved, and after trying once or twice to break out we concluded to lie still and make the best of our situation. As long as the snow did not bury us entirely, we were better off under the tent than anywhere else, because we were protected from the wind. In half an hour the drift had increased to such an extent that we could no longer turn over, and our supply of air was almost entirely cut off. We must either get out or be suffocated. I had drawn my sheath-knife fifteen minutes before in expectation of such a crisis, and as it was already becoming difficult to breathe, I cut a long slit in the canvas above my head and we crawled out. In an instant eyes and nostrils were completely plastered up with snow, and we gasped for breath as if the stream of a fire-engine had been turned suddenly in our faces. Drawing our heads and arms into the bodies of our kukhlankas, we squatted down upon the snow to wait for daylight. In a moment I heard Mr. Leet shouting down into the neck-hole of my fur coat, "What would our mothers say if they could see us now?" I wanted to ask him how this would compare with a gale in his boasted Sierra Nevadas, but he was gone before I could get my head out, and I heard nothing more from him that night. He went away somewhere in the darkness and squatted down alone upon the snow, to suffer cold, hunger and anxiety until morning. For more than ten hours we sat in this way on that desolate storm-swept plain, without fire, food, or sleep, becoming more and more chilled and exhausted, until it seemed as if daylight would never come.
Morning dawned at last through gray drifting clouds of snow, and, getting up with stiffened limbs, we made feeble attempts to dig out our buried sledges. But for the unwearied efforts of Mr. Leet we should hardly have succeeded, as my hands and arms were so benumbed with cold that I could not hold an axe or a shovel, and our drivers, frightened and discouraged, seemed unable to do anything. By Mr. Leet's individual exertions the sledges were dug out and we started. His brief spasm of energy was the last effort of a strong will to uphold a sinking and exhausted body, and in half an hour he requested to be tied on his sledge. We lashed him on from head to foot with sealskin thongs, covered him up with bearskins, and drove on. In about an hour his driver, Padarin, came back to me with a frightened look in his face, and said that Mr. Leet was dead; that he had shaken him and called him several times, but could get no reply. Alarmed and shocked, I sprang from my sledge and ran up to the place where he lay, shouted to him, shook him by the shoulder, and tried to uncover his head, which he had drawn down into the body of his fur coat. In a moment, to my great relief, I heard his voice, saying that he was all right and could hold out, if necessary, until night; that he had not answered Padarin because it was too much trouble, but that I need not be alarmed about his safety; and then I thought he added something about "worse storms in the Sierra Nevadas," which convinced me that he was far from being used up yet. As long as he could insist upon the superiority of Californian storms, there was certainly hope.
Early in the afternoon we reached the Yamsk River and, after wandering about for an hour or two in the timber, came upon one of Lieutenant Arnold's Yakut working-parties and were conducted to their camp, only a few miles from the settlement. Here we obtained some rye bread and hot tea, warmed our benumbed limbs, and partially cleared the snow out of our clothing. When I saw Mr. Leet undressed I wondered that he had not died. While squatting out on the ground during the storm of the previous night, snow in great quantities had blown in at his neck, had partially melted with the warmth of his body, and had then frozen again in a mass of ice along his whole spine, and in that condition he had lived to be driven twenty versts. Nothing but a strong will and the most intense vitality enabled him to hold out during these last six dismal hours. When we had warmed, rested, and dried ourselves at the camp-fire of the Yakuts, we resumed our journey, and late in the afternoon we drove into the settlement of Yamsk, after thirteen days of harder experience than usually falls to the lot of Siberian travellers, Mr. Leet so soon recovered his strength and spirits that three days afterwards he started for Okhotsk, where the Major wished him to take charge of a gang of Yakut labourers. The last words that I remember to have ever heard him speak were those which he shouted to me in the storm and darkness of that gloomy night on the Málkachán steppe: "What would our mothers say if they could see us now?" The poor fellow was afterwards driven insane by excitements and hardships such as these which I have described, and probably to some extent by this very expedition, and finally committed suicide by shooting himself at one of the lonely Siberian settlements on the coast of the Okhotsk Sea.
I have described somewhat in detail this trip to Yamsk because it illustrates the darkest side of Siberian life and travel. It is not often that one meets with such an experience, or suffers so many hardships in any one journey; but in a country so wild and sparsely populated as Siberia, winter travel is necessarily attended with more or less suffering and privation.
[Illustration: Iron Skin Scraper]