A chase after walrus is far more exciting than either a seal or bear hunt, for their capture involves a certain risk and occasionally actual danger. As soon as one of these beasts is sighted four or five Baidaras are launched and set out at a terrific pace, for the crew of the first boat up gets the lion's share of the spoil. Winchester rifles are now used instead of the old-fashioned harpoon, so that accidents are rarer than they used to be, although boats are often upset. I have only once seen a walrus: a distorted, shapeless mass of discoloured flesh, sparsely covered with coarse bristles. The one I saw measured about ten feet long, had quite that girth, and must have weighed over a ton. Walrus meat as a diet is less repulsive than seal, for it is not so fishy in flavour and has more the consistency of beef.
We had been here about ten days when a native arrived from East Cape and reported a whaler off that headland. At Whalen the ice still presented a hopelessly unbroken appearance, but low, dark clouds to the eastward looked like open water in the direction of the Straits, and I sent Harding and Stepan, with the East Cape man, to verify his report. He was a silent, sulky brute, and I felt some anxiety until the pair returned the next day after a terrible journey, partly by land but principally over the sea ice across which they had to wade knee deep in water. For about six miles crossing the tundra they floundered in soft snow up to the waist, and finally reached their destination, wet through and exhausted, to find that the ship, probably scared by heavy pack ice, had disappeared to the southward. The natives, however, treated them well, and sent a man to accompany them half way back to Whalen, for the thaw had come so suddenly that he could proceed no further, and our companions only just managed to reach home. This was the last journey made by land between the two settlements, for which I was not sorry, as the undesirable community at East Cape were now as completely cut off from us as the pirates of Oumwaidjik. Harding informed me that at East Cape a totally different dialect was spoken to that at Whalen, but this did not surprise me, as I compiled while at Oumwaidjik a small glossary which completely differed from words in use at Whalen. The natives of the Diomede Island have also a distinctive language, of which, however, I was unable to obtain any words. A reference to the Appendix will show the difference existing between the dialects spoken on the mainland of Siberia. East of Tchaun Bay the same language existed in every village as far as Whalen. The languages spoken by the Reindeer Tchuktchis of the interior and the Eskimo of the Alaskan Coast do not in any way resemble the dialects spoken on the Siberian Coast.
By the end of June the snow on land was fast disappearing, and blue lakes began to appear amongst the white plains and hummocks of the sea. But those were weary days of waiting even when warmer weather enabled us to live altogether in our hut without taking shelter in the chief's malodorous yarat. For the former was crowded all day with natives, who used it as a kind of club, and left us souvenirs every night in the shape of a stifling stench and swarms of vermin. As time wore on the heat in our heavy furs became insupportable, but frequent and sudden changes of temperature rendered it impossible to discard them altogether. For often the sun would be blazing at midday with a temperature of 60° in the shade, and a few minutes later we would be cowering over the stove listening to the howling of the wind and the rattle of sleet against the wooden walls. This would last perhaps an hour or two, and then the sky would again become blue and cloudless, the sunshine as powerful as before. One day in early June is thus described in my journal: "Clear, cloudy, warm, cold, windy, calm, sunshine, fog and a little rain!" The wind troubled us most, for here there is no happy medium between a dead calm and a tearing gale, and the latter occurred on an average every second day. Northerly and north-westerly winds prevailed, and we whistled in vain for a southerly buster to clear the coast of ice. And yet notwithstanding our many miseries there were pleasant days, still and sunlit, when I would stroll to the summit of a grassy hill near the settlement, where the sward was carpeted with wild flowers and where the soothing tinkle of many rivulets formed by melting snow were conducive to lazy reverie. From here one could see for a great distance along the coast to the westward, and on bright days the snowy range of cliffs and kaleidoscopic effects of colour cast by cloud and sunshine over the sea ice formed a charming picture. Stepan passed most of his time on these cliffs watching in vain, like a male sister Anne, for ships, for, like most Russians, the Cossack suffered severely from nostalgia.
But the days crawled wearily away, each more dreary than its predecessor, and the eternal vista of ice greeted each morning the anxious gaze of the first man up to survey the ocean. Our Union Jack, now almost torn to shreds by incessant gales, was hoisted on a long stick lent by Teneskin for the purpose, but I began to think that the shred of silk might as well have fluttered at the North Pole for all the attention it was likely to attract from seaward. So passed a month away, and the grey hag Despair was beginning to show her ugly face when one never-to-be-forgotten morning Harding rushed into the hut and awoke me with the joyful news that a thin strip of blue was visible on the horizon. A few hours later waves were seen breaking near the land, for when once ice begins to move it does so quickly. Three days later wavelets were rippling on the beach, and I felt like a man just released from a long term of penal servitude when on the 15th of July the hull of a black and greasy whaler came stealing round the point where Stepan had passed so many anxious hours.
The whaler proved to be the William Bayliss of New Bedford. We boarded her with some difficulty on account of the jagged ice floes on the beach to which she was moored. It was an acrobatic feat to jump from the slippery ice, lay hold of a jibboom towering overhead, and scramble over the bows. But once aboard, Captain Cottle loaded us with good things (including a tin of sorely-needed tobacco), and all would now have seemed couleur-de-rose had Cottle been able to give us news of the Thetis. This, however, he was unable to do, and when that night the whaler had sailed away I almost regretted that I had declined her skipper's offer of a passage across the Straits, which might, however, have been prolonged for an indefinite period as the ship was now bound in an opposite direction. That night was certainly the worst we ever experienced, for even Teneskin was rendered helpless by the pandemonium created by the floods of whisky which had streamed into the settlement from the hold of the William Bayliss. Towards evening things looked so ugly that the chief and his sons, armed with Winchester rifles, took up their quarters for the night in our hut, the door of which was barricaded by means of iron bars. Even Yemanko looked pale and anxious, for every man in the village, he said, was mad with drink. The chief's wife and daughters remained in the yarat, for a Tchuktchi however drunk has never been known to molest a woman. Singing, shouting and deafening yells were heard during the earlier part of the night, as men reeled about the settlement in bands, and occasionally our door would re-echo with crashing blows and demands for admission. This went on for two or three hours, and when things had quieted down and we were thinking of emerging from the stifling hut for fresh air, a shot rang out on the stillness. We seized our rifles, and not a moment too soon, for simultaneously the door flew open with a crash and half a dozen men reeled into the room. One of them brandished a Winchester, but I noticed with relief that the rest of the intruders were unarmed. The face of another whom I recognised as a medicine man, was streaming with blood from a wound across the forehead. Fortunately all were overcome by the fiery poison they had been greedily imbibing and were therefore as weak as children in the hands of seven sober men. In less time than it takes me to write it the invaders were firmly secured with walrus thongs and thrown out of doors to sleep the drink off. A watch was kept throughout the night in case of an attack by reinforcements, but the deadly "Tangle-foot" had done its work, and the village did not awaken until the following day from its drunken slumbers. Unfortunately a native was killed by the shot we heard.
On the morning of the 18th of July Harding and I, while walking on the beach, remarked a white cloud on the horizon, the only blur on a dazzling blue sky. Presently the vapour seemed to solidify, and assume the appearance of a floating berg, until, a few minutes after, we looked again at the object which had attracted our attention, and lo and behold a thin black thread was now ascending from it into the clear still air. "A steamer!" shouted Harding, rushing back to the hut for a field-glass. But before he could return through the deep heavy shingle doubt had become certainty and I had recognised the Revenue cutter Thetis. This is the same vessel, by the way, which rescued Lieutenant Greely and his party on the shores of Smith Sound, but I do not think even they can have been more heartily grateful to see the trim white vessel than we were.
In less than an hour our welcome deliverer had threaded her way through the ice, and we stood on the beach and watched her cast anchor about half a mile off shore. As the chains rattled cheerily through the hawse holes Stepan flew, on the wings of a light heart, to the flagstaff. I am not emotional, but I must confess to feeling a lump in my throat as the Stars and Stripes were slowly dipped in response to a salute from our ragged little Union Jack. For with the meeting of those familiar colours all my troubles seemed to vanish into thin air!
Once aboard the Thetis Harding and I, at any rate, were amongst acquaintances who had previously served on the Revenue cutter Bear. I also found an old friend, Lieutenant Cochrane, once third officer of the Bear, and now second in command of the Thetis, which made this sudden change from a life of mental and physical misery to one of security and well-being the more enjoyable. There was nothing to delay the cutter, save farewells to our kind old host and the repayment for the food with which he had provided us, and by midday we were steaming away from the dreary settlement where I had passed so many anxious hours. And then, for the first time in many weary months, we sat down in the ward-room to a decent and well-served meal and enjoyed it beyond description, for are not all pleasures in this world comparative? Success to the Expedition was drunk in bumpers of champagne, and I then adjourned to Cochrane's room for coffee and liqueurs and a talk over old days on the Bear. And the afternoon in that cosy, sunlit cabin, the blessed sensation of rest after toil combined with a luxurious lounge and delicious cigar, constituted as near an approach to "Nirvana" as the writer is ever likely to attain on this side of the grave!