THE BAY OF DUNES. THE RUSSIAN SCHOONERS.
17. No grandees could have been received with more dignity than we were. At the sight of the two Ukases, which we had received from St. Petersburg, and which required all inhabitants of the Russian Empire to furnish us with all the help we needed, these humble seamen bared their heads and bowed themselves to the earth. We had an example before us to show how orders are obeyed by the subjects of that Empire a thousand miles from the place where they were issued. But we were received not only in this reverential manner, but were welcomed with the greatest heartiness, and the best of everything on board was spread before us—salmon, reindeer flesh, Eider-geese eggs, tea, bread, butter, brandy. The second skipper then came on board, and invited us to visit him: the first of a series of invitations. Dr. Kepes was very pressingly invited, for he had a sick man on board his vessel, and our doctor returned with an honorarium of tobacco in his hand. These simple Russian seamen of the Arctic seas freely produced their little stock of good things to give us pleasure, and one of them after observing me for a long time, and thinking that I did not express myself sufficiently strongly for a happy man, persuaded himself that something was the matter with me, and that I wanted something. Forthwith he went to his chest, and brought me all the white bread he had and the whole remaining stock of his tobacco. Though I did not understand a word he said, his address was full of unmistakable heartiness, and so far needed no interpreter.
18. Since we abandoned the Tegetthoff we had passed ninety-six days in the open air, and, including the sledge journeys which preceded the abandonment of the ship, about five months. The impressions of a return to life were felt by us with silent yet deep thankfulness of heart, for as the poet says:—
“Das Schweigen ist ihr bester Herold.”
It gave us infinite satisfaction to gaze on things the most insignificant, and as we thought of our adventures, our discoveries, and our deliverance, many of us asked his heart in a whisper: What will be said of this in Austria? Lusina, as the only one among us who spoke Russian, was constituted our interpreter, and through him we learnt that great events had happened during our absence: that there was general peace in Europe; that Napoleon was dead; and we learnt too that the greatest interest in our destiny had been excited in Austria; that the Russian government had issued orders to all their vessels employed in the Arctic fisheries to do their utmost to find us, and contribute to our rescue; that Count Wilczek had returned in safety—the skipper of our schooner having met him at the mouth of the Petschora, just as he was setting out for Obdorsk, and lastly, that a Norwegian fishing vessel had been beset in the ice in the autumn of 1872 at the Barentz islands—very near to where we were, and had been crushed; that four of the crew had escaped in a boat, and after the most dreadful sufferings, had travelled over land to the country of the Samoyedes in the extreme north of the Ural Mountains.
19. The ships we found in “Dunen Bai,”—the Bay of Dunes—came from Archangel, and were engaged in the salmon fishery, at the mouth of the Puhova River. They had taken very little, and their purpose was to remain where we found them for fourteen days’ longer, and to spend about the same number in fishing and hunting at the southern extremity of Novaya Zemlya. This programme was not exactly to our taste. To spend a month in a fishing-vessel, just as we awoke to the remembrance of all the comforts and pleasures there are in the world, to sleep in the hold where cholera lurked among bear and reindeer hides, amid heaps of salmon and reindeer flesh, among nets and oil casks—such a prospect was not to be thought of. Accordingly, we agreed with Captain Voronin, that he should leave off his fishing and take us without delay to Vardö, in Norway, that we should give him in return for his services three of our boats, two Lefaucheur rifles, and guarantee him the further compensation of 1,200 silver roubles.
20. At last we could go to sleep, the much-needed, much-desired sleep, undisturbed by the fear lest we should be starved to death at last. On that evening, when I opened my journal, I found these words: “Shall we be saved this day? shall we be alive? Fifteenth May on board the Tegetthoff.” I had written these words by the merest chance on the blank leaf reserved for the 24th of August, and it was singular that we should be rescued on that very day. For a long time I could not sleep amid the murmur of Russian words, which I mechanically endeavoured to imitate and to interpret as I lay amid the dead salmon, till at last I fell asleep, my last connected thought being, that I had not to row any more. Next day Voronin and his trusty harpooner, Maximin Iwanoff, insisted on Weyprecht and myself occupying their own cabin, and as we could utter no other Russian word than ‘khorosho’ (good), we were obliged to do as they wished. The ship was now watered, and the nets which had been stretched out were hauled on board, the crew, as they worked, singing their wild “Volkslieder” excellently well.
21. On the 26th we left the small quiet bay, the scene of our happy rescue, and with a favourable wind from the north, the vessel ploughed her way through the waves of the White Sea. Now began the time of letter writing; many of us, indeed, had commenced this employment even before we left the boats. On the 27th and 28th, we had stormy weather from the north-west, and the high seas we saw told us what our fate would have been had we tried to cross this sea in our small boats. On the 29th, we sighted Black Cape on the “Murmann coast,” and for two hundred miles we ran under the low, rocky coast of Lapland. We often fell in with ships sailing from or to Archangel, and in our own eyes we seemed the only barbarians amid the commerce and civilization of the world. We sent deputations to every ship that came within hailing distance to beg tobacco or sheets of writing paper, without, however, betraying our incognito. We desired to be the first to give news of ourselves by the telegraph. Contrary winds compelled our captain to tack often, and the delay seemed to our impatience purgatory itself.