And yet in a way it was interesting, for I saw some of the inhabitants of the island, the aboriginal inhabitants, I should never have otherwise seen. Gilyaks they are, and the water seems their element. They have the long straight black hair of the Mongolian, and sometimes they were clad in furs—ragged and old and worn, the very last remains of furs—sometimes merely in dirty clothes, the cast-offs of far-away nations.
They live by the fish. There is nothing else.
I tried hard to photograph these aborigines, using all sorts of guile to get them into focus. I produced cigarettes, I offered sugar, but as soon as they found out what I was about they at once fled, even though their boat was fastened against the gangway and it meant abandoning somebody who was on board. I did eventually get some photographs, but they shared the fate of the rest of my Russian pictures, and I am sorry, for I do not suppose I shall ever again have the chance of photographing the Gilyak in his native haunts. He belongs to a dying race, they told me, and there are few children amongst them.
And though we lay long at De Castries Bay they would not let me take pictures there at all. It was forbidden, so I was reduced to doing the best I could through my cabin port. In Alexandrosvk the police officer had aided and abetted my picture-making, but in Nikolayeusk it was a forbidden pastime, for the town, for purposes of photography, was a fort, and when I boarded the Kanovina on the river, the post steamer bound for Blagoveschensk, I met with more difficulties.
There was on board a Mrs Marie Skibitsky and her husband, the headmaster of the Nikolayeusk “Real” School, and she spoke very good English and was a kind friend to me. Through her came a message from the captain to the effect that though he did not mind my photographing himself, it was forbidden in Russia, and he begged me not to do it when anyone was looking on. That made it pretty hopeless, for the ship was crowded and there was always not one person but probably a score of people taking a very great interest. The captain was not brass-bound as he had been in the John Cockerill, but he and all his officers were clad in khaki, with military caps, and it was sometime before I realised them as the ship's officers. The captain looked to me like a depressed corporal who was having difficulties with his sergeant, and the ship, though they charged us three roubles more for the trip to Blagoveschensk than the Amur Company would have done, was dirty and ill-kept. It was in her I met the saloon the windows of which would not open, and the water in my cabin had gone wrong, and when I insisted that I could not be happy till I had some, it was brought me in a teapot! They never struck the hours on this steamer as they had done on the John Cockerill, and gone was the excellent cook, and the food consisted largely of meat, of which I am bound to say there was any quantity.
But in spite of all drawbacks the ship was crowded; there were many officers and their wives on board, and there were many officers on board with women who were not their 'wives. These last were so demonstrative that I always took them for honeymoon couples till at last a Cossack officer whom I met farther on explained:
“Not 'wives. Oh no! It is always so! It is just the steamer!”
Whether these little irregularities were to be set down to the discomforts of the steamer or to the seductive air of the river, I do not know. Perhaps I struck a particularly amorous company. I am bound to say no one but me appeared to be embarrassed. It seemed to be all in the day's work.
It was pleasant going up the river again and having beside me one who could explain things to me. Every day it grew warmer, for not only was the short northern summer reaching its zenith, but we were now going south again. And Mrs Skibitsky sat beside me and rubbed up her English and told me how in two years' time she proposed to bring her daughters to England to give them an English education, and I promised to look out for her and show her the ropes and how she could best manage in London. In two years' time! And we neither of us knew that we were on the threshold of the greatest war in the world's history.
I took the breaking out of that war so calmly.