there, because the drift logs lay at an angle forming a square enclosure
with the rocks. In this 'tent' we found a food basket fastened with a
strip of sailcloth and containing several woollen stockings and shreds of
a blue and white blanket. We also found an axe and a 'fishing-rod', that
is, a length of twine with a hook at the end made from a bent pin. Some
of the articles lay scattered round the 'tent'-a spirit lamp, a spoon, a
small wooden box containing various odds and ends, including several
thick sail-needles, also home-made. On some of these objects the rubber
stamp 'Trapping Schooner St. Maria' or the inscription 'St. Maria'
could still be made out. But this camp site was completely deserted-
there was not a soul there, living or dead.
'2. It was a home-made cookstove—a tin casing enclosing a bucket
with a lid. Usually an iron tray was placed underneath for burning bear
or seal fat. But there stood an ordinary primus heater. I shook it and
found that it still contained some paraffin oil. I tried to pump it up, and
the oil squirted up in a thin stream. Next to it we found a tin marked
'Borsch. Vikhorev Cannery. St. Petersburg, 1912'. Had we wished to, we
could have opened that tin of borsch and heated it up on the primus-
stove, which had been lying in the earth for nearly thirty years.
'3. We returned to the camp after a fruitless search in the direction of
Galchikha. This time we approached it from the southeast, and the hills,
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which we had previously seen as an unrelieved undulating line, now
presented quite an unexpected appearance. It was a single large scrap
running into stony tundra intersected by deep notches, as though
excavated' by human hands. We walked along one of these hollows, and
none of us at first paid any attention to the caved-in stack of driftwood
between two huge boulders. There were only a few logs, not more than
half a dozen, but one of them had a sawn end. It was this sawn log that
struck us. Up till now we had believed that the camp had been situated
between the rocky ridge and the hills. It could have been shifted,
however, and before long we found that this was so.
'It would be difficult to enumerate half the things we found in this
hollow. We found a watch, a hunting knife, several ski-sticks, two
single-barrelled Remingtons, a leather vest and a tube containing some
kind of ointment. We found the rotted remains of a bag containing
photographic film. And finally, in the lowest part of the hollow, we
found a tent, and under that tent, its edges still held down by drift logs
and whalebone to prevent it being blown away in a gale—under this
tent, which we had to hack out of the ice with axes, we found him whom
we were looking for...
It was still possible to guess in what attitude he had died-his right arm
flung out, body stretched out as if listening to something. He lay on his
face, and the satchel in which we found his farewell letters was under his
chest. Obviously, he had hoped that the letters would be better
preserved under cover of his body.
'4. There could have been no hope for our ever seeing him alive. But
until the word Death had been pronounced, until I had seen it with my
own eyes, this childish thought had still lingered in my heart. Now it
was gone, but in its stead another light burned up brightly—the thought
that it was not for nothing, not in vain, that I had been seeking him, that
for him there would be no death. An hour ago the steamer came
alongside the electric lighthouse and the sailors, with heads bared,
carried the coffin aboard covered with the tattered remains of the tent.
A salute was fired and the ship flew its flag at half-mast. Alone, I
wandered around the deserted camp of the St. Maria and here I am,
writing to you, my own, dear Katya. How I wish I were with you at this
moment! It will soon be thirty years since that brave struggle for life
ended, but I know that for you he died only today. I am writing to you
from the front, as it were, telling you about your father and friend, who
had fallen in battle. Sorrow and pride for him fill my soul, which is
stirred to its depths by this spectacle of immortality...'
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CHAPTER TWO
THE UNBELIEVABLE
'How I wish I were with you at this moment'—I read and reread these
words, and they seemed to me so cold and empty, as if I were in a cold,
empty room, addressing my own reflection. It was Katya I needed, and
not this diary—the living, bright, sweet Katya, who believed in me and
loved me. Once, shaken by the fact that she had turned her back on me
at her mother's funeral, I had dreamt of coming to her, like the Gadfly,
throwing at her feet the evidence that proved me to have been right.
Afterwards the whole world had learnt of her father through me and he
had become a national hero. But for Katya he remained her father-who,
if not she, was to be the first to learn that I had found him? Who, if not
she, had told me how wonderful everything would be if the fairy-tales
we believed in still came true on earth? Amid the cares, labours and
perturbations of the war I had found him. Not a boy, fascinated by a
dim, glamorous vision of the Arctic which illumined his mute, half-
conscious world, not a youth striving with youth's stubbornness to have
his own way-no, it was as a mature man, who had experienced
everything, that I stood confronting a discovery destined to become part
of the history of Russian science. I was proud and happy. But a surge of
bitterness rose up inside me at the thought that it could all have been
different.
I did not get back to my regiment until the end of January, and the
very next day I was summoned to Polarnoye to report to the commander
of the Northern Fleet.
Our launch entered the bay, and the town unfolded to my gaze, all
white, pink and snowy. It stood on the steep, grey hillside as if on a
pedestal of beautiful granite rocks. White little houses with porch steps
running out in different directions were arranged in terraces, while
along the bay front, forming a semi-circle, stood big stone houses. In
fact, as I found out afterwards, they were called 'compass houses', as
though a gigantic compass had described this semi-circle over
