we knew what to do. We wrung out our socks and jackets, and put them
on again, threw everything we had left into the kayak, got in and started
paddling away. My God, how furiously we worked those paddles! It was
this, I think, that saved us. In about six hours we approached Cape
Flora...
Among the earlier entries made soon after the navigating officer had
left the ship, I found an interesting chart. It had an old-fashioned look
about it, and I thought it resembled the chart that was appended to
Nansen's account of the voyage of the Fram.
But what surprised me was this: there was a chart of the drift of the St.
Maria from October 1912 to April 1914, and the drift was shown as
having taken place in the area of what was known as Petermann's Land.
Who nowadays does not know that this land does not exist? But who
knows that this fact was first established by Captain Tatarinov in the
schooner St. Maria'.
What then did he accomplish, this Captain, whose name appears in no
book of geography? He discovered Severnaya Zemlya and proved that
Petermann's Land does not exist. He changed the map of the Arctic, yet
he considered his expedition a failure.
But the most important thing was this: reading the diary for the fifth,
sixth and seventh time from my own copy (with nothing now to
interfere with the actual process of reading), my attention was drawn to
the entries dealing with the Captain's attitude to this discovery:
'Lately he kept reproaching himself for not having sent out a party to
explore it' (i.e. Severnaya Zemlya).
'If we perish, our discovery must not perish with us. So let our friends
report that through the efforts of our expedition an extensive territory,
which we have named Maria Land, has been added to Russia.'
'Should desperate circumstances compel me to abandon ship I shall
make for the land which we have discovered.'
And the navigating officer called this idea childish and foolhardy.
Childish and foolhardy! The Captain's last letter which Aunt Dasha
once read to me contained those two words.
'Willy-nilly, we had to abandon our original plan of making
Vladivostok along the coast of Siberia. But this proved to be a blessing
in disguise. It had given me quite a new idea. I hope it does not strike
you, as it does some of my companions, as childish and foolhardy.'
The page had ended with those words and the next sheet was missing.
Now I knew what that idea was: he wanted to leave ship and head for
that land. The expedition, which had been the principal aim of his life,
had been a failure. He could not return home 'empty-handed'. His one
desire was to reach that land, and it was clear to me that if any trace of
the expedition were to be found anywhere, then it was in that land that
it had to be sought.
Would I ever find out what had happened to this man, who had
entrusted me, as it were, with the task of telling the story of his life and
death? Had he left the ship to explore the land he had discovered, or had
he died from hunger along with his men, leaving his schooner, icebound
off the coast of Yamal, to drift for years along Nansen's route to
Greenland with a dead crew? Or, one cold stormy night, when stars,
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moon and Northern Lights were blotted out, had the ship been crushed
in the ice, her masts, topmasts and yards crushing to the deck, killing
the men there, while the hull groaned and creaked in its death throes,
and in some two hours the blizzard had cloaked the scene of the disaster
in snow?
Or were men from the St. Maria still alive somewhere, on some Arctic
desert island, men who could tell the story of the ship's fate and the fate
of her Captain? Had not six Russian sailors lived for several years in an
uninhabited corner of Spitzbergen, hunting bears and seals, eating their
flesh, wearing their skins and using them to cover the floor of their hut,
which they had built from ice and snow?
But how could they? Twenty years had passed since that 'childish',
'foolhardy' idea of abandoning ship and striking out for Maria Land
had been voiced. Had they made for this land? Had they reached it?
CHAPTER EIGHT
'I THINK WE HAVE MET'
Volodya, the doctor's son, called for me at seven in the morning. Half
awake, I heard him down below scolding his dogs Buska and Toga. We
had arranged the day before to visit the local fur-breeding farm and he
had suggested making the trip by dog-sledge.
When we had settled in the sledge he shouted briskly, like your true
Nenets, 'mush, mush!' and the dogs started off at a spanking speed.
The snow dust struck my face, stinging my eyes and taking my breath
away. When the sledge bounced over a snowdrift I clutched Volodya,
who looked round in surprise. I let go of him and started to bounce up
and down in my straps, which, I thought, were not drawn tight enough.
Whoosh! Without warning the dogs stopped dead in their tracks, all
but catapulting me out of the sledge. Nothing alarming. It appeared that
we had to turn off here, and Volodya had stopped the dogs to change
direction. His dogs had one fault-they couldn't take a turning on the
run.
We continued down the new track and after a while the dogs spurted
forward and began to bark. Hark!—what was that? All of a sudden, as if
in answer to the dogs a chorus of barks came from behind a clump of
trees, first remote, then nearer and nearer. It was a long-drawn-out,
wild, confused barking, which sent a chill up your spine.
'Volodya, why are there so many dogs here?'
'They're not dogs, they're foxes.'
'Why do they bark?'
'They're cannies!' Volodya shouted over his shoulder. 'They bark!'
I had, of course, seen ordinary foxes, but Volodya explained that this
farm was breeding silvery-black foxes, and this was something quite
different. There were no foxes like it anywhere else in the world. A
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