Condemned as a Nihilist Part 33

"We must have made a good two hundred miles," G.o.dfrey said; "and we could safely venture to strike across in such quiet weather as this, but there is a river marked on the chart as coming in somewhere here, and I want to find it if I can. There is water enough for another week, but it begins to taste horribly of skin, and besides that it has a considerable mixture of ashes. I am sure we must be very close to it; indeed, according to my calculation of two hundred miles, we ought to have pa.s.sed it already. Anyhow, we will keep on until we get there."

G.o.dfrey was not far out, for late in the day they saw an opening of some fifty yards wide in the bank. They at once made for it, and entering it, paddled along as near the bank as they could go to avoid the current.

G.o.dfrey tasted the water from time to time, and after paddling for two hours p.r.o.nounced it perfectly sweet.

"We will land here, Luka. I am sure we both want to stretch our limbs a bit and have a rest. Look about for a good place to land; the banks are too steep to be able to get the big canoe up, but we can carry the other--it is light enough now."

They presently found a place where a portion of the bank had fallen in and left a gap. Here they landed, moored the large canoe to the sh.o.r.e and carried the other up the bank. An exclamation of pleasure broke from G.o.dfrey at the wide expanse of bright green dotted with flowers. Jack was exuberant in his delight, circling round and round like a wild thing, barking loudly and occasionally throwing himself down to roll.

The two paddles were driven firmly into the ground, the sail unlaced from the yard, which was lashed to the paddles as a ridge-pole, over which the sail was thrown. The furs were taken out of the boat and spread in the tent.

"We will have a cup of tea, Luka, and then turn in for twelve hours'

sleep. I am sure we deserve it."

After a long rest they woke thoroughly refreshed; then, while Luka was lighting a fire, G.o.dfrey went down to the river, stripped, and had a short swim, the water being too cold to permit his stopping more than two or three minutes in it. When they had had breakfast he said:

"Now, Luka, do you go down to the boat, take the firewood out, and then sluice the boat thoroughly with water and get it perfectly clean. By the time you have done that I shall be back, and we will then lift her out of the water and turn her bottom upwards to dry thoroughly. Then we will melt down some of that bear fat we saved and give her a thorough rubbing with it. But we will leave that job until to-morrow; it will take four-and-twenty hours for her to dry. I am going out with my gun to see what I can shoot. The whole place seems full of birds, though they are mostly small ones; still I might come across something better. You had better keep Jack with you."

G.o.dfrey's expedition was not a very successful one. He brought back four grouse and a dozen small birds, which he had killed with a single shot, firing into the thick of a flock that flew by overhead. The grouse were roasted for dinner, and G.o.dfrey found to his satisfaction that Luka had baked a pile of cakes, this being the first time they had tasted bread for a fortnight, as it demanded more time and attention than they could spare to it in the boat. Luka told him that several flights of black duck had pa.s.sed up the river while he had been at work at the boat, and volunteered to grease the boat next day if G.o.dfrey would try to get a shot at them.

"It will be of no use my trying to shoot them on the river," G.o.dfrey said, "as I should have no means of picking them up; and I can tell you I found the water too cold this morning to care about stripping and swimming out for them. I will have another try on the plain. I saw four or five deer to-day, but only the first pa.s.sed within shot, and as I had not a bullet in the gun he got off without my firing at him. I will try to-morrow if I can't stalk one."

Accordingly the next day G.o.dfrey set out. After an hour's walking he saw three deer. He worked round very cautiously so as to get a clump of bushes between him and them, and then crawled up to it and looked through. They were a hundred and fifty yards away, and he had no confidence in his gun at that distance. He stood for some time thinking, and then remembered he had read that on the American plains the deer were often decoyed into coming close up to the hunter by working upon their curiosity. He drew his ramrod out from his gun, put the cap he wore--which was the fur one with tails--on to the end of it, pushed this through the bushes, and began to wave it to and fro. The deer caught sight of it immediately, and stood staring at it for a minute or two, ready to bound away should the strange object seem to threaten danger.

As nothing came of it, they began to move towards it slowly and with hesitation, until they gathered in a group at a distance of not more than fifty yards.

G.o.dfrey, while waving the cap with one hand, was holding his gun in readiness with the other. Feeling sure that he could not miss the mark now, he gently lowered the cap and raised his gun to his shoulder.

Slight as was the movement it startled the deer; but as they turned to fly he fired both barrels at the shoulder of the one nearest to him, and had the satisfaction of seeing it fall, while its companions dashed away over the plain. He ran up to the fallen animal and found that it was already dead, both bullets having struck it in the region of the heart.

He proceeded to cut off the head and the lower part of the legs, opened and cleaned it, and was then able to lift it on to his shoulder. As he neared the tent Jack came tearing along to meet him with loud barks of welcome.

"Yes, I have got food for you for some time, Jack, though it does not seem to me that you do much to earn it."

Luka was at work greasing the boat. G.o.dfrey called him up on to the bank.

"We must try and do something to preserve the meat, Luka."

"Shall we rub it with salt, G.o.dfrey?"

"We can spare some salt, but not much. It would never do to be left without that. We can do well enough without bread, but we can't do without salt."

"Smoke it well," Luka said.

"We might try that, but I am afraid those hams are beginning to go."

"Not smoke enough, G.o.dfrey."

"No, I suppose not."

"They must have plenty, lots of smoke."

"Well, there is plenty of wood to make smoke with."

"We must keep it close," Luka said. "We ought to smoke it for two days."

"We can keep it close enough by cutting some poles and making a circular tent with the sail. It will spoil its whiteness, but that is of no great consequence. You had better leave the boat for the present, Luka, and come with me and cut poles and boughs for the fire."

Taking hatchets they started out and presently cut eight poles ten feet long.

"Now which is the best wood for smoking it with?"

"Pine makes the best smoke next to oak."

"There are plenty of stunted pines about, and I should think some of this aromatic shrub with it would be good. I will make up two big bundles of that, and we will take them and the poles back first; then we will cut some pine boughs."

As all these were obtained within a few hundred yards of the camp, they had soon materials for their fire. The poles were then stuck in a circle and lashed together at the top, the sail taken down and wrapped round it. It was not large enough, but by adding the storm-sail and the hide of the deer the covering was made complete. Then a number of sticks were tied from pole to pole across it. The deer-flesh was then cut up into strips of about a foot long, three or four inches wide, and half an inch thick; and these were hung over the sticks until the whole of the deer was so disposed of. The three remaining bear's hams were also hung up, and a fire of the pine-wood was then with some difficulty lighted and some of the sweet-smelling shrub laid on it. G.o.dfrey, who had undertaken this part of the business while Luka went back to the boat, crawled out from the tent almost blinded.

"By Jove!" he said as he closed the aperture, "if it is as bad as that now that it is only just lighted, the meat ought to be smoked as dry as a chip by to-morrow."

G.o.dfrey had nothing to do now but to watch the smoke rising from the opening at the top of the tent, opening the entrance a little whenever it slackened, drawing the sticks together with the iron ramrod, and throwing on a fresh armful of the fuel. Having finished greasing the boat, Luka did the same to the canoe. They spent the next twenty-four hours in alternately sleeping, collecting drift-wood on the river-bank, and attending to the fire, which had to be watched carefully, and some dry splinters added from time to time to get the green wood to keep alight. Every hour or two a piece of meat was taken out and examined, and in thirty hours from the time of lighting the fire Luka p.r.o.nounced that it was done. The strips had shrivelled to half their former thickness and were almost black in colour.

"They will give us plenty of work for our teeth, Luka," G.o.dfrey said.

"They look almost like shoe-leather, but perhaps they will be better than they look. I once tasted some smoked reindeer tongues--at least they called them reindeer tongues, but I do not suppose they were--and they were first-rate. Now there is nothing more to do; let us get ready for another start."

The sail was taken off and the poles chopped into five-feet lengths.

"We will lay them in the bottom of the boat, Luka, four longways and four crossways. As there are sixteen of them, that will make the top line five or six inches above the floor. Then we will lay our firewood on them. In that way it won't get wet with the water, and, what is quite as important, it won't dirty the water."

This was done. The flour and deer's flesh were stowed on similar platforms fore and aft of the firewood and covered with skins. Some twelve buckets of water were then baled in. What remained of the frozen provisions was inspected; but it was agreed that as it had already melted a good deal, it would not be eatable much longer, and as they had food enough to last for some time, it was of no use keeping it. It was therefore broken up, Jack was allowed to eat as much as he wanted, and the rest was left. When everything was packed the canoe was carried down and placed in the water, and they took their places; Jack jumped on board, and a fresh start was made.

As soon as they emerged from the small river, they struck out straight from the land. The wind was light and from the north, and both took their paddles. Their four days' rest had done them good, and the canoe, under the influence of sail and oar, went fast through the water.

"Twenty-four hours ought to take us across," G.o.dfrey said. "The gulf looks from eighty to ninety miles across at the point where the river runs into it. We must head rather to the south, for there is sure to be a current out in the middle, as the Obi is a big river."

It was, however, thirty hours before they reached the opposite sh.o.r.e--G.o.dfrey accounting for the difference on the supposition that the stream must have been a good deal stronger than they expected, and must have drifted them down a long way. They found, indeed, that even insh.o.r.e they were pa.s.sing the land at a rate of nearly two miles an hour.

"That is all the better, Luka, for with this north wind our sail will be no good to us. We may as well get it down at once and stow it. The sh.o.r.es are muddy, I see; so we shall not hurt the canoe if we should drift up against it. That is a comfort, for we can both go to sleep. I am sure, after thirty hours' paddling with only two or three long easies, we deserve a rest. First of all we must have a meal. One does not know whether to call it dinner or supper when there is no night and we sleep just when we are tired."

They had caught eight or ten fish as they came across, pa.s.sing through a great shoal of herrings. In half an hour the kettle was boiling over the fire, the fish were hissing and crackling in the frying-pan over it, and a strip of deer's flesh, with the ramrod run through it, was frizzling.

It was p.r.o.nounced excellent. There was a slight aromatic bitterness that gave a zest and flavour to it, and the flesh inside was by no means so tough as G.o.dfrey had expected to find it. When all three of the voyagers had satisfied their hunger, the brands were as usual extinguished, the embers thrown overboard; then returning to the canoe, they lay down, and were in a very few minutes fast asleep. They slept for six hours, and when they woke the land was no longer in sight.

"It is lucky there is no fog," G.o.dfrey said, "and that we have the sun to act as a compa.s.s. We can't be many miles out. We won't make straight for sh.o.r.e, Luka; we will head about north-west, so as to edge in gradually. There must be a good deal of current here, and it will be helping us along."

In an hour the low line of coast was visible, and they then headed still more to the north.

"There must be a good three-mile-an-hour current here," G.o.dfrey observed presently. "We are going along first-rate past the sh.o.r.e. It took us over five days to come up. At this rate we shall go down in two."

They paddled steadily for twelve hours, stopping once only to cook a meal. Then they went close insh.o.r.e again, had supper, and slept. When they woke they found they were still within a mile of the sh.o.r.e, and the current was now taking them along no more than a mile an hour.

"The gulf must be wide here, Luka. I don't think we should gain anything by going out four or five miles farther, so we will keep about as we are. We ought to be at the point by the end of to-day's work. We were two hundred miles up. I expect we drifted down five-and-twenty miles in crossing, and we must have pa.s.sed the land at a good five miles an hour yesterday; so that we ought not to be more than thirty or forty miles from the point, for this peninsula does not go as far north as the other by twenty or thirty miles."

After eight hours' paddling they found themselves at the mouth of a deep bay.