Wild Adventures in Wild Places Part 5

Ah! there were hearts on that berg that would never beat again, for at that moment six of the original fifteen lay dead on the berg.

The storm now abated, and the sea went down; but yet another danger had to be encountered, for strange black monsters, with fierce eyes, rose up from the depth of ocean and sought to scale the berg. Was it after the dead they had come?

Boats at last!--only the boats of native Indians, but they came with friendly intentions.

So they committed the bodies of their late comrades to the deep, and, embarking with the Indians, were rowed on sh.o.r.e to a new land. Frank was in a sad way: he was carried to the hut of a chief; medicine men were sent for to look upon him and administer to him herbs strangely compounded, and wise old squaws uttered their spells over his prostrate form; but it was the nursing he received, after all, from Chisholm and Fred that at last brought him round.

Their fare while they lived among the Indians was very poor of its kind; but then, a gift-horse should not be looked in the mouth. These poor people gave them a portion of all they possessed, and they gave it, too, with right good will. Captain Anderson could speak their language--a kind of Yack _patois_--and held many long conversations with the chief-- a great man in the estimation of the tribe, and in reality a true man, although only a savage. Anderson held him spell-bound, as he told of some of the strange cities and countries there were in the world. He liked to hear the captain talk, and still, from the sinister look and incredulous smile on his face as he listened, you could see that he thought the narrator was drawing largely on his imagination.

It was very kind of this chief to invite the captain, our heroes, and the survivors of the melancholy shipwreck to stay with him for the rest of their lives.

"Blubber," he said, "would never fail them; salt fish and seal's flesh could always be had in abundance, with now and then a bit of a whale as a treat. Then they could take them wives from the daughters of his people, and the smoke from their wigwams would ascend for ever."

It was a pretty picture, Anderson allowed; but--there is no accounting for taste; he loved his own home in England better.

"Then in that case," said Kit Chak--and here spoke the n.o.ble savage--"I and my brother will guide you through the great forest to Inchboon, where lies a Danish whaler. The journey will take us one moon."

One moon!--nearly thirty days. It was a fearful undertaking; but what will not men do for home and country? So all preparations were made for the march, and in three days they were ready to start.

"You do well to wrap up, Frank, my boy," said Chisholm to his young friend; "but, beside the captain, you _do_ look odd."

In twenty-five days, after sufferings and hardships that they never forgot, they arrived at Inchboon, and sure enough they found the Danish ship. She was bound to Russia, though; if that would suit them, said the captain, his vessel was at their service.

They gladly accepted his offer, bade brave Kit Chak and his brother adieu (not without well rewarding them), and in six weeks' time they were landed at Cronstadt.

Our travellers now were as happy as kings; but where, they wondered, would they turn up next?

CHAPTER SEVEN.

PART III--THE RUSSIAN STEPPES.

QUIET DAYS ON THE KYRA--CAPTAIN VARDE'S HAPPY HOME--FRED FREEMAN'S RUSTIC RUSSIAN--THE CAPTAIN TELLS A TALE OF ADVENTURE.

The captain of the Danish barque, who had brought our three heroes safely into Russian waters, was one of those individuals who are never so happy as when ministering to the comfort and pleasure of others.

"Having landed you in Europe," he said, on the very last day they dined together on board, "I dare say I ought to let you go, but I a.s.sure you, gentlemen, I am not tired of you, and if you will accept of a few weeks of the kind of rude hospitality I can offer you, at my little country home on the banks of the Kyra, I shall be delighted."

"Stop," he continued, smilingly, holding up his hand as Chisholm was about to speak, "I know everything you would say, so there is no occasion to say anything. I have been kind to you, and you feel so much indebted to me already, that you are unwilling to trespa.s.s further on my goodness. That is what you would say; but, dear gentlemen, if you do feel under an obligation to me, you can amply repay me, and even confer a favour on me, by giving me a few weeks of your company."

"What say you, Fred?" asked Chisholm.

"Oh!" Fred replied, "I am delighted at finding such a pleasant 'new way of paying old debts.' Let us go by all means."

"As for me, my friends," said Captain Anderson, "I must leave you to-morrow. Although the loss of my ship was no fault of mine, it was a terrible misfortune, and one which it will be long ere I can forget, and longer still ere it will be forgotten against me."

"We need not tell you," said Chisholm, "how truly sorry we are to part with you. We will live in the hopes of meeting you some day in England, and renewing our acquaintance with one in whose ship we sailed so long and spent so many happy hours."

So next day the captain of the lost brig _Grampus_ and our friends parted. They stayed just one week in Cronstadt, communicating by telegraph with those at home, then, in company with their new friend, started for his cottage on the Kyra. They were not sorry when, three days after leaving Saint Petersburg, they found themselves down in the very heart of the cool green country, and in a spot which, but for the different dress and language of the people they met, they could easily have fancied was a part of England itself. If they were delighted with the country, they were not less so with the house and home itself of Captain Varde, their kindly host. Half buried in trees, it was approached by a broad and beautiful avenue, which led through well-kept lawns to what you would have been bound to have styled the hall door, or front entrance, but the truth is Captain Varde's house had no front, or, in other words, it had two; for the s.p.a.cious hall led you straight through to the wide terraced lawn and flower garden, that skirted the lovely river.

"When we go down to the village," said Varde, "which is situated about three miles from here, we sometimes go by boat, and sometimes with the horses in the conveyance I have landed you in to-day. But here comes my wife and daughter, the only two beings I love on earth."

The first greetings betwixt himself and family being ended, Captain Varde introduced our heroes, who were very kindly welcomed, and made to feel perfectly at home; so much so that before the first day of their visit had come to an end, they seemed to have known this family all their lives.

When, after dinner, the ladies had retired, and the gentlemen lingered over the walnuts and wine,--

"Captain Varde," said Fred Freeman, "I cannot tell you how much astonished I and my comrades feel at all we see around us in this pretty home of yours. It is so different from anything we could have expected to meet with in Russia."

"It is, indeed," added Chisholm, "there is an air of refinement everywhere, and, if you will excuse me for saying so, captain, the English spoken by Mrs and Miss Varde, with the exception of a slight foreign accent, which, in my opinion, adds a charm to it, is as perfect as any you will hear in London."

"We have travelled a good deal, even in your country," said the Danish captain, with a smile.

"Yes, but," said Fred, "you would travel a very long way in England without meeting with a family who could talk the Russian language. As linguists, the people of this country undoubtedly beat us. Now, my idea of a Russian peasant, or small farmer, was somewhat as follows--shall I offend you if I describe my beau-ideal rustic Russian?"

"Certainly not; though my wife and child are Russians by birth, I myself am a Dane."

"Well, then," said Fred, "the rustic Russian that I had on the brain, and whose prototype I look for here in vain, was indeed a sorry lout--a short, stout, rough, and unkempt fellow, with less appearance of good breeding about him than a Nottingham cowherd, and less manners than a Newcastle navvy, with a good deal of reverence about him for the aristocracy, and an extraordinary relish for rum. He was guiltless of anything resembling ablution; dressed in sheep's skins, with the hairy side next the skin; slept in this same jacket, and never changed it from one year's end to another, except for the purpose of taking a bath, which operation he performed by getting inside the stove and raking the hot ashes all about him; his princ.i.p.al diet was the blackest of bread, and the greatest treat you could give him a basin of train-oil and a horn spoon."

Captain Varde laughed. "Anyhow," he said, "I am glad you have already found yourselves undeceived, and I do not doubt but that, in your intercourse with the people of this country, you will find many of them brave, generous, and gentlemanly fellows, and quite worthy of being reckoned among the number of your friends."

And Captain Varde was right.

The first two or three months of their life at the house of their newly-found friend was quite idyllic in its simplicity. Much of their time was spent in fishing and shooting, or in climbing the hills to obtain a view of the wild but beautiful country around them; but in whatever way the day had been pa.s.sed, the afternoon always found them gathered around the hospitable board of their worthy host. Then the evening would be spent in pleasant conversation, with music and story-telling, the stories nearly all coming from the captain himself.

He had spent a great deal of his life at sea, and had come through innumerable adventures both on the ocean and on land.

"Old sailors," said Varde, once, "are sometimes accused of spinning yarns, with less of facts about them than there might be; but, for my own part, I think that a man who has knocked about the world for about twenty years has little occasion to draw upon his imagination."

"I fought a bear one time," he continued, "single-handed, face to face-- ay, and I may say breast to breast."

"No easy task that, I should say," remarked Chisholm, "if he were of any size."

"He was a monster," said Varde, "of Herculean strength; yonder is his skin on the couch. You may be sure though that I did not court the struggle, nor am I ever likely to forget it, for two reasons--the first is that in my right leg I still carry the marks of the brute's talons; the other reason is a far dearer one."

Captain Varde paused, and took his wife's hand in his, gazing at her with a look of inexpressible tenderness.

"But for that bear adventure I never should have met with my wife. How my Adeline's father came to settle down for life in the wild unpeopled district where I first made his acquaintance and hers, I can hardly tell. In his youth he had been a merchant and a dweller in cities; in his old age he built himself a house many many versts even from a village of any pretensions, on the confines of a great gloomy forest, and close by a lake that people say is far deeper than the great hills around it are high. Here he lived the life of a recluse and a bookworm.

"In the summer of 1845, myself and a few friends had encamped in the neighbourhood of this lake, chiefly to enjoy the excellent fishing there to be obtained. Not that we did not find work for our guns as well, for there was abundance of both fur and feather; but my chief delight lay in the gentler art. One of my friends, Satiesky by name, could do enough gunning for the whole camp, so I at least was content, and the time was spent most pleasantly until it set in for settled wet weather.

"At last after several days' rain it was evident the weather was broken, and the summer gone; so, very reluctantly, we prepared to pack our horses and trudge back again to the distant city. Packing did not take us long, and, having packed, we started. A march of six or eight versts brought us to the little village or hamlet of Odstok. We had just reached its first house--a small outlying farm built on a wooded eminence. It was well for us we had, for in less than ten minutes the low land that we had just pa.s.sed was completely covered with water.

What had been fields before was now an inland sea. Swollen by the mountain torrents, the river had burst its bounds and swept down the valley with terrible force, carrying before it fences and trees, and even the scattered houses which stood in its way, and drowning oxen, horses, sheep, and alas! human beings as well.

"For three whole weeks we were in a state of siege. Not that we wanted food, however; Jerikoff the farmer's larder was well stored, and he was very good to us indeed. He found his old boat, in which he used to paddle about in a little ca.n.a.l before the floods, very handy now. I shouldn't have cared to risk my life in the ricketty tub; but Jerikoff did, and used to make voyages to a distant shop, and return laden with many a little Russian dainty. Once he brought in a haul of hares and rabbits from the flood. They had doubtless taken refuge on a tree as an extemporised island; but when that island itself became flooded, down the stream, _nolens volens_, they had to float. It is an ill wind that blows n.o.body good, and Jerikoff set out in great glee to reap this rich harvest of living fur. His face was a study while so engaged. 'Oh! my pretty dears,' he said, addressing his victims; 'I couldn't think of seeing you drown before my very face. Come into my boat; there is room for you all.' But when the old man, before landing, began to knock them on the head, I daresay the little mariners thought they had got out of the frying pan into the fire.

"But about my bear, gentlemen. Well, I am coming to that."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE CAPTAIN'S TALE CONTINUED--WINTER BRINGS THE BEARS FROM THE MOUNTAINS--THE TRAGEDY IN THE FOREST--BEARS AT BAY--BREAST TO BREAST WITH BRUIN--FRED FREEMAN FALLS IN LOVE!