In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic (4 page)

Would our departure compromise the running of the ship? Brusilov himself was of the opinion that a crew of ten was quite sufficient to man her, even on the open sea. On the other hand, our departure would add one other appreciable advantage to the rationing of supplies, namely the saving of fuel, which was perilously scarce.

There was not a single log or piece of coal left on board; all we had left for heating was bear fat and seal blubber mixed with machine oil. The samovar was kept boiling with wood from cabin walls and other nonstructural parts of the ship. During the winter of 1913 to 1914, the entire crew lived in two cabins aft, an upper one that was smaller and colder, and another on a lower deck that was quite warm because it also served as the galley. After our departure everyone would be able to live in that lower cabin, which would greatly simplify the heating problem. Their health would improve as a result, since the temperature of the other cabin rarely rose above 41° Fahrenheit during the day and easily dropped below 28° Fahrenheit at night.

Given all these circumstances, the lieutenant could only look on our departure as a blessing that would be to everyone’s benefit. Nevertheless, the same uncertain future faced us all. No one could foresee who would succeed in this unequal struggle against the treacherous Arctic elements.

 

My preparations began on January 10, 1914. There was plenty to do. Eventually we had to build seven sledges and seven kayaks, prepare our clothing, sew and repair our boots, gather together all the supplies and think of a thousand things at once. Because we lacked essential materials and proper tools, the work was extraordinarily difficult. The wood made available to us was of poor quality. We had to manufacture rivets from copper scrap; we even had to make many of the tools we required. The many wooden pieces we sawed for each kayak were first joined together with rivets, and then lashed firmly with strong twine. When fully assembled, the entire wooden skeleton was also wrapped with the twine, and then covered with canvas cut from spare sails. All this work was carried out deep in the ship’s hold, where the temperature dipped as low as —36° Fahrenheit, by the faint glow of seal-oil lamps, which we called “smudge pots” because they gave off more smoke than light. Most of the work was delicate and painstaking, so it had to be done with bare hands despite the terrible cold. Our fingers quickly became chilled to the bone and we would have to warm them repeatedly over the lamps. In the bitter subzero temperatures, it was particularly excruciating to rivet the kayaks and sewthe sailcloth that covered them. Our homemade needles were so cold to the touch that they burned like red-hot iron and blistered our fingertips. We worked from early morning until late at night, and gradually the hold was filled with kayaks and sledges. We lightened the hard work by telling jokes and singing songs.

Each kayak was designed to carry two men, as well as their equipment and supplies, and each was given a name such as “Gull,” “Auk,” “Snow Bunting,” “Teal,” and “Fulmar.” Due to the extreme cold of the ship’s hold, it was impossible to give the boats a finishing coat of paint. We solved the problem by lowering the kayaks through a skylight in the afterdeck into the relative warmth of the galley. For a week it was so crowded with kayaks we could move around in the galley only bent double, almost on all fours.

In March a small lead opened in the ice at the bow of the ship, which widened to be twelve feet across. There we were able to subject our small craft to sea trials, and discovered that they performed better than our clumsy tools and materials would have allowed us to hope. The kayaks proved to be spacious and stable. The materials were by no means suitable, admittedly, and certainly not what we would have chosen, but we had to use whatever was at hand. For the longitudinal members of the frames we were forced to use desiccated spruce planking stripped from the ceiling of the mess; needless to say, these boards were not particularly strong or flexible. Most of the ribs were fabricated from old barrel staves, so each frame had to be wrapped with twine to prevent the wood from splintering.

The sledges had even less to recommend them. For runners we used brittle birch boards scavenged from a battered mess table. Many of these pieces shattered at our first attempts to bend them into the proper shape, forcing us to fabricate some of the runners from ash oars. On several occasions the inferior materials made available to us by Brusilov caused me to quarrel so violently with him that I still cringe to think about it. He was convinced that all we would have to do was to set off on some heading—a difficult journey to be sure, but a short one—and very soon we would reach Franz Josef Land, after five or six days at the most. So he smiled indulgently at our efforts to make the sledges and kayaks as sturdy as possible. He claimed it would be far wiser to use one of the ship’s lifeboats, and reminded us of Lieutenant De Long’s expedition.* But I did not viewour journey so optimistically, and the rigors of fate would soon reveal that our trek across the ice—which I had estimated would take a month—would in fact turn out to be even more terrible than I imagined. It would have been impossible to haul a heavy lifeboat mounted on a sledge and laden with 2,400 pounds of supplies over the rugged pack ice.

In any case we did not even have an accurate fix on our present position, or know whether we would find land at all, as we did not possess a map of Franz Josef Land. To be able to trace our perambulations over the ice, I painstakingly drew a grid of meridians and parallels onto which I copied an enlarged outline of Franz Josef Land as it appeared on the map in Nansen’s
Farthest North.
Nansen himself said that he ascribed no particular accuracy to this map and had only included it in order to give an approximate idea of the archipelago. It showed Cape Fligely at 82°12´ north and, to the north, the great expanse of Petermann Land with King Oscar Land to the northwest. How surprised we were in early March and April, therefore, when our astronomical observations pinpointed our position in the middle of these landmasses, while in reality there was nothing but endless pack ice as far as the eye could see.* There were no signs of any nearby land—nor any polar bears (the previous year at the same time we had shot forty-seven), nor leads in the ice, nor the dark line of a “water sky”
^†
along the horizon that is normally an indication of open water. On the contrary, the flat horizon stretched into the distance in all directions, dashing all our hopeful fantasies. These unmistakable signs foretold a long and arduous route through deep snow and over treacherous ice.

It is true that in January, when the noonday sky began to glow with a faint rosy hue, some of us, including myself, saw something in the far distance that stood out like land against this pinkish background, but it remained visible for only a few hours. Then, the colorful glow suddenly faded into darkness, and a pack of white foxes trotted by, not far from the ship. Perhaps it was Cape Fligely or Prince Rudolf Island that we had seen. Since then, however, many months have gone by, and we have had no additional sightings of land. Whether the land we saw was real or imagined, since then we have been drifting ever farther away from it, on a relentless northerly course.

On clear sunny days, prompted by the vague hope of discovering a distant landmass, I often climbed up the mainmast to the crow’s nest, about eighty feet above sea level. I searched the horizon in vain. I could see nothing but a rugged expanse of ice, which toward the south, in the direction of our goal, took the shape of an immense, impassable barrier. It seemed to block the way to freedom for our sledges, which, in aggregate, would be heavily loaded with over 2,400 pounds. But it was certainly only an illusion: We always found a passage, although we had yet to discover the superhuman effort it would require. At that point in time we still imagined that we would cover at least seven miles a day.

——

When the sun was shining, it was exhilarating to be up there in the crow’s nest, with only the slightest breeze stirring in the ice-covered rigging. The
Saint Anna
seemed to be dreaming under her sparkling white carapace, as if a masterly hand had adorned her with exquisite crystals of hoarfrost and robed her hull in snowflakes. From time to time garlands of snow would come loose from the rigging and drop softly like flowers onto the dormant ship, which looks narrower and longer from aloft. The slender, towering yards seem elegant, almost fragile. Bathed in dazzling rays of light, the tackle throws a magical reflection onto the slumbering vessel, motionless in her icy prison for now a year and a half. What will be her fate? How long will it be before she stirs on her frozen bed—this ice floe from the Kara Sea that trapped her off the coast of the Yamal Peninsula? Will it be somewhere between Svalbard and Greenland, far from her current prison? And when she finally awakens, will she then glide unhindered into her own element, hoist her greatsails, and turn away from the realm of “white death” toward the sunlit blue waters of the south, where her wounds will heal, and everything she has suffered will seem like a terrible dream?

Or during a bitter night, when the snow is whipped through the sky by the storm, and the moon and stars are engulfed by a fearful blackness, will she be rudely awakened in the midst of the tempest by the splintering of spars and the cracking of planks, heralding her annihilation? The hull, then, will shudder in agony and her wooden sides will shatter. After some time only heaps of debris and a new mound of ice will mark her grave. The storm will sing her eulogy and strew the site of the disaster with fresh snow. And by the nearest pressure ridge a handful of desperate men will try to save what they can of their belongings in the dark, still clinging to life, still hoping to escape death.

What is your destiny, proud ship? Your slow destruction has already begun, although even the smallest planks have never been torn willingly from your hull. But the men you have carried this far are struggling, like you, filled with a desperate courage inspired by the treachery of the elements. Their only concern is how to stretch their supplies as long as possible.

Already the second hard winter on the ice has passed. Endless polar nights and their terrifying darkness are giving way to the first timid rays of a triumphant sun, which traces an ever-higher arc each day, awakening life all around us. The crew has also come back to life. From morning ’til night men bustle about carrying myriad tools as they swarm to and fro between the ship and a fleet of strange craft lined up on the ice nearby. Each of these odd vessels consists of a long sledge set on high trestles, with a light sailcloth kayak placed on soft cushions between the rails of the sledge, as if resting in a shallow basket. With their bows and sterns jutting well beyond the lengths of the sledges that bear them, and wearing fresh coats of black paint, the kayaks look quite formidable. This somber impression is brightened somewhat by the wide strips of white canvas that attach each kayak firmly to the body of its sledge so that they form a single craft. Ropes run diagonally from one strip of canvas to the next over the kayaks, which help secure the boats to the sledges, and also protect them against jagged blocks of ice.

On board ship and all around is a hive of industry. The final preparations for our departure are being tended to; those who are staying behind are eager to help. Everyone has a great deal to do. Those who are craftsmen by trade make use of their skills; others lend a hand by stowing baggage and supplies. Denisov, our wonderful harpooner, is rushing around more than anybody, even though he is among those who will be staying behind. The only ones absent are Lieutenant Brusilov, Miss Zhdanko, and the harpooner Shlensky, all of whom, for over a week now from morning until night, have been writing the letters we shall deliver to people who live in the present—unlike those of us on the ship, who live only in the past and the future, awaiting our deliverance from the polar ice.

There was little variety in our provisions. The ship’s biscuits, before they were packed, were thoroughly dried, then placed in twenty-pound sacks and hermetically sewn closed. We took one of the three tents included in the
Saint
Anna
’s inventory. It was large, round, and—compared with Nansen’s—very heavy (about sixty pounds). Later, when it became wet and frozen, it was too awkward to carry and we had to leave it behind. But during the first half of our journey by sledge we were very glad to have its protection against the cold and snowstorms. By way of firearms, we carried two repeating rifles, three seal-hunting rifles, and one double-barreled shotgun, with about 120 pounds of ammunition. In addition to all this we had two harpoons, the usual warm clothing, instruments and equipment such as axes, skis, dishes, all sorts of repair material, and so on. Over and above the actual weight of the kayaks and sledges, we had to haul about 2,600 pounds.

To start with, two men were assigned to pull each kayak/sledge combination. Each of us had a sailcloth hauling strap to which a rope was fastened. The strap was worn over one shoulder and across the chest, and the end of the rope was fastened to one of the forward uprights of the sledge, allowing the man pulling to steady the bow of the attached kayak with one hand and thereby steer the sledge where he wanted, while he held a ski pole in the other. There was one man on each side of the sledge, which would have made it easy to pull, had the route not been blocked at every step by ice hummocks, and had we not been constantly sinking into the snow up to our knees. Alas, we soon had to face the fact that it was practically impossible for only two men to pull each sledge.