by G. A. Henty
“The Isvostchiks are often frozen in St. Petersburg in their sledges at night,” Godfrey said.
“They can’t build huts in a town,” Luka remarked; “they can’t find snow deep enough to get into; town not good in winter.”
“Are there many wolves here, Luka? Do they often attack people?”
“No, there is plenty of game in the woods. In Russia the game now, so I hear, is scarce, so the wolves must take to eating men; but here there is plenty of game, and so they do not often attack people. I have heard of hunters going out and never coming back again. Then people say wolves eat them, but not often so. May be killed by elk, or hurt by a falling tree, or climb hills and fall down. I do not think it is often the wolves. Wolves great cowards.”
“I am glad to hear it, Luka: I have heard them howl sometimes at night and wondered whether they would come this way.”
“Not come here,” Luka said decidedly, “we keep plenty of big fire. All beasts afraid of fire. Then we have got dogs and guns. Much easier for wolves to attack elk; but even that they seldom do unless it is wounded or has injured itself.”
“Well, I think I will go off to sleep; my pipe is out and the hot tea has made me sleepy.”
After sleeping for some hours, Godfrey awoke with a strange feeling of oppression. Outside he could hear the dogs whimpering.
“Wake up, Luka,” he said, “it is very close in here. I fancy the snow must have drifted very deep and covered us up completely. Let us get up and see about it.”
It was quite dark outside, except that the embers of the fire threw a dull red light on the snow. The shelter seemed but half its former dimensions. The snow had drifted in at its entrance and lay in a bank piled up to the roof.
“Bring your spear, Luka, and mine, and shove them up between these poles. We must make a few holes up through the snow if we can to let a little air in.”
The spears were pushed up and then worked a little to and fro to try to enlarge the hole. They were eight feet long, but Godfrey did not feel at all sure that they penetrated through the cover of snow. However, when they had made a dozen of these holes there was a distinct change in the air.
“They have gone nearly through, if not quite, and anyhow they are near enough to the surface for the air to find its way out. Now we had better set to work at once to dig a passage out. That is one advantage of this shelter, there is a place to throw the snow back into.”
Going down on their hands and knees they soon scraped the snow away until they reached the entrance to the shelter. Here the snow weighted by the pressure above was much denser and harder, and they could cut out blocks with their hatchets.
“Now,” Godfrey said, “we must make a tunnel sloping upwards. It must be as steep as it can so that we are able to climb up, making steps to give us foothold. I will begin, for we only just want it wide enough for one. I will hand the blocks down to you as I cut them, and you pile them regularly along the sides here. As we fill the shelter up you must drive the dogs back into the tent. We shall want every inch of room for the snow before we get out.”
For hours they worked steadily, taking it by turns to cut and to pile. The last four feet were much more difficult than the first, the snow, being lighter and less packed, falling in upon them as they dug. Once Luka was completely buried, and Godfrey had to haul him back by the legs. The atmosphere inside, however, improved as they got upwards, being able to penetrate between the particles of the light snow. It was six hours before they both struggled out, followed by the dogs in an impetuous rush. It took them another couple of hours to clear away and beat down the snow sufficiently to make an easy entrance to the shelter. A fire was lighted outside and a meal cooked, for the lamps were quite sufficient to keep the tent sufficiently warm, and they would have been well-nigh stifled with smoke had they attempted to light the fire in the shelter. The snow was still falling and drifting, and the sky showed no signs of change.
“The entrance will fill up again by to-morrow,” Luka said, “and we shall have more trouble than ever to get out.”
“We must provide against that, Luka; we must build a sort of roof over the entrance here, and then we shall only have to start from this point again. Let us set to work and chop down some poles at once.”
After three hours’ more work a cover was built over the entrance, and roofed with pine branches so as to prevent the snow from drifting in.
“Now, Luka, there is one more job, and unfortunately a long one, but we must do that. We must get the snow that we have packed in the shelter below out of the way, for if by any chance this passage fell through, we should have nowhere to pile the snow; besides, we may have another passage as deep as the present one to dig to-morrow, for the snow is drifting down in clouds. It has deepened a couple of feet since we began to make the roof over the entrance.”
Luka, who was always ready to work, set to cheerfully, but the short twilight had faded into deep darkness before the work was completed.
“If we had had a couple of good shovels with us, Luka, we should have made short work of this,” Godfrey said as they retired below into their tent. “We could do as much work in an hour as one can in five with these tools. It is heart-breaking to shovel out snow with a hatchet. I am as tired as a dog. This is harder work than the gold-mines at Kara by a long way.”
“Yes,” Luka said, “but there is no man with a gun.”
“No, that makes a difference, Luka, this is free work and the other isn’t; not that one can call it exactly free when we have no choice but to do it.”
For another four days the snow continued to fall; but as the wind had dropped, and the snow no longer drifted, their work each morning was comparatively easy.
“I wish it would stop,” Godfrey said, “for we begin to want food for the dogs; our stock of dried fish has been exhausted since we were shut up. There is half a deer hanging to a branch of that tree close to the tent, but it is eight or ten feet below the snow, and as we can’t calculate the exact position now it would be a big job to try to get at it.” There was, however, no change in the aspect of the weather on the following morning, and Luka announced that beyond the tea and a handful or two of flour there was nothing whatever for breakfast, while the dogs had fasted on the previous day.
“Well, Luka, there is nothing to do but to try and get at that venison. I have been thinking that it will be easiest to try from below; it is much quicker work chopping out the solid snow than it is trying to make a hole in that loose stuff at the surface. The tree was just about in a line with the front of the tent, wasn’t it? and we hung the deer on a branch that stretched out nearly as far as the tent. I should say we hung it about half-way along that branch and not above twelve feet from the tent.”
Luka agreed as to the position.
“Very well, then, as we know exactly the direction, and as the distance is but twelve feet, it ought not to take us very long to chop out a passage just big enough and high enough for one to crawl through. When we get near the place where we think it is, we must make the tunnel a good bit higher, for the bottom of the meat was quite five feet from the ground so that it should be well out of reach of the dogs. Now, will you go first or shall I?”
“I will begin,” Luka said. “We must make the passage wide enough to push the snow past us as we get it down.”
“Certainly we must, Luka. Make it pretty wide at the bottom, and make the top arched so as to stand the pressure from above.”
It was easy enough work at first, but became more difficult every foot they advanced, as the one behind had to crawl backward each time with the snow that the one at work passed back to him. At last the tunnel was driven twelve feet long, and the last four feet it had been given an upward direction, by which means less snow had to be removed than would have been the case had the bottom remained level with the ground and the height been increased.
“We are a good twelve feet in now, Luka, and certainly high enough. Which way do you think we had better try?”
/> Luka replied by calling one of the dogs and taking it with him to the end of the tunnel. The animal at once began to snuff about eagerly, and then to scratch violently to the right.
“That will do,” Luka said, pushing it back past him and taking its place. He had driven but a foot in the direction in which the dog was scratching when the hatchet struck something hard. It required some care to dig round the meat and make a hole large enough for Luka to stand up beside it and cut the cord by which it hung. The dogs yelped with joy when he dragged it back to the other end of the passage. The fire was made now in the passage under the roof they had made at the end of the first day’s work, for outside the snow fell so fast that it damped the fire greatly, and as the smoke made its way out through the entrance it was no inconvenience to them below. A good-sized piece of raw meat was chopped off and given to each of the dogs. The ramrod was thrust through another large piece and held by Luka over the fire, and then Godfrey carried the rest of the joint outside and placed it in the fork of a tree.
“It smells good, Luka,” he said as he returned to the fire; “I wish it would attract a bear.”
Luka shook his head. “Bears are asleep, Godfrey; they are hunted in summer, and sometimes they may be found in the early part of the winter, but never when the snow is deep; they would die of hunger. There might be wolves, but we don’t want them. Wolf skins fetch very little, and their flesh is only good for the dogs; we don’t want wolves, but we must be on our guard. In such weather as this food is very scarce. They might come and attack us. Yesterday I heard howls once or twice. I think when we have done breakfast it will be better to take that meat down below.”
“Why, they wouldn’t smell it as much as this cooked meat, Luka.”
“No, I was not thinking of that, but if they come we may want it.”
“You mean they might besiege us, Luka?”
“Yes, shut us up here. Wolves very patient; wait a long time when they scent food.”
“Well, we will have the dogs sleep up here for the future. They will act as sentries, and there is none too much air down there. That reminds me, I will cut a long pole or two, fasten them together, and try and drive them down through the snow to the roof of the shelter below.”
Luka shook his head. “You might drive it down five or six feet, but you would never get it down to the roof, and if you did you could never pull it up again.”
“I don’t know, Luka. I once saw them driving down some bars in tough clay when they were making a railway cutting at home. I think we might do it in the same way.”
Godfrey after breakfast cut a pole, chopping it off just below where two or three small branches had shot from it, leaving a bulge. This bulge he shaped and smoothed very carefully with his knife, so that it was in the form of a peg-top.
“There,” he said. “You see it is thicker here than it is anywhere else, so that the hole it makes will be a little larger than the pole itself, and instead of the snow holding the pole all the way down it will touch it only on this shoulder.”
This succeeded admirably. It was six feet long. They had cleared away the loose snow to a depth of eighteen inches, and both holding it were able to force the pole down as much more; then they hammered it with a billet of wood until only a foot showed; then they spliced another to it, and working it up and down jumped it in until they could again use the mallet, and at last struck on something solid, which could only be one of the beams forming the roof of the hut. Godfrey went below, and soon discovered the spot where the pole came down, and with his knife managed to clear away the snow round it. Then he went up and assisted Luka to withdraw the pole, which left a hole of about three inches in diameter.
“That is a capital chimney,” he said. “Now we will throw a few fir branches over it, to prevent the dogs treading here and shutting it up. I think the air looks rather lighter, Luka, and that the storm is nearly over. There is a howl again. I am afraid that we are going to have trouble with the wolves. Is there anything we can do?”
Luka shook his head. “We might get up into trees,” he said. “We should be safe there, but then we should lose the dogs.”
“That would never do, Luka; we should have to haul the sledge back a hundred and fifty miles. No, I’ll tell you what we will do: we will cut down some young trees and block up our tunnel with beams, leaving three or four inches between each to fire through or use our spears.”
“That is a very good plan,” Luka said. “We should be quite safe then.”
It took them some hours’ work to carry out the idea. The middle of the tunnel was closed by a row of pointed stakes, some four inches in diameter, driven deep into the snow and reaching up to the roof of the shelter. An opening of a foot wide was left in the middle, another stake being placed beside it in readiness to fill it up if required. The operation was completed by the light of the fire, as it was pitch dark by the time it was done. Then another meal was cooked and eaten, and the brands carried below, where, at the bottom of the descent, the fire was now kindled. The dogs had for some time been growling angrily in the upper passage, and the fire was no sooner alight below than they broke into a chorus of fierce barking.
“We had better bring them down here, Luka, and fill up the opening. I think the wolves must be gathering in numbers.”
Going up again they sent the dogs down, firmly lashed two cross-bars to the others, and to these lashed the pole they had left in readiness, thus completing the grating across the tunnel. As they worked the smoke from the fire below curled up round them. A few months before Godfrey would have found it almost insupportable, but by this time he had, like the natives, become so accustomed to it that it affected him very little. Still he said to Luka: “You had better break off the hot ends of the sticks so as to have a red fire only for the present, the smoke makes my eyes water so that I can scarcely see. Now the sooner those fellows come to get their first lesson the better.”
Kneeling by the grating, with his gun in his hand and his spear beside him, Godfrey gazed out, and could presently distinguish the outline of a number of moving figures.
“I can see their eyes at the entrance,” he said. “Shall I give them a shot, or will you send an arrow into them?”
“You fire,” Luka replied. “Bow makes no noise, gun will frighten them; besides, I have only twenty arrows and they would get broken. Better keep them till there is need.”
Godfrey levelled his gun, which was charged with buck-shot, and fired both barrels. Terrific yells and howls followed, and the opening was clear in a moment, though Godfrey could see two or three dark figures on the snow. There was a sound of whimpering and snarling, and then of a fierce fight outside.
“They are killing and eating the wounded,” Luka said; “when they have done that they will come again. Let them get close up next time.”
In a few minutes the entrance to the tunnel was darkened again, and then cleared. The dead wolves had been pulled away. Another quarter of an hour and the animals reappeared. As all was silent they gradually approached. Godfrey could hear their panting, and presently heard a noise against the bars. A moment later there was a rush and an outburst of snarling growls, then he and Luka drove their spears again and again between the bars, yells of pain following each stroke. The animals in front were unable to retreat, and the others behind crowded in upon them, maddened with the smell of blood, and all trying to get first at their prey. They quarrelled and fought among themselves, while their cries and growls were answered by the furious barking of the dogs in the shelter below.
In two or three minutes Godfrey, who had reloaded his gun, fired both barrels into the mass, and at the flash and sound the wolves again fled. This time they did not venture to re-enter the passage. Occasionally one showed itself, and was instantly shot by Godfrey or Luka, who took turns on watch throughout the night. As soon as the dim light broke they removed the bar and issued out with the dogs. A dozen wolves lay dead outside the bars, seven were scattered round the entrance. Godfrey shot two mor
e who were lurking under the trees, while Luka sent an arrow through another.
“There are plenty of them about still,” Godfrey said. “Let us get three or four of the dead ones upon a branch out of their reach as food for the dogs, drag the rest away from the entrance to the tunnel, and bring the others up from below. That will give them, with the three we have shot now, enough for a big meal. Then I should think they would move off.”
This was accordingly done, and they went below and cooked breakfast, while the dogs feasted on a dead wolf. Then they lay down for three hours’ sleep. When they went up again the dead wolves had disappeared, only a few bones and the blood-marked snow showing where they had lain. Godfrey fired a couple of shots to scare away any that might be lingering in the neighbourhood, and then replacing the bars they went out hunting, and from that time heard no farther of the wolves.
They continued their hunting, shifting their camp occasionally until it was time to rejoin the Ostjaks, and then travelled east. They struck the river some thirty miles below the camp, crossed at once and travelled up the other side until they arrived at the huts. They were heartily welcomed by the natives, and remained there for three days to rest the dogs. They were very glad of getting a supply of fish again. These the Ostjaks had in abundance, as they kept their frozen piles for food when the keenness of the wind rendered the cold so bitter that they were forced to remain in their huts. At other times they fished by torch-light at holes that they kept broken in the ice, spearing the fish, which were attracted by the light. The Ostjaks were surprised at the large number of skins, some of them of the most valuable kind, that Godfrey had brought back, and were impatient for a fresh start. They were this time absent for only six weeks, returning at the beginning of May. The hunt was marked by no adventure. They did fairly well, but were not fortunate in securing any skins of the black fox and but few of the sable.
