In the Land of White Death

by Valerian Albanov

  But those happier times—in the first half of the first winter, now in the distant past—occurred before we had begun to drift northward. The Saint Anna was then as trim and shipshape as she had been in the harbor on the Neva in St. Petersburg, near the Nicholas Bridge, and interested people were being invited to take a little trip along the coast in “Nordenskiöld’s* footsteps.” The white paint was still fresh on her hull and decks, the mahogany furnishings in the saloon gleamed like mirrors, magnificent carpets covered the floors. The hold and storeroom were overflowing with supplies and every delicacy that might tempt the palate. But these irreplaceable luxuries had disappeared at an alarming rate. We were soon forced to nail boards over the skylights and portholes, and pull our bunks away from the hull, so that our pillows and blankets did not freeze to the walls at night. We also had to cover the ceilings and floors with boards, sailcloth, layers of cardboard and felt, and finally hang small basins in numerous places to catch the water that dripped incessantly from the ceilings and walls. Our kerosene had all been burned, and for a long time we had been using lamps fashioned from tin cans containing a mixture of bear fat and seal blubber, the wicks of which gave off more smoke than light. In winter, the temperature belowdecks hovered between 28° and 23° Fahrenheit, and the “smoke pots” scarcely brightened the dense gloom. Several of these lamps placed on a table gave only a faint circle of light: Their tiny, trembling flames cast a vague reddish glow, and this dim lighting gave those around the table a shadowy, spectral look—the one and only advantage of these “smoke pots,” since our faces were as filthy as our worn clothing. Our soap had been used up long ago, and our attempts to manufacture some had failed miserably: It stuck to one’s face like a greasy glue and was nearly impossible to wash off. Our poor Miss Zhdanko! Now if she blushed, one would not even notice it beneath the layer of soot covering her face. In the saloon, the walls and ceiling were covered with a crust of ice. The layer grew thinner near the center of the room, which remained virtually the only place where it could not form. The ever-trickling water had taken the varnish off the wood, and it now hung from the walls in long, dirty, water-sodden strips. Wherever the woodwork had been stripped and saturated with humidity, mildew and mold were rampant.

  * The great Swedish explorer, Baron Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, had made the first and by 1912 the only traverse of the Northeast Passage in 1878–79. See Introduction.

  But necessity accustoms one to many forms of ugliness, and we were no exception. The changes occurred gradually, and we had time to get used to these sordid surroundings; in the end, we no longer noticed the squalor of our living quarters, as the degradation was spread over a period of eighteen months, and our pathetic lamps masked its hideousness.

  And yet despite such wretchedness, I awoke on the last morning filled with melancholy at the prospect of leaving the Saint Anna. What memories haunted me! I had spent a whole year and a half of my life in this tiny, cramped cabin, which now, in recent days especially, had become my pleasant retreat. I led my own life here. The sounds of my companions, who spent their days on the other side of the bulkhead, reached me from time to time, while nothing of my solitude filtered through to them. The walls of my cabin enclosed my thoughts and plans, my hopes and fears; they were mine alone.

  Our departure was set for the evening of April 10. I went up on deck. The weather was fine. An unusually clear sky stretched as far as the distant, unchanging horizon; it was the first true spring day of the year. The air was pure and still, without the slightest breeze, and there was not a cloud in the sky. The sun cast its warming rays; it had even begun to melt the snow on the dark canvas hulls of our kayaks. With the help of the harpooner Denisov, I calculated the angle of the sun with my sextant and chronometer. At noon I obtained a favorable enough longitude reading to be able to determine our position at 82°58.5´ north and 60°5´ east of Greenwich. In the meantime, my companions moved all our kayaks and sledges to the starboard side of the ship and lined them up near the gangway, their bows facing south. My sledge was at the head of the row.

  The farewell dinner was held at three that afternoon, and was probably the inspiration of our steward Regald and Kalmikov the cook, our indefatigable “singer and poet.” He had been laboring in the galley since dawn in service to his art, and had even gone so far as to put aside his notebook of poetry, something he rarely let out of his sight. The steward in the meantime prepared one of the rooms belowdecks, pulling together the benches, setting the table, and doing his utmost to make it a real gala dinner. In their cabins above, crewmembers hurriedly finished their letters; for several days now, those who were staying behind had been constantly writing.

  At the appointed hour, we all sat down at the mess table for dinner. I, who usually sat apart, took my place among my companions. The captain was slightly delayed by something; he would appear shortly. A dark mood filled the room, although everyone tried to look cheerful. But the jokes and forced laughter could not conceal the pervasive sadness and anxiety, among both those who were leaving and those who were staying. Some of those who were to remain on the ship expressed concern that each of the sledges—laden with nearly 400 pounds—was too heavy to be hauled by just two men over such rough terrain, but those who were leaving affected an air of confidence. Then it was decided that everyone on board would help haul the sledges as far as our first camp. Each of those who would be staying behind assigned himself to the sledge of whoever was his closest companion.

  Physical strength had nothing to do with the makeup of each hauling team; it was based solely on the bonds of friendship. Those of us who were leaving bragged about the special attributes of our personal “tugboats” who were to haul us out of the “quiet harbor into the open sea” on the initial leg of our journey.

  “Just look at that grinning mug!” someone declared of his escort. “He’ll really put his back into it!” My own “tugboat” was the harpooner Denisov, and his robust physique apparently provoked envy among some of my companions, although they pretended to be indifferent.

  As we gathered around the table, the gramophone provided background music, including what had lately been our two favorite recordings: “Come Ashore,” and “The Call of the Snow-white Gull.” These songs had been played several hundred times during our four-day Easter celebration, so every chord was familiar—indeed, we were all rather sick of them, but they evoked pleasant memories of the early months of our voyage, when we were filled with high hopes as we sailed along the Norwegian coast. This confidence had sustained us for a long while, even when the ice had closed in around us. In those halycon days our cook/poet, Kalmikov, had composed a long poem, put it to music, and sung it to us for hours on end. I have forgotten the bulk of it, alas, but I still remember these confident lines:

  Under the flag of Mother Russia

  Our captain will show us the way

  Along the coast of Siberia

  In our ship so fine and gay.

  Finally Lieutenant Brusilov came below and the meal began. Miss Zhdanko served the soup and encouraged us to eat heartily. We were very hungry, since it was already four o’clock and normally we ate at noon. In spite of our limited supplies, the meal looked like a banquet. But would we ever enjoy sitting down together like this again? And if indeed one day we did, how many of us would be there? Although no one spoke of it, we must have all been thinking the same thing, for the table was uncharacteristically silent; joy was not one of the guests.

  It seemed as if we were fulfilling one final, painful obligation.

  After I left the table, I went up on deck to shoot a final sun sight with the sextant. The sun was setting in a reddish smear, and the horizon was veiled in mist—indications of an imminent change in the weather. I marked our position on the chart, and carried it back to my sledge with the sextant and the chronometer. I had put on a double layer of underclothing in addition to my normal clothes and had given everything else to those staying behind. There was only one personal item I was taking with me: an
icon of Saint Nicholas the Miracle-worker.

  Soon my cabin was empty: I cast a farewell glance round the bare little room and then went out onto the ice. Our traveling outfits consisted of high boots in leather or sealskin, with uppers made of the same sailcloth we had used for our jackets and trousers; we had warm undergarments, a cap, and earmuffs. We made a strange-looking group, all kitted out with our towlines over our shoulders and a long ski pole in one hand. My comrades were lined up, facing south. The dark hulls of the kayaks with their high, raked bows and white canvas lashing strips were reminiscent of a flock of wild ducks that had gathered to fly south to warmer lands. Unfortunately, however, they could not fly and we would have to haul them.

  The sledges had been packed with all our personal belongings underneath, and on top of them all the oars, skis, hides, firearms, tent, etc. They were very heavy, too heavy for their narrow runners, which sank deep into the snow. Denisov had made a trial run with each of the sleds and was not very happy with the result. But there was no point in delaying the departure now. I could not bring myself to leave anything behind, since after careful reckoning I had chosen only basic necessities. If need be, we could offload along the way.

  When it was time to leave, everyone was there, without exception, to walk with us some of the way, including our dog, Ulka, the last survivor of the six hounds Brusilov had brought from his uncle’s estate. Finally, even the lieutenant himself came out and stood behind my sledge to help me push it.

  Everyone seemed to be waiting for a signal, so I took off my cap and made the sign of the cross. They all did the same, then someone shouted, Hurrah! We all repeated the cry in unison, leaned into our hauling straps, and at that moment our sledges began to move toward the south.

  The closest accessible land, Cape Fligely, on Prince Rudolf Island, was sixty-five nautical miles to the south-southwest. But we would never catch sight of it, because we would be pushed irresistibly northward by the drifting ice pack, even as we trudged laboriously to the south.

  OVER THE POLAR ICE PACK

  With the runners creaking and pitching like boats plying ocean swells, our sledges moved southward over the ice. We could see that ice hummocks and pressure ridges lay ahead of us, but we were confident there was a passage between them.

  Although the route was quite straightforward at the start, and each sledge was being hauled by at least three men (two of them by four men), we did not seem to be making much headway. After half an hour, we made a short stop and discovered that we were still quite close to the Saint Anna.

  No sooner had we climbed up one of the first pressure ridges than the runners broke on one of the sledges. We repaired the damage at once and set off again after three quarters of an hour. Brusilov, who was very concerned about this accident, immediately sent two men back to the ship to fetch two parrels* from the mizzenmast, in case we had to make other repairs in the future. Behind a high rise that hid the ship from view, Miss Zhdanko and Kalmikov, the cook, decided to return to the ship. The weather was rapidly deteriorating. Two hours later a strong south-southwesterly gale began to blow, bringing with it a raging snowstorm.

  * A parrel is a wooden sleeve that slides up and down a ship’s mast, connecting a yard or other spar to the mast.

  We pitched camp for the night. The tent was placed in the center with the kayaks propped up all around it for protection. Our pedometer indicated that we had barely covered three miles. Soon we were all gathered together in the tent around our blubber stove, drinking milky tea. To everyone’s surprise, Brusilov handed out pieces of chocolate, and even produced a bottle of champagne. Although we had only one mouthful each, it was not the quantity that mattered, but the fact that we were at 83° latitude, toasting our respective homeward journeys! We chatted for a while about the past, the present, and the future, and then bade a moving farewell to our helpful companions, who set off for the ship on their skis.

  The blizzard gained in strength, causing the tent to snap and groan. Exhausted, we slid into our malitsi and immediately fell into a deep, comforting sleep. When we awoke at ten o’clock to the sound of the gale still howling with the same force, we could not imagine traveling on in such conditions. Flurries of snow had been blown into the tent, and our furs were dusted with white. It was a bad start, and most discouraging. The thermometer indicated —9° Fahrenheit. But we had to think about maintaining our strength, so we got up to prepare a meal. We had enormous difficulty in opening the tent door, and even more so in uncovering the kayaks buried in the snow. We eventually managed to boil some water for tea, and to warm up some cans of Australian meat, which dulled our hunger. We then climbed back into our malitsi, since the dreadful weather precluded any other form of activity, and that is how we spent the day.

  The next day brought no improvement, and in the end we were stopped for three whole days. We stayed in the tent the entire time, bundled up in our reindeer hides, eating and sleeping. My companions preferred sleeping in pairs: They would slip their legs and the lower parts of their bodies into one malitsa, and pull the other malitsa over their heads. This method is recommended for creating and preserving body heat, but it has the disadvantage of disturbing one’s sleep each time the other sleeper moves or turns over. For that reason, I always preferred to sleep alone, and later developments would show how right I was. Bed companions often squabbled, which occasionally led to more serious arguments. Generally, the disruptive partner did not even realize how much he had been disturbing his neighbor, and felt that all forthcoming complaints were totally unjustified. Insults would be exchanged, occasionally degenerating into prodding and shoving or half-hearted punches, until eventually the adversaries turned their backs on each other and endeavored to fall asleep again. In most cases, that is how hostilities ended. The most quarrelsome bed-partners were the inseparable friends, Konrad and Shpakovsky.

  Those who chose to sleep alone had to accept a certain heat loss because it was impossible to fit one’s entire body into one’s malitsa. I tried to ward off the worst of the cold by jamming my legs as deeply as possible into my malitsa while covering my head and chest with my warm jacket.

  And this is how we stayed for three days and three nights, immobile. Since it was impossible to move on, we had to resign ourselves to the inevitable. At least it gave us a good opportunity to become accustomed to life in the tent, and physically we were quite comfortable. At times some of the group would sing to try to brighten our solitude, or to drown out the howling of the storm. Only one of them, old Anisimov, who back on board used to complain of pains in his back and legs, was becoming more and more listless, so I decided to send him back to the Saint Anna. It was the only solution, as we would not be able to nurse him later on, and he was no longer fit enough to pull a sledge.

  On the evening of the thirteenth the wind had abated a little and suddenly we were awakened by noises and shouts from outside the tent. When we opened up the entry flap we were greeted enthusiastically by three messengers from the Saint Anna: Denisov, Melbart, and Regald. They had wanted to come and visit us the night before, but the blizzard had prevented them from doing so. Today they had braved the elements in order to bring us some hot soup, which we gulped down ravenously. They told us that the ship was buried in snow up to the gunwales. They brought us some shovels, and we immediately started digging the kayaks out from beneath the snow. Our faithful friends left again that evening with our ailing comrade, but the next day one of them, Regald, returned with his belongings to take Anisimov’s place.

  At around noon, I took another sun sight and was very surprised to find a latitude reading of 83°17´. I was wondering about the precision of my calculations, when Regald handed me a letter from the lieutenant, confirming that he had found a latitude of 83°18´ that same morning. In that case there could be no doubt: In the course of the last four days the storm had driven us northward by roughly twenty-two miles. On our first day’s trek we had covered only three miles, which meant that so far, in spite of all our efforts, we w
ere actually nineteen miles farther from our goal than when we had left the ship! This observation immediately drained me of almost all hope. But then the thought that summer was on its way—and that northerly winds would prevail throughout most of the season—restored my courage and convinced me to carry on. So we made ready, packed up the tent, and set off. Then a new, disturbing incident occurred: We had hardly gone a few yards before we were overcome by dizziness and felt so weak that we had to lie down.