Around the World in 100 Days

by Gary Blackwood

  “Well,” he said, rubbing his hands together, partly from anticipation and partly because of the chill in the air. “We still have a few hours of daylight left. Let’s get the Flash rolling, shall we?”

  Somewhere west of Vladivostok, Siberia, September 27

  The round-the-world racers have now passed the halfway point in terms of the time allotted them. Forty-eight days remain in which to reach London. We have traveled well over half the distance—some 15,000 miles so far—but much of it was done aboard a ship. Every mile of the 10,000 that remain must be traversed the hard way.

  We did not remain in Vladivostok long enough to cable a dispatch; it will have to wait until we reach the next sizable city—if there is such a thing in Siberia. We had stocked up on tinned food and carbide pellets and other necessities back in San Francisco, so the sole supplies we took on were ten gallons of very expensive kerosene and a traveler’s guidebook, after which we set out upon the Great Russian Post Road.

  Though it is only nominally a Road, and certainly far from Great, it is at least dry. There is little need for a map, for the route is well delineated by telegraph poles and by the black-and-white posts that serve as mile markers—or, to be perfectly accurate, verst markers. According to the guidebook, a verst is roughly two-thirds of a mile.

  Every twenty or thirty versts there is a way station where the postal service drivers, or yemschiks, may exchange their weary steeds for fresh ones. Apparently some of these stations also offer accommodations to travelers, but the guidebook’s author does not recommended availing oneself of them unless one is equipped with some sure-fire method of killing lice, fleas, and bedbugs. Your humble reporter did, in fact, pack something called Keating’s Powder, which is guaranteed to repel insects of every sort. But one cannot help questioning its efficacy; it has proven to be no use at all against mosquitoes.

  Though the Graphic’s Moscow correspondent issued warnings about man-eating tigers, he failed to mention the dangers of man-eating mosquitoes (which, unfortunately, do not discriminate against women). Each time the Flash slows to negotiate a rough spot in the road, the nasty pests (mosquitoes, not tigers) descend upon us in droves. Our sole defense is to raise the leather rain roof and lower the side curtains. We did discover that if Mr. Shaugnessey lights his pipe and fills the car with pungent tobacco smoke, it discourages the buzzing blackguards a bit. It also sends the other passengers into uncontrollable fits of coughing.

  Another look at the guidebook informs one that the number of inhabitants in all of Siberia is less than the population of London. It is not difficult to believe. Aside from the post-houses there are few dwellings along the way and no villages at all, only verst after verst of trees, mostly evergreens, with a smattering of oaks and maples whose leaves are just beginning to turn.

  After driving for several hours we did encounter another vehicle, one of the carriages used by the post drivers. We braked at once and pulled over, to avoid frightening the three-horse team. The yemschik slowed, too, and gaped at our motorcar, then shouted something that none of us could understand. Considering the man’s hostile tone, it was probably just as well.

  These post carriages, which are called tarantasses , are unlovely, utilitarian vehicles, little more than a box on wheels, with no suspension of any sort. Though their primary purpose is, of course, to carry letters and packages, we discovered that there was a passenger within this one, for he lifted the leather side curtain to peer at us.

  There seemed to be no seating of any sort; the man was perched upon his luggage. He looked quite uncomfortable and very envious of our motorcar. When the driver cracked his whip, the carriage lurched forward, sending the passenger tumbling from his suitcase seat. From now on, when this reporter is tempted to complain about the cramped accommodations aboard the Flash, she will try to remember to thank her lucky stars that she is not crossing Siberia in a tarantass.

  Elizabeth did not mention that the guidebook she referenced so frequently was, in fact, purchased by Charles, and that it was Charles who brought all those facts and Russian terms to her attention. Elizabeth tended to rely more on her own opinions and observations than on reading or research. Still, she didn’t mind sounding knowledgeable when she got the chance.

  By dusk, the Flash had covered more than sixty miles, but had reached nothing resembling a settlement. The crew hastily set up the tents and built a fire, throwing on green boughs to create a smoke screen that foiled the mosquitoes—more or less.

  “Unfortunately,” said Charles, gloomily, “if there are bandits, the fire will lead them right to us.”

  They took turns standing sentry—sitting, actually—throughout the night. Elizabeth insisted upon doing her share of guard duty. Harry was still not entirely certain that he could trust Charles; just to be on the safe side, he slept in the backseat of the Flash.

  TWENTY-NINE In which

  THE TRAVELERS DECIDE TO CROSS CHINA AFTER ALL

  Around noon the next day, they came upon a town that consisted of half a dozen houses, a small whitewashed church, and an army barracks, all built of logs. The sight of their motorcar brought peasants, soldiers, and clergy swarming from their respective buildings, openmouthed in astonishment.

  An officer who spoke a little English invited them to his quarters to share what passed for luncheon in Siberia—tea, salt fish, and heavy black bread that was ostensibly made from rye flour but featured some other ingredient that tasted rather like powdered pine bark—which, in fact, it was. To make tea, the man hacked a chunk from a large brick of grayish stuff and boiled it for a quarter of an hour. These bricks were called kerpichni chai, and consisted of the dust and twigs and crushed leaves that were swept up off the floor of tea merchants’.

  “I am sorry we cannot offer you something better,” said the officer.

  “No, no, this is fine,” said Harry. “Far better than the tinned beef we’ve been eating.”

  “It’s very filling,” put in Elizabeth, forcing a smile. She pushed her chipped china plate aside. “In fact, I don’t think I could possibly eat another bite.”

  Charles quickly changed the subject. “We were surprised at how solid and dry the roads are here. In America, we had to fight our way through knee-deep mud at times.”

  The Russian officer nodded gravely. “There is a reason why the roads are so dry and the rivers so shallow. We have had five months of . . . what is the English word?”

  “Drought?” said Elizabeth.

  “Yes. Drought. The grain harvest this year was very poor. And the people cannot plant their winter crop in such dry ground.” He took a bottle of clear liquid from a shelf and poured a shot for each of them. “Fortunately, vodka may be made without grain. Nostrovia.”

  “Cheers,” said Harry. Though it had little flavor, the vodka took the taste of pine bark and tea dust out of their mouths. “What is it made of, then?”

  “Sugar beets.” The officer downed another shot and shook his head. “I do not know what will become of the people here. If the government does not send aid, I do not see how they will survive. Some, I regret to say, have left their farms and taken up robbery. We spend much of our time chasing after these outlaws.”

  But apparently the bandits they really needed to fear were the Chungese, nomads who lived in northern Manchuria. “Oh, well,” said Harry, “we won’t be passing through China.”

  “You cannot avoid it, unless you go a thousand versts out of your way.”

  “But we don’t have Chinese visas,” said Charles.

  The soldier shrugged. “No matter. We control the province of Manchuria—for now, at any rate. You will find several garrisons of our soldiers, who will assist you if you need it. Since we are a hospitable people, they will no doubt feed you, as well.”

  “Oh, good!” said Elizabeth brightly, picking a bit of pine bark from her teeth.

  When they emerged from the barracks, they found the Flash surrounded by villagers—more of them than it seemed the little settlement could possib
ly contain. The men were all dressed more or less alike, in blue shirts, brown trousers, and bearskin caps; the women wore faded print dresses, the children patched hand-me-downs. Though the men had boots, the women and children were barefoot, despite the chill.

  Johnny sat slumped in the front seat, looking so much like a cornered animal that Harry couldn’t help laughing, though he hid it well. Luckily, none of the townsfolk were attempting to touch the car. In fact, they seemed a little afraid of it. Then one boy of ten or eleven, so thin that he seemed all knees and elbows, crept cautiously forward and touched the metal; he gave a triumphant shout, as though he had survived some ordeal.

  “You want to take a ride in her?” said Harry. He held open the driver’s door and gestured to the boy. “Go on, get in. We’ll give you a ride.” Though the boy obviously knew no English, he grasped Harry’s meaning. Ignoring the protests of his mother, he climbed in. “It’s all right,” Harry assured the woman. “It’s perfectly safe.”

  “She thinks we’re kidnapping him,” said Elizabeth. “I’ll stay here as hostage until you come back.”

  They drove a few yards up the road, with the boy laughing in delight, then returned. The other children pressed forward, pleading for a ride. “Now you’ve done it,” said Charles.

  Harry shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he told the children. “No more rides. We have to be on our way.” The disappointment in their faces was heartbreaking. Harry dug through their supplies, came up with a bag of desiccated pineapple he had bought in San Francisco, and handed it to the boy who had ridden with him. “Here. Pass that around, will you?” While the children were distracted, Harry took Elizabeth’s arm. “Let’s go!”

  As they headed out of the village with yapping dogs and shouting children in their wake, Harry said, “Sorry to leave you at the mercy of the crowd, Johnny. I’ll stay with the car next time.”

  “I don’t mind staying with it,” said Charles.

  “You two are just trying to avoid the twig tea and pine-bark bread,” said Elizabeth. “Next time, I’ll stay with the car.”

  Harry laughed. “We’ll take turns, all right?” After a time, he said, more soberly, “I wish I could have given them more than just bag of pineapple.”

  “We can’t supply every village in Siberia,” said Elizabeth. “Besides, there may be a better way to help them. I’ll tell my readers how truly desperate the situation is here; surely it will motivate someone to organize a relief effort.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Harry.

  “I do have one from time to time,” Elizabeth replied brusquely, as though he had insulted rather than complimented her. Perhaps, Harry thought, she was as unaccustomed to praise as the rest of them were.

  That evening, as he and Elizabeth sat throwing green branches on the campfire and dodging the clouds of smoke, Harry said quietly, “You promised to tell me about yourself and your family.”

  “I said I might. Eventually.”

  “That was a month ago. Do you plan to wait until we’re back to England?”

  “I have no particular plans. I’ve just been waiting for the right time.”

  “Oh. Well, I was curious about your father, that’s all.”

  “What about him?”

  “I wondered whether he was as distant and as difficult to please as mine.”

  She considered the question for a moment. “No. I expect he’s nothing at all like your father.”

  “I see.”

  “I doubt that you do.”

  “Well, you haven’t given me much to go on.”

  She tossed another limb on the fire. “My father . . . My father has been less fortunate than yours. He once had a well-paying position and a good reputation. But then, a year or two after I was born, he . . . he committed a single foolish act, and lost it all. My mother was so distressed by this change in their fortunes that her health declined drastically. Naturally, we could not afford proper care for her. When I was six, she died.”

  “I’m sorry. It must have been very difficult for you.”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. She cleared her throat and raised her chin resolutely. “But it also made me strong. And resourceful. And determined to succeed.”

  “Actually, my father had much the same experience. His parents, too, lost everything they had. From the time he was my age, he was forced to make his own way in the world.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Nor did I, until recently.” Harry stretched and yawned. “I believe I’ll call it a day.” He headed for the Flash, but turned back to say, “I’m glad you talked me into letting you come, Elizabeth. I hope it brings you that success you’re after. I hope your newspaper stories are a sensation, and make your name—whatever it is—into a household word.”

  Elizabeth could find no words to reply. She sat gazing thoughtfully into the fire and sipping strong tea, brewed from the last of the tea leaves she had brought, to keep herself awake. It worked so well that, when it was time to rouse Johnny for his turn at guard duty, she let him sleep.

  THIRTY In which

  FOR A CHANGE, NOTHING UNFORTUNATE BEFALLS OUR PROTAGONISTS

  When Charles rejoined the crew, he had also resumed his journal entries.

  Tuesday, September 29

  Fifty-four days gone; forty-six remaining. Early this morning, we left the post road and crossed the border into Manchuria. Though there is a large Russian presence in the province and the landscape is much the same as in Siberia—rolling grassland broken by the occasional river valley—the moment we entered a town it was clear that we were in China.

  The houses are better built and more ornate, decorated with porcelain figures and carved dragons. The signs hanging on the shops are painted with Chinese symbols. The streets are filled with small carriage-like vehicles pulled by humans, not horses. There are no women to be seen. The men wear loose smocks of white or blue, and their faces are mostly hairless; even their heads are shaved, save for a single long braid that hangs down their backs or is curled into a sort of bun.

  Strangely, they display no curiosity at all about the Flash. It’s as though the whole notion of a motorized car is so alien to them, they do not even acknowledge its existence. The people and the town seem more prosperous than those in Russia, but they lack three things upon which we have come to rely—railroads, a telegraph system, and a source of kerosene.

  To my astonishment, Fogg has consented to stop at a roadside inn for refreshments. Unfortunately, the tea here is, if possible, even more vile than that given us by the Russian soldiers. The wheaten bread, however, is quite edible—which, in a way, is rather a pity; if they had that pine-bark stuff, we could have used it for fuel.

  As it was, the motorists were forced to burn tree bark and dead limbs in the firebox. It was hard to keep the steam pressure constant, and their speed suffered because of it. Still, in only two days they traveled the five hundred miles from Valdivostok to the sizable city of Kharbin, where they could sleep without fear of being attacked by bandits.

  Harry began to suspect that the outlaw situation had been somewhat overstated. Because Japan threatened to take over Manchuria, the Russians had strengthened their military might in the province. The troops of mounted Cossacks that patrolled the roads did more than just keep the bandits at bay; when the Flash bogged down fording a stream, they pulled it free. Harry didn’t have the heart to refuse their offer of food and drink, though he and his companions suffered for it.

  A day west of Kharbin the travelers encountered a range of mountains, but they weren’t much of a challenge compared with the Rockies or the Sierras. By the third of October they were back in Siberia, where they resumed travel on the post road, with its familiar telegraph poles and its black-and-white verst markers.

  From time to time they passed a large heap of stones with a tree limb sticking from it, decorated with strips of ribbon and paper that fluttered in the breeze. The purpose of these baffled the companions. Just before they
reached Tchita, the mystery was solved when they encountered a caravan of Buryats, the nomadic herders who had occupied the area for centuries.

  The group consisted of perhaps a dozen blue-clad men on horseback, four wagons, and several hundred head of cattle. As they passed one of the stone piles, a horseman stopped, said a brief prayer, and tied a strip of yellow cloth to the tree branches. “It’s a shrine,” said Charles. “Buddhists, I expect.”

  “My goodness!” whispered Elizabeth. “I just realized that half those horsemen are actually women. And they’re riding astride their mounts, not sidesaddle. In some ways they’re more civilized than we are.”

  Tchita, the capital of the province, was an attractive city with a good supply of kerosene and even a passable hotel where Charles took a room for the night. Harry and Johnny shared a stable with the motorcar. Though Elizabeth chose the relative luxury of the hotel, she did not mention the fact in her dispatch, not wanting to seem less than intrepid.

  Tchita, Siberia, October 5

  Over a meal in the dining room of the Hotel Grand, we learned from a French-speaking fellow diner that the majority of Tchita’s residents are convicted criminals, but not of the desperate sort. No, their only crime was that they dared to speak out against the Czarist government or against the Church. As punishment, they were exiled here. Since many of these men and women are well educated and skilled, they have made the town into something of a cultural oasis in the midst of the desolate steppes.

  Not all the “criminals” sent here are religious or political dissidents, of course. The more dangerous convicts are put to work in the gold mines —except for the ones who escape, and apparently there have been thousands. A fair number of these varnaks, as they are called, have made their way back to Europe, armed with passports that are either forged or taken from some unlucky citizen, along with his life.

  Not all escapees are so clever or so lucky. After enduring a month or two of the Siberian winter, some give themselves up; others die before they have the chance. A few actually manage to survive in the wild by hunting or trapping—or preying upon townsfolk and travelers. (This reporter, for one, would have been just as happy not knowing that latter piece of information.) Since the greater part of the Russian army is stationed in Manchuria, protecting it from invasion by the Japanese, there are not nearly enough soldiers in Siberia to keep these rogue varnaks in check.