'Who are these men, Father?'
'Explorers for the tsarina.' Then, turning to Bering, he said: 'Concerning the fur trade, I have good news and bad. Down at Kyakhta on the Mongolian border, Chinese merchants are buying our furs at phenomenal prices. On your travels, pick up all you can.'
'Is it safe to visit the border?' Bering asked, for he had been told that Russian-Chinese relations were strained, and it was Marina who responded in a voice trembling with excitement: 'I've been twice. Such strange men! One part Russian, one part Mongolian, best part Chinese. And the excitement of the marketplace!'
The voivode's bad news concerned the overland route leading to Yakutsk: 'Agents tell me it's still the worst journey in Siberia. Only the bravest attempt it.'
'I made it three times,' Zhdanko said quietly, adding quickly with a smile: 'That's a damned cold trip, I can tell you."
'I'd love to make a trip like that,' Marina cried, and when the visitors left to prepare for their journey north, Bering said: 'That young lady seems willing to go anywhere.'
So back to Ilimsk, Vitus Bering and his company trudged, more than three hundred miles of tortuous terrain, and there they waited on the banks of the still-frozen Lena River, but when spring finally thawed the valleys and streams, they rafted nine hundred miles to the eastern stronghold of Yakutsk, where Trofim showed Bering with great excitement that portion of the mighty Lena he had twice navigated, and when the Danish sea captain saw that massive body of water so close, in a sense, to the Arctic Ocean, he gained a new respect for his energetic aide. 'I long to sail that river,' Bering said with deep emotion, 'but my orders are to the east,' and Zhdanko said with almost equal feeling: 'But if our journey prospers, may we not see the Lena from the other end?' and Bering replied: 'I would like to see those hundred mouths you spoke of.'
IT REQUIRED THE ENTIRE SUMMER OF 1726 AND INTO THE fall to move the eight hundred miles from Yakutsk to Okhotsk, that bleak and lonely harbor on the huge sea of that name, for now the full meaning of the fearful word Siberia became clear. Vast wastelands without a sign of habitation stretched to the horizon.
Hills and mountains intervened, with turbulent streams to ford. Wolves followed any body of men, waiting for an accident that would provide them with a defenseless target.
Untimely snows swept out of the north, alternating with blasts of unexpected heat from the south. No man could plan a day's journey and expect to complete it on schedule, and to look ahead for a week or a month was folly. When, on the lonely uplands of this forlorn area, one did meet a traveler coming from the opposite direction, he was apt to be one of two kinds: a man who spoke no known language and from whom no information could be got, or a cutthroat who had escaped from some terrible prison compound not visible from the trail. This was the Siberia which terrified wrongdoers or antiroyalists in western Russia, for a sentence to these unrelieved monotonies usually meant death. And in these years the very worst part of the entire stretch was the region which Fleet Captain Bering now had to negotiate, and at the end of autumn, when not even half his goods had reached the eastern depot, it began to look as if he would never become a true fleet captain because he seemed destined never to have a fleet.
The trips back and forth between the two towns that year were so awesome that when porters bearing heavy loads staggered into Okhotsk, they sometimes fell in a heap, for they were totally exhausted. Bering had to make the arduous journey on horseback, since wagons and sleds could not cross the mountains and muddy flats and even cargo sleds became snowbound. At first Zhdanko remained at the western end guarding the supplies, and then, in a burst of energy, he made two round-trip journeys.
When, worn to thinness, he dragged in the last of the timbers he supposed that he would be awarded with a rest, for he believed that he could not complete another journey, but just as the snows of early winter began, Bering learned that one small party of his men was still stranded in the badlands, and without his having to ask his constable to go rescue them, Zhdanko volunteered: 'I'll fetch them,' and with a few men like himself he went back over those snow-covered trails to bring in the vital supplies, and it was providential that he did, because it was this group of sleds that carried many of the tools the shipbuilders would need.
Bering and his men were more than five thousand miles from St. Petersburg, counting their detours and doubling back, and they were beginning their third winter on the road, but it was only now that their worst difficulties began, for without proper materials or experience, they were supposed to build two ships. And it was decided that this could be most expeditiously done not here in settled Okhotsk but far across the sea on the still-primitive peninsula of Kamchatka.
That dubious decision having been made, they now had to face the next step, a perplexing one: any hastily built temporary ship sailing from Okhotsk would land on the western shore of the peninsula, but departure for the exploration would have to be made from the eastern.
So, on which shore should the ships be built? When, as was his custom, Bering consulted with his subordinates, two clear opinions quickly emerged. All who were European or European-trained recommended that he land on the western shore, cross over the high mountains of the peninsula, and build on the eastern: 'For then you will have clear sailing to your target.' But the Russians especially Trofim Zhdanko, who knew northern waters argued that the only sensible thing would be to build the ships on the western shore, the near one, and then use them to sail around the southern tip of Kamchatka and head north to the serious business.
Zhdanko's recommendation made maximum sense for it would enable Bering to avoid that man-killing haul of building equipment across the backbone of Kamchatka where mountains soared to fifteen thousand feet but it had one serious weakness: no one at that time knew how far south the peninsula ran, and if Bering followed his aide's advice, he might spend a fruitless year trying to breast the southern cape, wherever it was.
Actually, it was about one hundred and forty miles from where the ships could be built, and it could have been breasted in five or six easy sailing days, but no map of that period was based on hard evidence, and those who guessed placed the cape hundreds of miles to the south.
Against Zhdanko's vigorous protests, Bering decided to land on the western shore at a lonely, wind-swept spot called Bolsheretsk, a settlement of fourteen mean huts, and there, as summer waned, this indomitable Dane, now forty-seven years old, launched an operation which stunned his men and staggered the imagination of those seafaring men and explorers who heard of it later. He decided that he could not afford to waste a fourth winter in idleness, so he ordered all the gear, including the timbers to be used for building the ships, to be transported by dogsled across the entire peninsula and over mountains that would be covered with snow. He did this so that he could build on the eastern shore and thus be ready to sail directly north when winter ended.
Zhdanko, seeing the first of the heavily burdened men start out, shuddered when he visualized what lay ahead, and when, as planned, he brought up the rear with some of the most valuable equipment, he gritted his teeth and told his men: 'They have a hellish blizzard in the mountains ahead. Called the purga, and when it rages, each man to dig his own hole!'
He and his cadre were on the highest hills in February when the temperature dropped to minus-fifty, and despite the fact that winds usually did not blow at that temperature, a dreaded purga roared down from northern Asia, whipping snow and sleet ahead of it like bullets.
Although Zhdanko had never before been caught in such a storm, he had heard of them, and shouted to his men: 'Dig!' and with fury they scooped out ten and fifteen and twenty feet of snow on the lee side of some huge rocks, and into these holes they crept while snow piled over the openings.
Zhdanko had to go down eighteen feet before he hit a solid base, and at that depth he feared he would be so totally covered as to be lost, so that as the storm raged, he constantly pushed himself up through the falling snow and sleet, and when dawn broke and the storm abated
, he was able to break clear and begin to search for his companions. When they dug out of their burrows two of the men began urging that they return to their starting point, and others would have supported them had not Zhdanko, with that fierce pride which motivated so much that he did, lashed out with his right fist and knocked one of the men backward into the snow. Seeing him fall, he leaped like a mountain cat upon the man and started bludgeoning him about the head with his powerful hands, and it was obvious that he was going to kill the defenseless man, but one of the others who had said nothing quietly interceded: 'Trofim, no!' and the big man fell back, ashamed of himself, not for having rebuked the man but for having done so to such an excess.
Chastened, he reached down, helped the man to his feet, and said jocularly: 'You've worked hard enough today. Bring up the rear.' Then he added: 'But don't try to run back. You'll not make it.'
That journey across the peninsula in dead of winter was one of the most hellish in the history of exploration, but Bering held his men together, and when they reached the eastern shore, he immediately put them to clearing away snowdrifts so that they could start building. It was a forlorn spot that had been chosen for this improvised shipyard, but never in his adventurous life did Vitus Bering show to greater advantage.
He seemed to build the ship himself, appearing at every danger spot whenever needed.
He spent eighteen hours a day in the long spring twilights, and whenever an aspect of the plans drawn up in St. Petersburg seemed incomprehensible, he deciphered them or made up his own rules on the spot. And his gift for improvisation was incredible.
Tar for caulking the ships had been lost somewhere en route, and it was no use blaming any individual. Somewhere in the six thousand miles from the capital perhaps on one of the handmade boats plying some unnamed river, or in the dreadful stretch east of Yakutsk, or during the two great blizzards in the Kamchatka mountain passes the tar had been lost, and the St. Gabriel, as they decided to call their ship, could not go to sea, for if left uncaulked, the open seams in her sides would admit enough water to sink her in twenty minutes.
For the better part of a day Bering studied this problem, then gave a simple order:
'Cut down those larch trees,' and when a huge pile had been assembled, he had the trees cut into lengths and from their bark he distilled a kind of sticky substance which, when mixed with a heavy grass, made a passable caulking, and the shipbuilding proceeded.
However, it was with another invention that he gained popularity with his men. Telling them: 'No man should sail a ship that has no spirits for a cold night,' he directed them to collect various grasses, roots and herbs, and when he had an ample supply he set up a fermentation process which, after many false starts, finally produced a strong beverage that he designated brandy, and of which his enthusiastic men laid in a copious amount. More immediately practical, he set other men to boiling seawater to obtain extra supplies of salt, and he directed Zhdanko to catch all the fish possible so that an oil could be made to take the place of butter. Larger fish were cured to serve instead of meat, which was not available, and he directed men to weave strong grasses together to make substitute ropes to be used in an emergency. In ninety-eight days, 4 April through 10 July this energetic man built himself a seagoing ship in which to make one of the world's premier voyages of exploration, and after only four days' rest, he sailed forth. Then came one of the mysteries of the sea: the daring man who had braved so much, who had already spent three and a half years in this quest, sailed north for only thirty-three days, saw another winter approaching, turned about, and scurried back to his Kamchatka base, arriving there after a total cruise of only fifty-one days out and back, despite the fact that the St. Gabriel carried a year's provisions and medical supplies for forty men.
Once again on land, with heavy snows about to descend, the men huddled in improvised huts and passed the winter of 1728-29 accomplishing nothing. Bering did interrogate a group of Chukchis, who told him that in clear weather they had often seen a mysterious shore across the sea, but for Bering the weather remained so foul that he did not see this land.
When spring brought good weather, he launched the St. Gabriel again, sailed boldly east for three days, became disheartened, and sailed back to Okhotsk. This time, ironically, he did go south, as Trofim Zhdanko had suggested two years ago, and he did easily round the southern tip of Kamchatka. Had he followed that easy route the first time, he would have had months of cruising time in the North Pacific and would also have avoided that fearful crossing of the peninsula during the blizzards.
It was time to go home, and since he now knew the good parts and bad of the Siberian road-and-river system, he made it to St. Petersburg in a rapid seven months and four days. He had been absent on his heroic travels for more than five years but had been at sea on his explorations slightly over three months, and about half that was spent on return trips.
But since the instructions handed him had been vague, it cannot be said that his voyage was a failure. He did not, of course, confirm Peter's conviction that Asia and North America were not joined, nor did he sail far enough to encounter Spanish or English settlements. He did, however, excite both Russian and European interest in the North Pacific and he had taken the first tentative steps in making this bleak area a part of the Russian Empire.
VITUS BERING, THE STUBBORN DANE, HAD BEEN BACK IN the capital less than two months when, despite the criticism and rebuke ringing in his ears because of his failure to sail either west to join the Kolyma River or east to prove that Asia was not joined to North America, he had the temerity to propose to the Russian government that he lead a second expedition to Kamchatka, and that instead of using about a hundred men, as he did the first time, he would now do it on a scale that would ultimately require more than three thousand. With his recommendation he submitted a careful budget in which he proved that he could accomplish this for ten thousand rubles.
The grandeur of his behavior in this negotiation was that he blandly refused to admit that he had failed the first time, and when critics assailed him for his supposed deficiencies he smiled at them indulgently, and pointed out: 'But I did everything the tsar ordered me to do,' and if they said: 'You didn't find any Europeans,' he replied: 'There weren't any,' and he maintained pressure on the government to send him back.
But the sum of ten thousand rubles was not to be spent lightly, and as Bering himself admitted, the expedition he now had in mind could run to as much as twelve thousand, so the government officials began a careful reexamination of his qualifications, and after interviewing his senior assistants, they came to the cossack Trofim Zhdanko, who had seen nothing wrong with Bering's conduct of the first expedition and who, having no family or pressing business in western Russia, was prepared to go east again.
'Bering is a fine commander,' he assured the experts. 'I was in charge of troops and can tell you that he kept his men working and happy, and that isn't easy. Yes, I'd be proud to work with him again.'
'But what about the fact that he didn't go far enough north to prove that the two continents don't touch?' they asked, and he surprised them with his answer: 'Tsar Peter himself once told me ...'
Their jaws dropped: 'You mean, the tsar consulted with you ...?'
'He did. Came to see me the night I was about to be hanged.'
The interrogators ended the meeting at this point to ascertain whether Tsar Peter had actually gone to a waterfront prison to conduct a midnight talk with a cossack prisoner named Troflm Zhdanko, and when Jailer Mitrofan verified that indeed the tsar had come on just such a mission, they hurried back to question Zhdanko further.
'Peter the Great, may his honored soul rest in peace,' Zhdanko began solemnly, 'was already thinking about the expedition in 1723, and what we discussed he must have told Bering later. He already knew that Russia did not touch America, but he was very eager to know more about America.'
'Why?'
'Because he was the tsar. Because it was proper for him to know.'
r /> The learned men hammered at the cossack for the better part of a morning, and all they learned was that Vitus Bering had failed in no commission that the tsar had given him, except the finding of Europeans, and that Zhdanko was eager to sail with him again.
'But he's fifty years old,' one scientist said, to which Trofim replied: 'And able to do the work of a man twenty.'
'Tell me,' the head of the committee asked abruptly, 'would you trust Vitus Bering with ten thousand rubles?' and Zhdanko replied truthfully: 'I trusted him with my life, and I'll do it again.'
That interrogation, and others like it, took place in 1730, when Trofim was twenty-eight, and in the years that followed, an energetic debate developed as to whether such an expedition should be made entirely by sea, which would be both quicker and cheaper, or by land-and-sea, which would enable the St. Petersburg government to learn more about Siberia on the way. No decision was reached for two years, and it was not until 1733, when Bering was fifty-three, that he was able to leave St. Petersburg on the overland route.
Once more he and Zhdanko were immobilized for two dreary winters by the snows of central Russia, and once again he was held in Okhotsk, and then his real troubles began, because bookkeepers back in St. Petersburg submitted a devastating report to the Russian treasury: 'This Vitus Bering, who assured us that his expedition would cost ten thousand rubles or twelve at most, has already spent more than three hundred thousand before leaving Yakutsk.
Nor has he placed his foot aboard his two ships. How could he? They haven't been built yet.' And the nervous accountants added a shrewd prediction: 'So a foolish experiment budgeted at ten thousand may ultimately cost two million.'
In a kind of dull and futile rage the authorities cut Bering's pay in half and refused him the promotion to admiral that he sought. He made no complaint, and when he fell a full four years behind schedule, he merely tightened his belt, strove to maintain the spirits of his men, and went ahead with the building of his ships. In 1740, seven years after leaving the capital, he finally launched the St. Peter, from which he would command, and the St. Paul, which his able young assistant Alexei Chirikov would captain, and on 4 September of that year he led the two ships forth for their great exploration of the northern waters and the lands that bordered them.