The chain of islands contained one called Lapak if we understood what its Russian occupants were saying. We mapped the whole and charted a fine harbor on the north coast, guarded by a beautiful dead volcano 1,100 feet high six miles due north. It was named something like Lewgong, but when I asked a second time for the name they whistled at me, signifying what, I do not know. Perhaps it is their sacred volcano.
George Vancouver in the last hour of his stay ashore met up with the Russian named Trofim Zhdanko, and in this grizzled warrior he recognized a man much different from the two brash younger men whom both he and Bligh had disliked. Desperately he longed to share ideas with this wise old man, and the Russian just as eagerly wanted to ask these strangers how they had managed to get such a fine ship, how they had navigated it from Europe, and what they judged the future of these islands to be. Alas, the two could not converse except in the most fragmentary sign language.
When shots were fired from the Resolution, warning Bligh and Vancouver that sailing time was at hand, the old cossack did hand each of the officers who had been so congenial a sea-otter pelt, but unfortunately, he had, in his generosity, given them two of the best, and Innokenti, seeing this, unceremoniously grabbed the pelts from the hands of the English officers and substituted two' of inferior quality. Vancouver, always a gentleman, saluted and thanked both father and son for their generosity, but Bligh glared at Innokenti as if he wanted to smash his insolent face. However, when the two men regained their ship, Bligh penned in his logbook a revealing entry:
On this Island of Lapak I met a most disagreeable Russian named, if I caught what he said, something like Innocent. He repelled me from the moment I saw him, and the longer I suffered his unwelcome attentions the deeper grew my loathing, for he seemed the worst type of Russian.
But when I observed the compliant manner in which the natives obeyed him and the enviable peace and order prevailing on his island, it was clear to me that someone in authority governed this place firmly, and that is always to be desired. I suspect that prior to our arrival, there may have been disturbances here, but prompt action on the part of someone quelled them, and if the credit goes to this Innocent, I withdraw my strictures against him, for order in any society is of maximum value, even if sternly achieved.
In this casual manner, and with such bland acceptances of what the Russian terror had achieved, the great English navigator James Cook crossed lanes with the Russian navigator Vitus Bering: each landed briefly at Lapak; each remained about the same amount of time; each sent ashore a subordinate who would gain fame on his own account Cook sending two, Bligh and Vancouver; Bering only one, Georg Steller and each sailed on, the Russian in 1741, the Englishman thirty-seven years later in 1778.
How different the two men were: Bering the bumbling, unlucky leader, Cook the impeccable captain with only one detectable flaw and that showing itself only at the end; Bering, who sailed under the most rigorous orders from his tsar or tsarina, Cook, who once he left sight of England sailed under his own orders; Bering the hesitant explorer who scurried back at the first sign of adversity, his tasks uncompleted, Cook the nonpareil who invariably went the extra mile, the extra continent; Bering, who advanced the art of navigation in no particular, Cook, who altered the definitions of the words ocean and mapmaking; Bering, who had grudging support from his government and no international acclaim whatever, Cook, who lacked for nothing in England and who heard the cheers of an entire world ringing in his ears for more than a decade; Bering often with no uniform and then a miserable one that fitted poorly, Cook with his prim hand tailored officer's garb topped by an expensive cockaded mariner's hat. How differently the two men behaved and how different their careers and contributions.
When Cook sailed on his second of three great journeys, England and France were at war, and the fighting at sea was vigorous, but both warring nations agreed that James Cook in his Resolution be allowed free passage anywhere he chose to sail, for it was acknowledged that he was doing the work of civilization in general and would not fire upon an enemy French warship even if he met up with one. During his third voyage, the one to Alaska, England was at war with her American colonies and, by extension, with France also, but once more the three warring nations agreed among themselves to let James Cook sail where he would, for by his perfection of the cure for scurvy, which Georg Steller had pioneered, and his promotion of this treatment through the fleet, he saved far more lives than would have been gained in a victorious battle. This second safe-passage arrangement was masterminded in part by Benjamin Franklin, the practical-minded American ambassador to France, who knew an international benefactor when he saw one, and Cook was that.
It was said earlier that as a navigator Cook had only one failing. He was apt, when tired, to be short-tempered, so that when, in February 1779, he found himself in Kealakekua Bay on the Big Island of Hawaii surrounded by mildly hostile natives who could have been placated with gifts, he lost his patience and fired a gun into a threatening crowd, in which a Hawaiian of some importance had already been killed.
In a flash the infuriated watchers fell upon Cook, clubbed him from behind, and held his head under water when he fell into the surf.
Vitus Bering and James Cook, two of the grandest names in Alaskan history, had mournful ends, the first dying of scurvy on a bleak, treeless, wind-swept island at the age of sixty-one, his life and his work incomplete. The second, having conquered scurvy and the farthest oceans, died at fifty-one because of his own impetuousness on a beautiful tropical island far to the south. The oceans of the world were made more available by the explorations of such men.
BUT THERE WAS IN THESE YEARS ANOTHER KIND OF Explorer, the commercial adventurer, and in 1780 such a one wandered almost accidentally into Lapak Bay in a small, incredibly tough little ship called the Evening Star, a two masted, square-rigged whaling brig out of Boston. It was captained by a small, wiry man as resolute morally as his ship was physically. He was Noah Pym, forty-one years old and already a veteran of the dreadful gales at Cape Horn, the trading marts at Canton, the lovely coastline of Hawaii, and all the vast empty spaces of the Pacific where whales might hide, for if his ship was not big, it was valiant, and in it Pym was ready to challenge any storm or any group of hostile natives gathered on a beach.
Unlike Bering and Cook, Pym never left port with support from his government or cheering notice from his fellow citizens. The most he could expect would be a one-line notice in the Boston newspaper: 'On this day the Evening Star, Noah Pym with crew of twenty-one, sailed for South Seas, intended stay six years.'
And as for the great nations agreeing among themselves to give this tough little fellow free passage, they were far more likely to sink him on sight in the supposition that he was sailing for the enemy. Indeed, he had in his time fought off the warships of both France and England, but this was a misnomer, for what he really did was maintain a sharp lookout and run like a frightened demon at the first sight of a sail that might prove threatening.
Zagoskin and Innokenti were out in their two-man kayak chasing sea otters when the Evening Star hove into sight off the south shore of Lapak Island, and they were astounded when a voice from the aft deck called out in good Russian: 'Ho there! We need water and stores.'
'Who are you?' Innokenti called, establishing that he was in charge.
'Whaler Evening Star, Boston, Noah Pym commanding.'
Innokenti, surprised that a ship from that far distance should have found Lapak Island, shouted back: 'Good harbor on the north shore south of the volcano!' and with Zagoskin paddling strongly from the rear seat, he led the way.
When the ship anchored between the shore and the volcano, Innokenti and Zagoskin climbed aboard and satisfied themselves in two minutes that whereas the Evening Star did carry one gun fore, it was not a warship. Neither man had ever seen a whaler before, but under the tutelage of the sailor who had called to them in Russian, they quickly learned what the procedures were, and just as quickly saw that Captain Noah Pym o
ut of Boston was, though small, a leathery individual with whom it would not be profitable to quarrel accidentally.
They learned that this amazing little brig which had traveled so far Cape Horn, China, a try at Japan, Hawaii had in its crew sailors who could speak most of the languages of the Pacific, so that wherever the ship anchored, someone could conduct business with the natives. Only one man spoke Russian, Seaman Atkins, but he loved to talk, and for two rewarding days he, Innokenti and Captain Pym traded information on the Pacific.
Pym, once the ice was broken, enjoyed the swift interchange: 'Six men in Boston own the Evening Star and they award me a full share for serving as their captain.'
'Do you also receive pay?' Innokenti asked.
'Small but regular. My real pay comes from my captain's share of the whale oil we deliver and the sale of goods we bring home from China.'
'Do the sailors share?'
'Like me, small pay, big rewards if we catch whales.' Pym pointed to a sturdy young fellow, a New Englander almost as hefty as Zagoskin and with the same kind of scowl:
'That's Kane, our harpooner. Very skilled. Gets double if he succeeds.'
'Why have you come into our waters?' Innokenti asked, and Harpooner Kane frowned at the word our, but Captain Pym answered courteously: 'Whales. They must be up there,' and he pointed toward the arctic.
Zagoskin broke in rudely: 'We see them coming past here sometimes,"and he would have said more had not Innokenti signaled that this was privileged information. The baldheaded Russian was obviously irritated by this tacit reprimand, and both Pyrn and Atkins caught the warning, but neither commented.
On the third day the men of the Evening Star met Trofim Zhdanko, now in his late seventies and still unbearded out of his respect for the memory of Tsar Peter, and they liked him from the start, in contrast to their rejection of the two younger men. The old fellow, at last in the company of someone who could speak Russian, poured out his recollections of Captain Bering, that hard winter on Bering Island, and the remarkable accomplishments of the German scientist Georg Steller: 'He went to four universities and knew everything. He saved my life because he made this brew of weeds and things that cured scurvy.'
'Now what might that be?' Pym asked. He had the habit of staring hard at anyone with whom he was speaking on important subjects, his small eyes closing almost to beads, his close-cropped head of brown hair bent forward.
'Scurvy is what kills sailors.'
'I know that,' Pym said impatiently. 'But what was in the brew this Steller made?'
Trofim did not know exactly: 'Weeds and kelp, that I remember. First time I tasted it I spit it out, but Steller told me, right over there it was, behind that group of rocks, he said: "You may not want it but your blood does," and later on, when we spent that dreadful winter on Bering Island, I looked forward to the little amount of brew he allowed me each day. It tasted far better than honey, for I could feel it rushing into my blood to keep me alive.'
'Do you still drink it?'
'No. Seal meat, especially blubber and guts, they're just as good. You eat seal you never have scurvy.'
'What will happen up here?' Pym asked. 'I mean Spain, England, France, maybe even China? Don't they all have an interest in this area?' And he pointed eastward to the unknown area which the Great Shaman Azazruk had once called Alaxsxaq, the Great Land.
'It's already Russian,' Trofim said without hesitation. 'I was with Captain Bering when he discovered it for the tsar.'
On the evening before departure Captain Pym broached with Zhdanko the navigational problem which had brought him to Lapak, and it was premonitory that he did not reveal his questions to either of the two Russian leaders, for he already distrusted them: 'Zhdanko, what do you know of the oceans north of here?'
Since it was obvious that Pym was toying with the idea of sailing north, a difficult adventure, as Zhdanko had learned from his own explorations beyond the Arctic Circle, the cossack felt he must warn the American: 'Very dangerous. Ice comes crashing down in winter.'
'But there must be whales up there.'
'There are. They swim past here all the time. Going, coming.'
'Has any small ship ... like ours ... sailed north?'
Since Zhdanko did not know where Captain Cook had sailed after leaving Lapak Island, he could honestly warn Pym: 'No. It would be too dangerous.'
Despite this advice, Pym was determined to probe the arctic seas before other whalers would dare to venture into those icy waters, and he remained firm in his desire to explore them, but he did not share with Zhdanko his plans, for he did not want the other Russians to know them.
Next morning, Pym allowed himself an uncharacteristic gesture: he embraced the old cossack, for he saw in his noble bearing and generosity in sharing his knowledge of the oceans a man in the true tradition of seafarer, and he felt renewed for having been in contact with him. Summoning Atkins, he said: 'Ask the old fellow why he lives alone in this little hut?' and when the question was put, Zhdanko shrugged, pointed to where his stepson and Zagoskin were whispering, and said with resignation and repugnance: 'Those two.'
AFTER PYM, WITH NO KNOWLEDGE OR CHARTS TO GUIDE him, sailed his Evening Star north from Lapak, he entered a world into which no other American had ventured or would soon do so. Yankee ships had penetrated the rest of the major oceans, following quietly in the more spectacular wake of Captain Cook's ships. But the constant search for whales, whose oil for lamps, ambergris for perfumery and baleen for the stays in women's corsets would produce fortunes for ship owners and their captains, made exploration of untapped seas obligatory. To go north of the Aleutians was daring, but if whales existed in the area, the risk was worth it, and Noah Pym was a man to take that risk.
He lived a hard life. He was a devoted father, but he was away on his voyages for years at a time, so that when he returned home he scarcely knew his three daughters.
But the results were so profitable to all concerned in his expeditions that both his owners and his crew urged him to sail yet again, and he did much sooner than he would have on his own account. He kept a cadre of reliable hands with himJohn Atkins, who spoke both Chinese and Russian; Tom Kane, the expert harpooner without whom the ship would have been powerless when a whale was sighted; and Miles Corey, the Irish first mate, who was a better navigator than Pym himself and even in bad weather he slept easily knowing that these men and others like them were in charge. He suspected that Corey was a crypto-Catholic, but if so, he created no problems aboard ship.
With the Aleutians left far behind, the Evening Star entered upon those dangerous waters which seemed so congenial in early spring, so fearful in October and November, when ice could form overnight, or come crashing down of an afternoon, already formed into great icebergs farther north and now cruising free on their own.
Noah Pym, in search of whales instead of knowledge, captured one whale south of that narrow strait where the continents seemed to meet, and having heard in Hawaii the rumor that Bering and Cook in their larger ships had proceeded farther north without incident, he decided to do the same. In the Arctic Ocean, Harpooner Kane struck a large whale, and when Pym laid his ship close to the dying beast, landing boards were laid to its carcass so that sailors could cut it up, searching for baleen and ambergris and throwing great slabs of blubber on the deck for reduction to oil in the smoking pots.
While the brig lay idle as the oil was rendered, Corey, in a voice that betrayed no panic, warned the captain: 'Should the ice start to move down upon us, we must be prepared to run.' Pym listened, but since he had no experience in such waters, he did not appreciate how swiftly the ice could strike. 'We must both watch it closely,' he said, but when the harpooner stabbed a second whale with a splendid shot, work on salvaging it became so exciting, with promise of full casks for the long sail home, that Pym forgot about the impending ice, and for several triumphant days attended only to the bringing aboard of baleen and blubber.
Then, like some giant menace looming out of a fe
vered dream, the ice in the arctic began to move south, not slowly like a wanderer, but in vast floes that made giant leaps in the course of a morning and stupendous ones overnight. When the floes appeared, almost out of nowhere, the free waters around them began to freeze, and it required only a few minutes for Captain Pym to realize that he must turn south immediately or run the risk of being pinned down for the entire winter. But when he started to give the order to hoist all sails, First Mate Corey said in a voice that still showed no emotion: 'Too late.
Head for the coastline.'
The advice was sound, the only one that would enable the Evening Star to avoid being crushed by the oncoming ice, and with an adroitness that far abler navigators than they might not have been able to exercise, these two New England men used every breath of wind to shepherd their little whaler with its thrice-precious cargo toward the northern coastline of Alaska, and there at a spot almost seventy-one degrees north, later to be christened Desolation Point, they stumbled by sheer luck into an opening which led to a substantial bay, at whose southern end they found a snug harbor surrounded by low protecting hills. Here, shielded from pounding ice, they would spend the nine-month winter of 1780-81, and often during that interminable imprisonment the sailors would not curse Pym for his tardiness in leaving the arctic but praise him for having found 'the only spot on this Godforsaken shore where the ice can't crush us to kindling.'
They had barely started constructing a refuge ashore when Seaman Atkins, the one who spoke Russian, cried: 'Enemy approaching over the ice!' and with expressions of fear that could not be masked, the twenty other crewmen looked up from their work to see coming at them across the frozen bay a contingent of some two dozen short, dark-faced men swathed in heavy furs.
'Prepare for action!' Captain Pym said in low voice, but Atkins, who had a good view of the oncoming men, cried: 'They aren't armed!' and in the next tense moments the newcomers reached the Americans, stared in amazement at their white faces, and smiled.