THEIR DE FACTO imprisonment at Zemovialach proved a blessing in disguise, for Melville and his fellow explorers badly needed to rest. The villagers seemed to understand this better than Melville did, and they cared for their frozen guests with extraordinary generosity. The women of the village were especially empathetic, Melville noted—“they examined our frozen limbs, shaking their heads in compassion, and even weeping over our miseries.” (Said the half-blind Danenhower: “The native women were always very kind in spite of their ugliness.”) The natives had little idea who these foreigners were, what country they were from, or why they had descended on this part of the world. Some seemed to think they had sprung from the ice itself. Yet the people of Zemovialach always showed the whaleboat’s crew the seat of honor as they welcomed them into their smoky warm balagans, and they shared everything they had.
Which, in truth, wasn’t very much. They were a poor people, facing winter—and as it was, their diet was so deficient in vitamins and minerals that blindness was rampant among them. Still, they were able to donate a ration of four good-sized river fish per day, plus what Melville called “a modicum of rancid deer tallow fried in a dirty pan filled with deer hair.” From this, they boiled vats of “long soup”—that is, fish and venison stews economically “lengthened” with river water.
Every day the Evenks also shared three or four geese. This latter foodstuff posed a problem for the Americans, for the natives had a peculiar tradition of eating their fowl in an advanced state of fermentation. They liked to kill their geese during the molting season and dry the whole uncleaned carcasses beside their huts for the rest of the summer. By autumn, the birds had become, as some of the men liked to say, “pretty high.” Wrote Melville: “The geese were … ancient and odiferous, so much so that when we would hang them up their intestines and juices would drop out.” Even for explorers who had inured themselves to eat just about anything, it was a bit much.
During this period of “enforced idleness,” as Melville referred to their captivity in Zemovialach, the men whiled away the hours singing songs and playing games with tattered assortments of cards. They soaked their swollen limbs in tubs of warm water. They repaired their torn and hole-ridden clothing, sewing new patches onto old patches. They drank cup after cup of bitter tea and smoked cigarettes of a harsh Russian blend of tobacco. They cleaned and groomed their snaggled, hirsute selves, using combs the Evenks made from the fossil ivory of woolly mammoths. They played intense chess matches with gnarled pieces they had carved from driftwood. They wrote letters, which they hoped to mail home as soon as they reached some place of civilization. In the mornings, they wandered down to the ice-encrusted river and helped the Evenks haul in the daily catch.
Aneguin even found time for romance. As a native Inuit, he looked a bit like his Evenk hosts—at least they seemed to think so—and he spoke a few words of Russian, which they could understand. They soon took him in as one of their own. Melville wrote, “Aneguin was visiting around among his copper-colored brethren and sisters, who began to repair his moccasins and clothing; until, finally, it was noised around that Aneguin had found a sweetheart in the village, which he blushingly acknowledged, and in praising her good qualities, said, ‘Him plenty good little old woman.’ ”
Melville worried about the possibility of scurvy and, given the fetid state of much of their food, recognized the risk that some of his men might contract dysentery or typhoid fever. Even if the local cuisine was dubious, Melville knew that his life, and that of every man in his party, utterly depended on these generous—but traditionally nomadic—Evenks and Yakuts. “What I most feared,” said Melville, “was that the natives, being somewhat wandering in their habits, might fold their tents like the Arabs and silently steal away in the night.”
Melville was also worried about Cole. His mental state was slipping fast. He seemed to have entered a dream world, and he spent his days talking gibberish. Melville declared him non compos mentis, “not fractious, but jolly and full of all kinds of nonsense. He had lost all trace of time and circumstances.” Cole kept saying that he was “tired of the strange, mysterious fellows” who were all around them. He repeatedly insisted that he wanted to see the “old woman.” Imagining that he was a professional pugilist, he had started boxing, jabbing at the air or sometimes taking a swing at anyone who got in the way.
Leach was deteriorating, as well—his frostbitten feet were causing him excruciating pain. Parked before the fire, he had become listless, feverish, and despondent, his spirits slowly draining from him. The flesh on his toes had sloughed away, exposing the stubs of his bones. His good friend Bartlett acted as his doctor, attending his every need. “Gangrene had apparently set in,” Melville wrote, “and if the toes were neglected for a day the odor was unbearable. Bartlett daily prepared a kettle of hot water in which he bathed and cleaned the sores, and, with a jack-knife in hand, pared away the flesh in a masterly manner.”
With Bartlett’s constant attention, Leach eventually came around. As his spirit strengthened, his thoughts wandered toward home, and he composed a letter to his mother in Penobscot, Maine:
My dear mother,
We laid in the ice until our ship (our home) was taken from us. Then our hardships began. We encountered a heavy gale, which nearly put an end to our sufferings. My feet were frozen stiff, and my legs were chilled up to my body so badly that I think they could have been taken off without my feeling it. When we got ashore I was in a tight fix. I could not walk, and was in much pain, and my feet had begun to putrefy. Bartlett, one of the men, took a knife and cut out the corrupt places, and cut about half of one of my great toes off, leaving the bone sticking out of the end. It troubles me to walk now, and I think that it will for some time. I make myself as agreeable as possible. The life is not altogether crushed out of me. Oh mother, you can have no idea of what we went through. When I look back it seems more like a strange dream than a reality.
Guess I have written enough about my trials. Gracious! How I want to see the folks at home. Give my love to everybody, in town and out, keep the lion’s share for yourself, and believe me, your loving son,
—Herbert
THE AMERICANS HAD been in Zemovialach for nearly two weeks when they chanced to meet an interesting visitor. He was a big, full-bearded Russian with the bearing of a soldier who made his living constantly moving about the delta, trading and bartering. It was Kuzma. His home was a half day’s dog drive away in a tiny village called Tamoose. There was an air of mystery about Kuzma—he seemed like an operator—but he appeared competent and interested in Melville’s plight. “He was a bright, intelligent looking man,” wrote Melville, “and I at once hoped far more from him than from any one we had yet met.”
Melville had by then learned a bit of pidgin Russian, and Kuzma soon came to understand the outlines of the Americans’ story: that Melville and his men were shipwrecked Americans from a vessel called the Jeannette, that they had reached Zemovialach by small boat, and that they were holed up here waiting for the ice to harden. Kuzma presented the Americans with some tobacco, five pounds of salt, several bags of rye flour, sugar, and tea, and a reindeer to eat.
Melville struck a deal with Kuzma: If the Russian would go to Bulun and bring back food, clothing, and reindeer teams, Melville would give him the whaleboat plus 500 rubles. Everywhere he went, Kuzma was to broadcast the news that the Amerikanskis were offering a reward of 1,000 rubles to anyone who could bring Melville information about the whereabouts of the two other lost parties—even if it was just reports of relics that might have washed up on shore. Kuzma agreed to the deal, but he insisted that it would be another week before he could safely set out on the journey, as the river still wasn’t sufficiently frozen over.
Melville was unsure whether he should trust Kuzma—something was slippery about him. In this part of Siberia, Melville said, “I had learned that lying is not considered a sin; on the contrary, if cleverly done, it is rather regarded in the light of an accomplishment.” But Me
lville had no choice but to shake on the deal.
Kuzma wasn’t lying, exactly, but he wasn’t telling the full truth. What Melville didn’t know was that Kuzma, the criminal exile, was under penalty of death should he venture to Bulun by himself. He had to wait until the starosta—elder—from his village, a man named Nicolai Chagra, was able to accompany him on the journey. This complication would cause further delays, but on October 16, Kuzma finally did leave for Bulun. If conditions were favorable, he estimated, it would be about a five-day trip.
For nearly two more weeks, the men waited in Zemovialach. “Many and long were our anxious looks from the hut-top,” wrote Melville, “but all in vain, for a sight of Kuzma.” Finally, on October 29, he did return, and “never was an absent lover welcomed more joyfully.”
It was immediately apparent, however, that Kuzma had not fulfilled his end of the bargain. He brought no food, clothing, or reindeer teams—and, as he soon explained, he had not even been to Bulun. However, something interesting had developed during his journey. At a tiny place called Kumakh-Surt, Kuzma had learned something that he felt obligated him to hurry back to Melville. By way of explanation, Kuzma reached into his pocket and handed over a crumpled scrap of paper bearing a message that fairly electrified the Navy engineer. It said, in part:
Arctic steamer Jeannette lost … landed on Siberia 25th September or thereabouts; want assistance to go for the Captain and Doctor and (9) other men.
Willliam F. C. Nindemann
Louis P. Noros,
Seamen U.S.N.
Reply in haste: want food and clothing.
Kuzma explained that he had met the two half-dead Americans who’d written the note and that they were now supposed to be recuperating in Bulun. What he didn’t realize was that the eleven surviving shipmates Nindemann and Noros had referred to in Kumakh-Surt were not the members of Melville’s party; Kuzma did not understand that there was yet another party of eleven Americans suffering somewhere out in the delta. The “captain” Nindemann and Noros had mentioned, Kuzma assumed, was Melville.
Melville was immediately spurred into action. He would leave the other men in Zemovialach for now and hasten to Bulun, where, with Nindemann and Noros, he would initiate a search for De Long. Knowing what he now knew, he chided himself for not having forced his way to Bulun sooner. Kuzma helped him put together a dog team from the village of Tamoose, secured two Evenk drivers, and had a new sled constructed.
On the morning of October 31, as the temperature dipped to twenty degrees below zero, Melville and his drivers took off across the frozen tundra, pulled by eleven “mongrels of every hue and build … a motley team in full cry, all yelping, snapping, biting, and seizing each other from behind.” Now that the river channel was frozen solid, they were able to make surprisingly good time. With the drivers occasionally beating the sled dogs with iron-tipped clubs, they pressed on through a blizzard and reached Bulun in three exhausting days.
It was almost dark when Melville dismounted from his sled and wandered into the heart of the village. Curious Yakuts swarmed around and soon led him to the little cabin where the two Amerikanskis were staying. Melville found the latch, and the door creaked open, revealing the countenances of two beloved shipmates he had not seen in fifty-one days.
NINDEMANN AND NOROS were elated to learn that not only Melville but all the men in the whaleboat had survived. They stayed up with the engineer, telling him their own doleful tale, including the story of Erichsen’s amputations and his burial in the ice. Melville resolved to leave as soon as feasible for the Lena delta. He was shocked and amazed to hear that De Long and his men might still be alive. He would do whatever it took to assemble dog teams, sleds, and provisions for a multiweek search. He had to make haste before the Arctic winter set in for good.
Melville wanted Nindemann and Noros to come with him, but this was, he said, “out of the question.” They were “so sick as to be barely able to walk, vomiting and purging violently—the effects of having gorged themselves on decayed fish.” Instead, Melville, working off his own Petermann map of the delta, enlisted Nindemann and Noros to make a detailed sketch of their wanderings—showing the location of their landing, the place where they had left De Long, the hut where they had been saved by the Yakut nomads, and various landmarks along the way.
Melville stayed up much of the night composing the text for a telegram to be sent to the London offices of the New York Herald, to the U.S. minister in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg, and to William Henry Hunt, the secretary of the Navy in Washington. Melville’s urgent message would be relayed south by a succession of dog and reindeer teams to the city of Irkutsk, the location of the nearest telegraph station. Melville knew his telegram would take weeks, if not months, to reach its destination: Irkutsk, located in southern Siberia not far from Lake Baikal, was nearly three thousand miles away.
Melville would leave Nindemann and Noros here in Bulun and arrange for the other men from the whaleboat to convene here. Together, they would head south toward Yakutsk, a small city on the banks of the Lena River, about a thousand miles to the south, that was the closest approximation to “civilization” in this part of Siberia.
Having secured dog teams, a Cossack guide, and several Yakut scouts, Melville departed for the Lena delta on November 5. In Nindemann’s hut, he left a message for Danenhower, instructing the navigator to lead the party to Yakutsk. “I have a pretty good chart to search for the missing,” Melville said. “If time and weather permit, I will go to the north coast for the ship’s papers, chronometer, etc. I may be gone a month. Fear not for my safety. I will see the natives take care of me.”
39 · WHITE GLOOM
Melville bid his shipmates farewell and prepared to head back into the icy barrens of the Lena. It must have taken every ounce of his resolve, for he, too, was frostbitten, exhausted, and starved, his system ravaged by months of half-rancid food. He was returning to the delta at a deadly time of year—as the Siberian winter was enveloping the land, bringing gale-force blizzards, perpetual darkness, and temperatures that would plunge to more than fifty degrees below zero.
The engineer knew that he was laughably ill-prepared. Though he had a knack for foreign languages, he had no knowledge of the Yakut tongue, and locals, he found, “could not understand my Russian without great torture.” He had little experience with dog teams, either, or with surviving on the open tundra. He would be wandering across a mostly uninhabited maze nearly three times larger than the Florida Everglades—but a frozen Everglades with only a few discernible landmarks, which were now obscured by ice and snow.
Attempting to find De Long in this white world, he knew, was quixotic—and, in this season, extremely dangerous. Yet there was a chance that the captain and his men were still alive; as long as that remained true, he knew he had to go. He tried to imagine his comrades out there, languishing, gnawing on fish heads or rawhide boot soles as their extremities blackened and their body heat drained away. He could only hope that, like Nindemann and Noros, they’d met sympathetic nomads, or they’d encountered a riverboat on some branch of the Lena, or they’d been picked up by a search party dispatched from an Arctic rescue ship, or they’d lucked upon a herd of migrating reindeer whose meat and fur had kept them alive.
Even if he were to find that De Long and his men had perished, Melville felt, the search would still be significant. Knowing that the delta was home to wolves, foxes, carrion birds, and the occasional polar bear, he wanted, if his shipmates were dead, to “rescue their bodies from the mutilations of wild beasts.”
The coming of the spring floods was an even bigger concern. “The face of the country,” Melville noted, “clearly showed me that if I delayed until spring, all trace of my comrades would be swept away by the floods, which completely submerge the delta and deposit great driftwood logs forty feet above the river plain.”
He also was determined to rescue any cached records or scientific instruments he might be able to find before the spring deluge r
uined them. Nindemann had sketched out for Melville the place on the beach where they’d buried the ship’s papers, records, chronometers, and natural history artifacts. Finding the cache would be difficult, Melville knew, but these relics were certainly worth saving.
In Bulun, Melville had made the acquaintance of the Russian authority, Commandant Gregory Bieshoff—“a fine specimen of Cossack manhood,” as Melville described him, “very large of stature, and a commanding presence.” The resourceful Bieshoff had made arrangements for dog teams, provisions, and two native guides. Although Melville had nothing to offer them now, he promised the Cossack that the United States government would ultimately pay the natives day wages and make good on every expense that might be incurred during the search—plus whatever brokerage fees Bieshoff himself might charge.
The two guides, Vasili and Tomat, were young, strong native men who knew the delta and its system of huts and hunting lodges. But they were extremely skeptical of the mission at hand. They thought Melville must be deranged. All their lives, as winter approached, they had headed away from the delta, not toward it. This journey violated their every instinct and habit; to Vasili and Tomat, the assignment seemed on the verge of suicidal. But the two men could use the money, and, knowing that human lives were at stake, they said they were willing to try.
On November 5, Vasili, Tomat, and Melville climbed aboard their sleds and headed north. “I set out,” Melville later wrote, “full of hopes and fears for the future—hoping for the best, yet fearing the worst.”
FOR DAYS AND DAYS, they cut across the white gloom. It was a dreamworld, shrouded in fog, piled in snowdrifts, with few markings of animals or man—“a barren and desolate region,” said Melville, “devoid of sustenance.” The runners scraped and snagged on the ice. Tomat and Vasili yelled commands in their strange Turkic language. The dogs struggled against their harnesses. The Siberian winds howled.