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At the hotel in Yaroslavl there was a telegram waiting for me: "Leave

immediately for Archangel. Lopatin." It was from the Hydro-graphical

Department. But why not from Slepushkin with whom I had arranged

that I would continue my search for Katya in the event of my not finding

her in Yaroslavl? Who was this Lopatin? And why immediately? Why

Archangel? True, Archangel was still the main base for any hydrological

work along the Northern Sea Route. But hadn't R. told me that we were

to meet at Polarnoye, where his plans would have to be endorsed by the

Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Fleet?

All this was cleared up, and very soon too. But at the moment, there in

Yaroslavl, in that squalid little hotel, where I raised the blue paper blind

and read and reread the telegram, I felt nothing but vexation at this

muddle and uncertainty, which seemed in some way to threaten Katya

and deprive me of the hope of seeing her again soon.

I now had a short journey facing me—a mere thousand kilometres

northward of Katya...

This is what I learnt when, straight from the train, I presented myself

at the HQ of the White Sea Naval Flotilla: Lopatin, whom I had been

cursing all the way, was Personnel Chief of the Hydro-graphical

Department. Only now did I recollect having heard the name at the

People's Commissariat. There had been no muddle in this telegram. The

day I left Moscow events had occurred in the Far North which caused

Rear-Admiral R. to leave urgently, at night, for Archangel, and the same

night a wire had been sent to me. There was nothing now for either R. or

me to do at Polarnoye, as the officer commanding the fleet had himself

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gone to Archangel. His meeting with R. had taken place the day before.

Evidently, the plan for that "most interesting job" had been approved,

because immediately after this meeting R. flew out to Dickson. He must

have been in a great hurry, or else decided he could manage without me,

otherwise he would have left instructions for me at Flotilla HQ.

"You're late, Captain," The Flotilla Personnel Chief said to me. He was

a genial, grey-headed man with side whiskers, who resembled an old

sailor of the period of Sevastopol's first defence. "What am I to do with

you now? We can't send you chasing after him."

He ordered me to report again in a few days time.

But how Archangel had changed, how unlike itself, while still itself, it

had become.

American sailors strolled about the streets in their little caps, bell-

bottomed trousers and woollen jumpers, fitting close round the waist

and falling loosely over the trousers. British sailors, with the initials

"H.M.S." on their caps, were somewhat more reserved in their manner,

but they, too, had that easy-going air about them which distinguished

them so strongly from our own sailors and struck me as strange. One

encountered Black sailors at every step. Chinese, washing shirts in the

Northern Dvina, right under the quay, and laying them out in the sun

among the rocks, chattered loudly in their softly guttural tongue.

And the Dvina, so spacious, so Russian, that it seemed there could be

no other river like it in the world, bore its brimming waters onward.

Motor launches, cleaving the sparkling wave as with a knife, passed in

one direction, towards the cargo port.

But it was not the foreigners who engaged my attention those days,

though I regarded them with keen but detached curiosity. This was the

city of Sedov and Pakhtusov. At the cemetery in Solombala I stood for a

long time at the grave of "Lieutenant Pyotr Kuzmich Pakhtusov,

Cavalier of the Corps of Navigators, who died at the age of 36 from the

trials and tribulations sustained on his voyages". From here Captain

Tatarinov had taken his white schooner on her long voyage. Here

Navigating Officer Klimov, the only surviving member of the expedition

to reach the mainland, had died in the town hospital. The St. Maria

expedition had an entire section devoted to it in the local museum, and

among the familiar exhibits I found something new and interesting-the

recollections of artist P., a friend of Sedov's, describing how Klimov had

been found on Cape Flora.

Early in the morning, after writing my regular letter to Yaroslavl, I

found myself at a loose end and went down to Kuznechikha. The pine

wood spread its sharp tang over the river. The drawbridge was open and

a little steamboat, weaving its way among the endless timber rafts, was

carrying people to the dock. Wherever you looked was wood, everything

was wooden-the narrow sidewalks along the fronts of the squat old

buildings dating from Nicholas I's time and now housing hospitals and

schools, the road paving, and fantastic edifices built of stacks of fresh-

sawn planks along the river banks. This was Solombala, and here I

found the house in which Captain Tatarinov had lived in the summer of

1912 when the St. Maria was being fitted out.

He had descended the steps of that little log-house and walked

through the front garden-tall, broad-shouldered, in his white naval

jacket, with moustaches turned up in the old-fashioned way. With stiffly

bent head, he had listened to some Demidov of a merchant, who

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demanded money from him for salt junk or for the "preparation of

ready-made clothing". And out there, in the cargo port, barely visible

among the heavy merchantmen with side paddles, stood the slim and

graceful schooner-too slim and graceful to make the voyage from

Archangel to Vladivostok along the coast of Siberia.

One incident, insignificant in itself but important for me, brought

these misty scenes oddly to life.

The day before a convoy had arrived I had gone to B. Port to see the

foreign ships unload.

Oho, how big this ancient port had grown, how spacious! I must have

walked a couple of kilometres along the wharves but still saw no end to

the cranes, which were piling military and general cargoes in tall,

rectangular stacks. And extensions were still being made to the port. I

came to the end and stopped to take in the panorama of the wharves,

which curved back in a smooth arc. At that very moment the little

steamboat, puffing vigorously, steered clear of a big American vessel

with a Hurricane in the bows and approached the wharf. I glanced at her

name, Lebedin, and remember thinking that this pretty name had

become sort of traditional in northern waters. It had been the name of

the boat in which Tatarinov's friends and relations had gone out to his

schooner to give the captain a last embrace and wish him a pleasant

cruise and happy landfall. Could this be the same Lebedin, which had

been called in one article "the first Russian icebreaker"? Surely not!

I asked a sailor who was rolling a barrel of fuel down the gangway to

call his captain, and a minute later a ruddy-cheeked young fellow of

about twenty-five, clad in ordinary work blues, came up on deck, wiping

his hands, which were black with oil, on a rag.

"I have an historical question to ask you, Captain," I said. "Do you

know by any chance whether this tug of yours was called Lebedin before

the revolution as well?" "She was." "When was she launched?" "In 1907"

"And always had the same name?" "Always."