straight as though made of long grey ribbons.
Strange were those wooden household articles lying in the snow
round the aeroplane. Strange, that sixty-year-old Nenets with his pipe in
176
his mouth who issued a command to an old woman, and she brought
out to us a piece of walrus bone.
But strangest of all was this boat-hook. There was hardly a thing in
the world stranger than this.
At that moment Luri put his head out of the cockpit and hailed me,
and I answered him from somewhere away, from that distant world into
which this thing had suddenly transported me.
What was this boat-hook, then? Nothing much! Just an old brass
hook on a pole. But on this old brass, now turned green, were clearly
engraved the words: "Schooner St. Maria".
I looked back. Luri was still looking out of the cockpit, and he was
undoubtedly Luri, with that beard of his, which I made fun of every day
because he had grown it in imitation of the well-known Arctic airman F.,
and it did not in the least suit his young, vivacious face.
Some distance away, outside the farthest choom, stood the doctor,
surrounded by the Nentsi.
Everything was in its place, just as it had been a moment ago. But
before me lay the boat-hook with the words "Schooner St. Maria"
engraved upon it.
"Luri," I said with deadly calm, "come here."
"Found something?" Luri shouted from the cockpit.
He jumped down, came up to me and started blankly at the boat-hook.
"Read that!"
Luri read it.
"It's from a ship," he said. "The schooner St. Maria."
"That can't be! It can't be, Luri!"
I picked up the boat-hook, cradling it in my arms like a child, and Luri
must have thought I had gone mad, because he muttered something and
ran to the doctor as fast as his legs could carry him. The doctor came up
with an anxious look, took my head between slightly trembling hands
and gazed into my eyes.
"Oh, go to hell!" I said with annoyance. "You think I'm off my rocker?
Nothing of the sort. Doctor, this boat-hook is from off the St. Maria'."
The doctor removed his spectacles and began to study the boat-hook.
"The Nentsi must have found it on Severnaya Zemlya," I went on
excitedly. "Not on Severnaya Zemlya, of course, but somewhere along
the coast. Do you realise what this means, Doctor?"
By this time the Nentsi had gathered around, looking on impassively.
This might have been the thousandth time they were seeing me showing
the boat-hook to the doctor, shouting and getting worked up.
The doctor asked whose hook it was, and an old Nenets with an
inscrutable, deeply-lined face, which looked as though carved out of
wood, stepped forward and said something in Nenets.
"What does he say. Doctor? Where did he get this boat-hook?"
"Where did you get this boat-hook?" the doctor asked in Nenets.
The Nenets answered.
"He says he found it."
"Where?"
"In a boat," the doctor translated.
"In a boat? Where did he find the boat?"
"On the beach," the doctor translated.
"What beach?"
177
"The Taimyr."
"Doctor, the Taimyr!" I yelled in such a voice that it brought the old
anxious look back into his face. "Taimyr! The coast nearest to Severnaya
Zemlya! And where's the boat?"
"There is no more boat," the doctor translated. "Only a bit of it."
"What bit?"
"A bit of boat."
"Show me!"
Luri drew the doctor aside and they stood whispering together while
the old man went to fetch the bit of boat. Apparently Luri still believed
that my mind was unhinged.
The Nenets reappeared a few minutes later with a piece of tarpaulin—
evidently the boat he had found on the coast of the Taimyr Peninsula
had been made of tarpaulin.
"Not for sale," the doctor translated.
"Doctor, ask him if there were any other things in the boat? If there
were, what things and what became of them?"
"There were some things," the doctor translated. "He doesn't know
what became of them. It was a long time ago. Maybe as long as ten
years. He says he was out hunting, and saw a sledge standing. On the
sledge stood a boat and there were things in the boat. A gun was there, a
bad one, couldn't shoot, no cartridges. Skis were there, bad ones. A man
was there."
"A man?"
"Wait a minute, I may have got it wrong." The doctor hastily put his
question again to the Nenets.
178
"Yes, one man," he repeated. "Dead, of course. Face eaten away by
bears. He was lying in the boat too. That's all."
"Nothing else?"
"Nothing."
"Doctor, ask him whether he searched the man, was there anything in
his pockets-papers, documents, maybe."
"There were."
"Where are they?"
"Where are they?" the doctor asked.
The Nenets shrugged. The question sounded rather silly to him.
"Is the boat-hook the only thing that was left? He must have been
wearing something. What happened to his clothes?"
"No clothes."
"How's that?"
"Very simple," the doctor said tartly. "Or do you suppose he purposely
kept them on the off chance of your dropping down on him from the
blue some day with your aeroplane? Ten years! And probably another
ten since he died!"
179
"Don't be angry. Doctor. It's all clear. The thing is to put this story
down in writing and have you certify that you heard it with your own
ears. Ask him what his name is."
"What's your name?" the doctor asked.
"Ivan Vilka."
"How old?"
"A hundred," the Nenets replied.
We were silent, but Luri held his sides with laughter.
"How old?" the doctor queried.
"A hundred years," Ivan Vilka repeated doggedly in pure Russian.
All the time while his story was being recorded in the choom he kept
repeating that he was a hundred. He was probably less, at least he did
not look a hundred. Yet the closer I studied that inscrutable wooden
face, the more was it brought home to me that he was really very old. He
was proud of his hundred years and persisted in repeating it until he
was satisfied that we had recorded in the written statement:
"Hunter Ivan Vilka, a hundred years old."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
VANOKAN
To this day it remains a mystery to me where the Nentsi got that
length of log from which we made the strut we needed. They went off on
skis during the night, probably to some neighbouring nomad camp, and
when, next morning, we came out of the choom, where I had spent that I
would hardly call the most restful night of my life, this piece of cedar
wood lay at the entrance.
Indeed, it had been anything but a cheerful night. The doctor slept by
the fire, the long ends of his cap, tied over his head, sticking comically
over his anorak like a pair of hare's ears. Luri tossed about and coughed.
I could not sleep. A Nenets woman sat by a cradle, and I lay a long time
listening to the monotonous tune which she was singing with a sort of
apathetic abandon. The same words were repeated every minute until it