Chapter 13
They will be rescued. People on the mainland will become worried and someone will ready a ship!
But one after the other, the men realise that no-one can possibly rescue them on an uncharted island.
The expedition’s other ship returned to Kamchatka in October.
The crew of the St Paul had found their way to the south-eastern coast of Alaska.
Captain Chirikov sent a group of his men to explore the area, but this group never returned.
A search party was sent to look for them, but they too disappeared without a trace, and at this point Chirikov abandoned all attempts to go ashore.
They added the coast to the map and sailed home, and their accounts did nothing to keep alive the hope that Bering and his crew might one day return.
They are declared missing, then dead, and eventually their wives stop waiting for them.
On the map, they name this island after their captain, but for them this place is the blue foxes’ island.
These Arctic foxes will not leave them in peace.
They burrow their way into the crew’s pits, then scamper away with belts, boots and tools between their teeth, they snatch seagulls roasting on the fire, and the crew turn their attention to the foxes.
It is the foxes’ fault that scurvy has claimed half their number, the foxes’ fault that their ship is rotting out in the bay, the foxes’ fault that their captain is decomposing in the cold sand, and they hunt the foxes, catch them but don’t kill them, instead sending them back to their dens half flayed, with no eyes, no tails, their paws singed in the fire.
Killing them is insufficient; the men want to hurt them.
They need a culprit. But the foxes never learn and return night after night.
Their persistence is staggering, senseless, and Steller allows an unscientific thought into his mind: perhaps the foxes are punishing them, making the crew pay for the popularity of their skins in St Petersburg.
On the ship, Khitrov was responsible for discipline, forcing even those weakened with scurvy to work, but since Bering’s death he has stepped aside.
The question of who steered the ship towards this uninhabited shore comes easily to a starving man’s lips, and Khitrov has seen the half-skinned foxes.
Their captain commander was a good-hearted man, God have mercy on his soul, and alongside an affable man like him, the job of the fleet master was to crack the whip.
These simple souls do not understand that he has done everything for the good of the crew.
If he had not forced them from their berths, they would still be drifting on the open seas, their sails torn asunder, and their ship would have become a floating grave where, below deck, the rats would feast on their flesh.
Khitrov realises that the tide has turned when he sees Steller digging a pit into the embankment.
He demands to be let in and shelter from the wind, but the naturalist just continues his work, striking his spade into the ground as though the fleet master standing next to him were nothing but air, an immaterial spirit, and not his superior with powers bestowed by the Tzarina herself.
The crew looks on, but nobody intervenes.
Khitrov is not stupid. He steps aside, and the position of commander is assumed by one Lieutenant Sven Waxell, a jovial fellow who is allowed to take the decisions simply because he will not make any decision without asking everybody else’s opinion first. Khitrov accepts his lot.
If they ever return to the mainland, he will reinstate discipline, but until then he keeps himself to himself, sucks on bird bones in his pit and patiently swallows back any harsh words that come into his mind.
After Bering’s death, the foxes’ island changes.
Now tasks are divided equally. Every man must do his share, and even the officers cover the middens and feed the sick.
Steller suggests that he might be allowed to concentrate on his research, but Waxell simply laughs, and the naturalist settles for plucking seagulls, digging pits and disappearing off to watch the sea cows whenever he gets half a chance.
This happens less frequently than he would like.
There is an endless amount of work, staying alive requires constant, grinding labour, a battle to fend off hunger and misery.
The cold has become a garment that they cannot shrug off, they cannot remain still, or their fingers and toes will turn red, then black and begin to smell, and they rub their stiffened limbs to keep warm.
Steller bends the surgeon apprentice Konavalov’s fingers, and the man implores him to stop, he no longer cares about his fingers and toes, please, I beg you, but Steller looks away and continues.
If he gets off the island alive, he will ask the Academy for a new assignment, a new direction.
He yearns for air shimmering in the heat, he longs for the desert, the equator, the tropics, anywhere the wind is warm.
After spending more than enough days tending to the sick, Steller becomes restless.
Usually good-humoured, he starts snapping at his comrades, and eventually Waxell sends him away to explore the beaches, to find driftwood for their now meagre fires.
The task gives Steller the opportunity to examine the animals and the terrain, to choose his direction and spend his days observing the birds and plants, and he learns how to find the sea cows, watches how they swim around the island to shelter from the wind.
He was worried that they might leave, abandon the island, but they do not.
They never head out to sea but actually avoid the open water, they do not dive but seem to prefer the shallows, they walk along the seabed on their short front limbs, munching on kelp, and if the wind turns, they grip the rocks along the shore and embrace the boulders so as not to be washed out to sea in the waves.
It is true that Steller generally returns from his excursions carrying less firewood than the others, but after days spent wandering the coastline he has the energy to sing again and to tell the others of his observations as they sit round the campfire.
The crew has little interest in cormorants and grasses, but he is not the only one excited about the sea cows.
The men are all keen to behold this great mammal, the gentle giant of Blue-Fox Island, and Steller tells them about it like a proud parent.
They consider the sea cow, their hungry eyes gaze out at the open waters, imagining what it would be like to sink their teeth into these creatures bobbing beneath the surface – a single specimen would be enough to feed every one of them – and as they speak, the sea cow’s flesh seems like manna from heaven.
As they chew on seagulls and the flour left from the ship, they imagine the taste of the sea cow, and as they sleep, with a faint moan they dream of swallowing its blubber.
The crew try to hunt them. They load their rifles and shoot, first taking aim from the shore, then from their boats, but this proves difficult.
The sea cow is protected by a hide an inch thick, and under that its muscles and vital organs rest behind a wall of dense blubber a further four inches thick.
The ammunition rebounds from the sea cows’ flanks without causing any damage, and Waxell forbids the men from wasting any more bullets, but they continue to shoot regardless.
Occasionally a carefully aimed bullet pierces the animal’s pebble-sized eye, and the sea turns red.
A cry of joy goes up on the shore, but their elation is short-lived.
The herd surrounds their fallen comrade, preventing the men from rowing their boat any closer, and all they can do is lean against the rail of their dinghy and look on as their catch sinks into the depths.
But the men do not give up. They shoot again and ram their boats into the animals’ sides, they hit and beat them, gash the sea beasts’ hide with their axes, but their problem remains unchanged: the sea swallows up their catch.
They know how to kill the sea cows but not how to get a carcass weighing several tonnes out of the water and onto the shore, and in the evenings they sit round the campfire drawing up plans and comparing strategies.
It is easier to talk about the sea cow than about how they will make their already thin broth last another day.
The sea cows never learn to fear them. They continue grazing, paying no heed to the danger, absorbed in their underwater world, and Steller is able to row the dinghy right up next to them.
On one occasion, a young male comes so close that he is able to place his hand on its back.
The creature examines their boat, prods its boards with the sensitive whiskers on its snout, and Steller runs his fingers along its hide, its gnarly skin reminds him of the bark of an old oak, and it is warm.
He had imagined that a creature swimming in the frigid oceans would be cold to the touch, but beneath his hand he feels the sea cow’s calm warmth and strokes it, examining the bumps on its skin, and he becomes restless.
He must get closer, see its organs and bones, he must measure it.
A naturalist cannot be content with simply stroking a subject.
Only by penetrating the surface can he understand the true nature of the sea cow.