Chapter 15
It is clear there is no way Steller can preserve the sea cow’s hide intact.
This would require many barrels of strong preserving solution, and he has neither arsenic nor lye, but he can preserve the skeleton.
He gets to work. Now he must make do without his assistants, he has run out of tobacco, and the men decline his requests for help, politely but firmly.
The work progresses more slowly by himself, and Waxell berates him.
Steller should be helping the crew in their shared endeavours, but instead he spends his days scraping the sea cow’s bones clean.
No matter: there is no longer any discussion to be had.
Khitrov gives Waxell a knowing glance, but the lieutenant lets the naturalist be.
Steller helped when they were ill, taught them how to dig pits in the ground to provide shelter, and when all hope seemed lost, he sang for them around the fire.
Now that the threat of imminent death has passed, he can be afforded a certain level of eccentricity, and though the men scoff at Steller’s work, their taunts are mild, and they chide him the way they would a child or an unruly dog.
Cleaning the sea cow’s bones is slow, arduous work, and in an attempt to forget about the impudent seagulls and his aching limbs, Steller starts talking.
He begins by explaining the process for preparing arsenic soap.
He severs the tendons and recites Linnaeus’s system, scoops out the contents of the skull and cleans it, all the while describing the species he has discovered, and as he cleans the bones of their cartilage with an infuriatingly blunt knife, he tells the sea cow all about the different seaweeds and minerals, the anatomy of seals, the migratory routes of whales, about the seeding of hay and how Arctic cisco swim upstream to lay their eggs.
He tells the sea cow about their journey, about the drinking water that turned murky and their comrades decomposing in the hold, about his childhood in Windsheim and his wife, the ravens, and everything he would like to say to Toma Lepekhin.
He explains to the sea cow why it had to sacrifice its life and assures it that one day it will be the greatest attraction at the imperial Academy.
The sea cow listens, and some days it even answers him.
Steller makes several mistakes. He forgets to number the vertebrae, and now ordering them correctly proves a slow, vexing task.
The foxes and seagulls scavenge around the carcass, trying to pinch the smaller bones, and these Steller decides to store at the camp, a decision that is not met with universal approval by the crew.
The bones remind them of the men shedding their flesh under makeshift crosses only a few hundred feet from the camp.
They would rather not think about the dead, and they are worried about the bodies they threw overboard on the night of the shipwreck too.
If such a thing does not bring about restless souls, then surely nothing will, and though Waxell has forbidden all ghost stories, he cannot stop the men whispering around the campfire, cannot stop them making the sign of the cross when the foxes howl in heat further up the hillside.
Steller is instructed to keep the bones out of sight, and duly hides them under a tarpaulin, he mutters his objections but obeys all the same, and while the others are asleep, he gropes in the dark for the sea cow’s skull and runs his hand along the slanted curvature of its crown.
He falls asleep with the skull in his arms, then snaps wide awake.
For a moment, he flails in terror, fumbles through the air until he finds the skull wrapped under his shirt, and his eyes meet Toma Lepekhin’s disapproving gaze.
Surely Adjunct Steller doesn’t want the others to see him caressing the dead? Steller nods, quietly thanks him.
The vertebrae of the neck, the breast, the hip and the tail lie on the beach in a neat line.
He has taken the sea cow apart, and by now he has long since forgotten his birds destroyed by the seawater.
Now he has this beguiling, miraculous specimen, and when they see it, the learned men of the Academy will surely grant him a bursary for another expedition.
Next time, he will do everything correctly, he will be properly prepared and will lead the expedition himself, he will take Toma Lepekhin with him and all the best scientific minds from the Academy.
Lepekhin asks Steller to join him hunting birds, and Steller agrees.
On the hillside, he can collect plants and minerals, and the two spend the day wandering across the hills and gathering ptarmigans’ eggs.
The white-breasted males waddle, honking, in front of them, trying to attract the men’s attention, but Lepekhin knows their tactics, knows how to find the females hiding in their nests of moss with the dappled eggs they are protecting.
The two light a fire and eat ptarmigan eggs fried in sea-cow blubber.
The grass rustles in the wind, and everything smells of smoke and the sea.
At moments like this, they even wonder whether it would be so bad after all if they were to be forgotten here on this shore and never make their way back to the mainland, where responsibilities and the rule of man await them.
Neither says this out loud, but it is there in their movements, the way they raise their cups, as if they long for nothing.
They row enough wood back from the shipwreck to build several boats, but their main obstacle is not a lack of materials but of expertise.
They piece together their ship by guesswork, one plank at a time, and as they work, the fledglings hatch from their shells, in the coves the sea cows give birth to new, chubby young, and Waxell urges his men to hurry.
They snap the old mast of the St Peter and shorten it to make it suitable for the new vessel, they burn off the tar from the old ropes and sew new, smaller sails.
The prospect of home inches closer, but the lieutenant is afraid they will run out of time.
He believes he can smell the approach of autumnal storms in the air, and with worry in his heart he looks on as the fledglings take flight and begin circling the island.
By August, the new ship is ready. A hooker measuring approximately forty-two feet, with no guarantee that it is even seaworthy.
The time has come to give it a name. An unnamed ship is a bad omen, and on this journey they will need all the luck and good fortune they can muster.
Someone suggests they name the ship after the Tzarina, then after the captain commander, but eventually it is named the Hooker St Peter.
As St Peter brought them to this island in the first place, perhaps he can help them leave it too, and the men lower their heads and pray to the guardian of the keys of Heaven to protect their ramshackle vessel.
At first they had envisaged themselves sailing home with all their pelts, rising from the dead as rich men, but they have only forty-two feet to accommodate forty-six men.
They can only take absolute essentials with them, and none of them is as shocked to hear this as Steller.
He has been pressing flowers, collecting seeds, bones and rocks, he has cleaned the invaluable skeleton of the sea cow; surely, they must make an exception for him!
But Waxell asks Steller to look at the vessel, to imagine how it will fit forty-six men, as well as the provisions and water they will need, then to tell him where exactly he thinks they will be able to store a skeleton the length of three men and the width of a rowing boat and which, furthermore, they cannot eat.
Steller knows he is in the wrong, but he cannot help complaining, and spends a full day and night sulking on the rocks by the shore, but Waxell’s mind is made up.
Steller will be allowed to take only his notes and the pipe he fashioned from a bird’s bone.
On the morning of the eleventh day of August, the wind is gentle and the sea calm.
They cook all the leftover food and prepare for the meagre days at sea by eating their fill.
They light a large fire, eat sea cow and ptarmigan, and sing together.
Nobody speaks of tomorrow. It is every bit as likely that they will not reach land as it is that they will be saved, but tonight none of that matters.
Tonight they will play cards, feast on sea cow and worry only about the here and now.
The others are wolfing down their food and celebrating, but Steller leaves the group.
Toma Lepekhin looks at him with quizzical eyes, but the naturalist shakes his head, and the Cossack sits back down and takes another portion of dried peas and sea cow.
Steller approaches the skeleton, pulls back the tarpaulin and assesses his handiwork.
His most significant discovery, a creature of which no-one has ever seen the like, that even the wildest bestiaries could never have imagined, and all he will have to show for it are the words in his notebook.
He stomps off, without even bothering to cover the bones again.
What use would it be? Once they have left, the foxes will pull them out, scatter them across the sands and take them back to their dens for their young to gnaw upon, and when he returns to the camp, Steller sits quietly and refuses to sing, though they implore him.