In the Land of White Death

by Valerian Albanov

  Had the three days of sleep done us more harm than good, or were we already so worn out by the most recent Arctic winter that our strength was nearly gone? I looked at each of my companions: They all had wan, yellowish complexions which stood out in the bright sunlight with frightening clarity—something we had not noticed in the winter twilight, particularly in the dim light of the blubber lamps.

  After a while, we felt better, but rather embarrassed by our weakness. We set out with only three of the seven kayaks to begin with, which we hauled two miles to the south, and then returned to fetch the other four. The Saint Anna stood out clearly over the pack ice, the weather was fine, and the sun felt warm already. These things combined to restore both our courage and our undaunted determination to overcome every obstacle, and to attain our goal, however long it might take us.

  That day we traveled nearly four miles and camped in a place sheltered by high mounds of ice. The following day was the same. We did three stages at this speed. Our route was so encumbered with obstacles and so obstructed by ice, which had piled up in many places to form formidable pressure ridges, that it was impossible to go any faster. To make things even worse, it was becoming increasingly clear that the runners of our sleds were too narrow and too close together: They sank deep into the snow, and we wasted all our time and energy in dragging them free. We logged only two and a half miles that day. The two crewmembers who had come earlier, Denisov and Melbart, joined us again with unfailing devotion, bringing us more hot soup. They made fun of our snail’s pace and threatened to come and visit us daily for another full week. Denisov, especially, who was half Ukrainian and half Norwegian, showed great interest in our exploit; he was very fit and had much Arctic experience, and could travel up to forty miles a day on his skis. Without a doubt he was the most capable of all those who had remained on board, and since he had an unusual background I will tell you a little about him.

  He left his father’s home in the Ukraine when he was thirteen, stowed away in the hold of a large steamship, and on disembarking in a foreign port he found employment as a sailor, working different ships until one day he ended up on South Georgia Island, in the stormy waters off Antarctica. There he went to work on a whaler and learned to become a harpooner. He later married a Norwegian girl and was just as happy in Norway as he had been in the Ukraine, or so he used to say. When he heard of Brusilov’s intention to go whale hunting in the Arctic and Far East, he volunteered at once, although he could have obtained a better-paid position in Norway. But the special nature of this new expedition appealed to his adventurous spirit. Although Denisov felt entirely at home in Norway, he loved Russia passionately, and it had always been his cherished dream to sail aboard a Russian whaler.

  By April 16, we had lost all communication with the Saint Anna. Denisov could no longer catch up with us, and by evening the vessel had disappeared beneath the horizon. Yet we were gradually getting used to this nomadic existence. We got up at seven in the morning and prepared our breakfast. During the early days, we still had a little bit of seal blubber to cook our meals and melt snow for drinking water. Our stove was a very primitive and inefficient arrangement: We had simply jammed a zinc bucket with its lid well down into an iron, boxlike container, and beneath the bucket sat an iron pan containing the blubber we burned for fuel. When the apparatus was lit, the temperature rose inside the tent, but there was so much smoke that we soon looked like gypsies. Later, our skin would become even darker.

  As a rule, we set off at around nine o’clock with a few sledges, which we pulled for about two hours, and then returned for the others. It was always a very tiring ordeal, and every day we regretted the fact that our sledges were not fitted with wider runners. The snow was very deep and we would sink to our knees. It was impossible to haul the heavy sledges on skis, since they would simply slide backward. After this exhausting chore, we would sit in the shelter of our kayaks and nibble on biscuits with a bit of chocolate. We had to be sparing with our meager provisions. After resting for an hour and a half, we would haul the first three sledges and kayaks, one of which contained the tent, for another mile or two, until we reached a suitable camping spot. We always chose the highest hummock of ice we could find so that we would have an uninterrupted view of the horizon. Two men would stay and keep watch over the tent while all the others went back for the remaining sledges and kayaks. We lined the floor of the tent with covers and coats as well as the sailcloth that normally lashed the kayaks to the sledges. As I have previously mentioned, the kayaks were placed in a circle around the tent, together with the sledges, which we attached with ropes to the ends of the tent guy lines. By seven in the evening, we were all settled into the tent, our legs tucked deep into our malitsi while we waited for our improvised stove to heat the water for our evening tea. To save blubber, we rarely let the water come to a boil, and were quite happy with just a warm drink. Then we would lace up the entrance to the tent, already filled with smoke and steam. The evening meal—consisting of tea, biscuits, and canned meat—helped us to forget the cold and our fatigue. When our supply of Australian cans ran out, we turned to Skorikov’s “bouillon,” which had been prepared with granules of dried meat. We improved the taste of the broth by adding a dried vegetable. These evening hours in the tent were far and away the most pleasant of the day, and did not fail to revive our flagging spirits, although our conversation always turned to the same burning questions: When would we find land? And from there would we manage to reach Cape Flora? What would happen after that, and would we ever see our homes again?

  We took off our snow-sodden boots and hung them to dry outside on our ski poles. Generally by morning they had dried in the wind. It was also in the evening that I wrote up my diary and made my calculations of the day’s navigational observations. When we ran out of fuel, however, the hours spent in the tent became almost unbearable. Those bitter evenings were very silent. We sat hunched together, gloomy and taciturn, huddled deep inside our reindeer hides in our respective corners. No welcoming tea to warm us; our miserable supper was made up of dried biscuit and ice shards melted in the mouth. With the biscuit we were allowed a spoonful of butter that was still so frozen it was hardly a substitute for hot food. Nor was the ice a suitable replacement for the tea, since it did not even manage to quench our raging thirst. Some of the men, later on, managed to get used to drinking seawater, in which they would dunk the ship’s biscuit to make a broth flavored with dried onion. There, too, cruel necessity proved to be an effective taskmaster: Those who could stand to drink salt water found that it very quickly lost its bitter taste. For cooking soups, we generally used seawater diluted with some ice.

  During the first third of our odyssey, we had to put up with many of these cold evenings, because at that time we rarely came across any open water, and consequently no seals or polar bears. Without a doubt the most unpleasant moment was getting up in the morning. We had to leave our warm malitsi and face the biting cold without a warm drink in our stomachs. Breakfast would consist of nothing more than a hard biscuit. We wore our malitsi to take down the tent and pack up our belongings, but finally we had to remove them and the hard work of hauling the sledges began. In dark, frigid weather with snow whirling in all directions, our spirits were as bleak as our surroundings. It seemed as if our route would never lead us to a more hospitable place, and that the dreadful blizzard would never yield to milder climes.

  Toward the eleventh day, when we had traveled roughly twenty-eight miles from the Saint Anna, three sailors came to see me and admitted they could not go on. They requested permission to return to the ship, believing that if they continued they would surely perish. I had the impression that these three fellows, to be honest, were among the strongest in our group, but perhaps they had expected to see land after five or six days, and to be rescued ten days afterward at the latest. Disappointed by the present situation, they now wished to return to the ship, where they would suffer neither cold nor hunger. As all of them had followed me of their own fr
ee will, and since I hardly considered our situation to be enviable, I felt I had no choice but to accept their request. If they were going to be discouraged so quickly, they were hardly of much use to me. As the weather moreover had been quite reasonable over the last few days, with no snow flurries, I was convinced that by following our tracks the three men would easily find their way back. I let them go. They refused to take any of the heavy kayak/sledge combinations they had been hauling with us. They left on skis, warmly dressed, carrying big rucksacks filled with biscuits; they also had a rifle with ammunition. I estimated they would reach the ship by the following day. But I waited for twenty-four hours at our present campsite in case they needed to return. During our enforced rest period, we dismantled two of the now useless sledges and kayaks for firewood. I had also given the three “fair-weather friends” a letter for the lieutenant relating our voyage thus far.

  Now only ten men accompanied me.* We still had five sledges bearing five heavily laden kayaks. Nothing else had changed. The terrain was rarely flat enough for us to take all the sledges with us at once. We still needed to do two trips daily, and occasionally even three. When the wind was in the right quarter, we would hoist sails on the sledges, which made our task easier, if only a little.

  * Piotr Maximov, Yan Regald, Prokhor Bayev, Alexander Arhireyev, Olger Nilsen, Pavel Smirennikov, Vladimir Gubanov, Alexander Konrad, Yevgeni Shpakovsky, and Ivan Lunayev.

  The arrival of spring was apparent even at this latitude. It was almost with us. The noontime rays of the sun were warming, but the thaw had not yet begun. The surface of the snow now was covered with a fine crust, smooth and dull, which gave off a dazzling reflection.

  At the end of April we all suffered in varying degrees from snow blindness that greatly affected our vision. We had no effective sunglasses. Our mechanic had fabricated some with pieces of green glass scavenged from gin bottles, but they were essentially worthless. As we stumbled our way across the uneven surface of the ice, the danger of snow blindness became very real. Those of us who could still see had to go ahead of the others as scouts. But there were days when we were all suffering, and then the only answer was to call a halt and close ourselves up in the tent. The damage to our eyes occurred even when the sky was quite cloudy, and once our vision was affected, everything seemed to be veiled in fog.

  ——

  A scene from this period remains permanently etched upon my memory. Ahead of us, the pack ice stretched into the distance as far as the eye could see. As I could distinguish nothing very clearly, my companion explained to me that there were huge blocks of ice heaped up in layers in the far distance. If we could get to the top of one of those icy towers, I thought, we might be able to spot land, or at least an even higher vantage point. Our five kayaks formed a long ribbon: Mine was being pulled by three sailors, and the others by couples. The weather was fine, warm, and windless, without a single cloud in the sky. The sun was dazzling. I had closed my eyes and pulled my cap well down over my forehead, but the intense light even penetrated my eyelids. From time to time I would open my eyes to check our heading. We strode rhythmically at a good walking pace, hauling strenuously on our ropes, with one hand bracing the kayak atop the sledge. In my right hand I held a ski pole which, as we advanced, repeatedly described the same figure with meticulous precision; swinging forward in a semicircle, then tilting slowly backward to be brought to the front again: the same gesture, over and over. It was as if the ski pole, which made an audible creaking sound upon contact with the snow, was measuring the ground we had already covered: a monotonous tune to accompany the travelers across the icy wilderness. They ended up believing that they could even hear the words to the tune “Far to go, so very far!” until all other thoughts faded away and all that seemed important was the same, mechanical gesture. We were all like sleepwalkers, placing one foot in front of the other, straining our bodies forward against our harnesses. . . .

  The sun is a ball of flames. It feels like a torrid southern summer. . . . I can see a port: People are strolling in the shade of the high harbor walls. Shop doors are open wide. Aromas of tropical fruit fill the air with their fragrance. Peaches, oranges, apricots, raisins, cloves, and pepper all give off their wonderful scents. The asphalt steams after being sprayed with water. I can hear the strident, guttural tones of Persian merchants offering their wares. My God! How marvelous it smells here! How pleasant is the tropical air!

  Suddenly my foot tripped over my ski pole. I quickly steadied myself against the kayak, opened my eyes wide, and was dazzled by the sun. For a moment I did not know where I was. What had happened to my tropical port? How the devil had I been transported to this icy wasteland?

  “What happened?” asked my companions. “Nothing,” I answered, “I tripped over my pole.” The boreal landscape unfolded once more before me in an infinite expanse, and the sun which had fleetingly brought me such joy now sought only to blind and torture me.

  Yet the hallucination did not completely vanish. My nose was still filled with the aromas of Mediterranean fruit. My companions were not conscious of my present condition. What did it mean? Was I ill? I shut my eyes tight once again. I was like an automaton, moving rhythmically with the pole in my right hand, and once again I could hear the monotonous tune: “Far to go, so very far!”

  But what I had just experienced continued to trouble me. For strangely enough I had never liked those aromatic fruits: They had never tempted my palate. But I decided that as soon as I arrived home I would head south and find employment somewhere on the Caspian Sea, where I could gorge on apricots, oranges, and grapes, to make up for the years I had neglected them. Why had I come to this frozen wilderness on the edge of an icy sea, when the weather was so beautiful in the sunny lands to the south? What madness! Tonight we have a “cold evening” ahead of us, since we have no fuel whatsoever. There is not even enough to melt ice for drinking water. But what good would complaining do? All this torture is simply deserved retribution. One should not poke one’s nose into places where Nature does not want the presence of man. My one and only goal was to press onward and thereby escape the claws of death. Here I was, dreaming of the sunny south, and I had not yet even left the north! I was now headed for lands far removed from this perilous frozen plain, a place where I might catch the last sweet chords of that tumultuous life I had imagined. How happy I would be simply to feel solid earth beneath my feet once more.

  In the meantime we had reached the hummocks of ice we had long been heading for. Now we would have to find a route through them.

  It would soon be time to pitch camp, and this seemed like a good, sheltered spot. Our long, exhausting march had brought us less than four miles. We checked to see if we had any superfluous equipment that we might burn to provide us with some heat. That day we had no tea to drink, only hot water, and our supper consisted of a pound of biscuits and a tablespoon of frozen butter each. Soon we slipped into our malitsi to sleep off our fatigue and discouragement. The next morning I awoke feeling quite refreshed. I had had a very optimistic dream. I immediately described it to my companions, who attached a great deal of importance to it. In fact, each of them bound his destiny to the flimsiest of threads!

  In my dream I saw all of us crossing endless pack ice with our sledges. In the distance I could see a large crowd of people who were watching something intently and chatting with animation among themselves. They seemed to be waiting for something, so they paid no attention to us, and we did not heed them either. As we drew near, we asked if they were waiting for someone or something. And one of them, pointing to a scrawny old man with white hair who had just appeared from behind a block of ice, replied, “He is a fortune-teller.”

  Not wishing to let this lucky opportunity slip by, I approached the old man and asked him to tell us our fortune, to tell us whether we would reach land and be saved. At the same time, I held out my hands with the palms up, as one normally does before a soothsayer. The old man glanced briefly at my hands, then pointed to the south w
ith his right hand and said, “You will reach your goal, open water is not far away, but there . . .” and his sentence broke off as I awoke.

  My story immediately erased the previous evening’s discouragement, and everyone experienced a new burst of courage and enthusiasm for our cause. I, too, was influenced by the optimistic theme of my dream; I was certain that it had been Saint Nicholas himself who had appeared before meto reveal the outcome of our enterprise. Of course, I may have simply been ill at the time, as my hallucinatory state the previous day had shown; but from then on I would never forget that dream. It was still vivid in my memory, despite all our trials and tribulations, when we finally arrived safe and sound at Cape Flora. My traveling companions also gained renewed strength from my dream, and their confidence grew even greater when on that same evening we came upon a large polynya,* where we were able to shoot some seals, which gave us a supply of fresh meat and blubber for fuel. We were happy to be able to eat our fill for once and enjoy a good rest. The disastrous state of the terrain we had to cross often depressed us, but our spirits revived rapidly and we found new energy whenever we met with unexpected good fortune.

  * A polynya is an area of consistently open water amid the ice pack, prevented from freezing over by prevailing winds and currents.

  ——

  The expanse of open water before us was extremely vast, and the pack ice on its opposite side was only vaguely discernible on the southern horizon. For several days now the north wind had been blowing, sending smears of grease ice and thickening clumps of frazil ice† streaming across the polynya like a frozen porridge. Through the binoculars one could see that a large quantity of this “ice porridge,” badly shattered, had accumulated on the far side of the polynya; since there was a significant swell running, the heaving movement of the grease ice was clearly visible. We launched one of the kayaks and tried to paddle across the polynya, but quickly became convinced that it would be impossible to penetrate the ice porridge, which extended for half a mile from the southern side of the open water. Thus we had to search for a route around the polynya. To the east, the open water extended for many miles. We walked for six nautical miles without seeing its far shore, the water being hidden under a heavy layer of frost smoke. Patches of water sky were visible above the eastern horizon. To the west, the expanse of water grew narrower, but still seemed endless after three miles of walking. There were large numbers of beluga and minke whales in the polynya. Every minute one would hear them blowing. They would rush back and forth in pods, breaching the ocean’s surface, then disappear into the depths again.