that was almost always below zero and sometimes forty or fifty degrees
below. When we got back into our vehicles and resumed our journey,
we were usually cold, and just as we would get warm enough to go to
sleep, we would reach another station and again have to turn out.
Sleeping in short snatches, between shivers, to the accompaniment of
a jangling dinner-bell and a driver's shouts, and getting out into
an arctic temperature every two or three hours, night and day, for a
whole week, reduces one to a very fagged and jaded condition. At the
end of the first four days, it seemed to me that I should certainly
have to stop somewhere for an unbroken night's rest; but man is an
animal that gets accustomed to things, and in the course of a week I
became so used to the wild cries of the driver and the jangle of the
thill-horse's bell that they no longer disturbed me, and I gradually
acquired the habit of sleeping, in brief cat-naps, at all hours of the
day and night. As we ascended the river, the moon rose later and
later and the nights were often so dark that our drivers had great
difficulty in following the line of evergreen trees that marked the
road. Finally, about five hundred miles from Yakutsk, a particularly
reckless or self-confident driver got off the road, went ahead at a
venture instead of stopping to look for the evergreen trees, and just
after midnight drove us into an air-hole, about a quarter of a mile
from shore, where the water was thirty feet deep. Price and I were
fast asleep, and were awakened by the crashing of ice, the snorting of
the terrified horses, and the rush of water into the sleigh. I cannot
remember how we got out of our fur bags and gained the solid ice. I
was so bewildered by sleep and so completely taken by surprise that I
must have acted upon blind impulse, without any clear consciousness of
what I was doing. From subsequent examination of the air-hole and the
sleigh, I concluded that we must have jumped from the widely extended
outriggers, which were intended to guard against an accidental
capsize, which had a span of ten or twelve feet, and which rested
on the broken ice around the margin of the hole in such a way as to
prevent the sleigh from becoming completely submerged. But be that as
it may, we all got out on the solid ice in some way, and the first
thing I remember is standing on the edge of the hole, staring at the
swimming, snorting horses, the outlines of whose heads and necks
I could just make out, and wondering whether this were not a
particularly vivid and terrifying nightmare. For an instant, I could
not be absolutely sure that I was awake. In a moment, the other
sleigh, which was only a short distance behind, loomed up through the
darkness and its driver shouted to our man, "What's the matter?"
"Oootonoole!" ("We got drowned") was the reply. "Get out your ropes,
quick, while I run to the shore for some driftwood. The horses
will freeze and sink in a few minutes. Akh! My God! My God! What a
punishment!" and, tearing off his outer fur coat, he started at a run
for the shore. I did not know what he expected to do with driftwood,
but he seemed to have a clear vital idea of some sort, so Price and
I rushed away after him. "We must get a tree, or a small log," he
explained breathlessly as we overtook him, "so I can crawl out on it
and cut the horses loose. But God knows," he added, "whether they'll
hold out till we get back. The water is killing cold." After a few
minutes on the snowy beach, we found a long, slender tree-trunk that
our driver said would do, and began to drag it across the ice. Our
breath, by this time, was coming in short, panting gasps, and when
Schwartz, Malchanski, and the other driver, who ran to our assistance,
took hold of the heavy log, we were on the verge of physical collapse.
When we got back to the air-hole, the horses were still swimming
feebly, but they were fast becoming chilled and exhausted, and it