414 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



After we had crossed the way of death which Schungei had 

 followed, we reached the first goal, the Bodarata. There we had 

 the inestimable good fortune to find more tshums and reindeer. 

 Thus aided we made for the sea, but we were forced to turn without 

 setting foot on the shore. For before us lay not only a pathless 

 morass, but again a countless heap of reindeer carcasses; we were 

 once more on the path by which Schungei had fled homewards, and 

 our new acquaintance, the herdsman Zanda, would not dare to 

 cross it. 



For in his herd also death had been busy with his scythe; the 

 destroyer had visited his house, and yet more disastrously those 

 of his neighbours. The man who had been his companion on his 

 wanderings had eaten of an infected fat reindeer which he had 

 hastily killed, and he had paid for his rashness with his own life 

 and that of his family. Thrice had the herd Zanda shifted his 

 tshum, and thrice he had dug a grave among the corpses of the 

 reindeer. First, two children fell victims to the dread disease, then 

 the thoughtless man's servant, on the third day the man himself. 

 Another child was still ill, groaning in its agony, when we set out 

 on our journey to the sea; its cries were silenced when we returned 

 to the tshum, for the grave had received a fifth victim. And this 

 was not to be the last. 



One of our men, the Ostiak Hadt, a willing, cheerful fellow, 

 who had endeared himself to us, had been complaining since the 

 day before of torturing pains which became ever more severe. He 

 complained especially of an increasing sensation of cold. We had 

 placed him on one of the sledges when we reached the herdsman's 

 tshum, and thus we bore him when the tshum was shifted for 

 the fifth time. He lay at the fire moaning and whining in our 

 midst. From time to time he raised himself and bared his body to 

 the warmth of the fire. Similarly he pushed his numb feet against 

 the flames, and seemed to care not that they singed. At length we 

 fell asleep, perhaps he did also, but when we awoke next morning 

 his bed was empty. Outside, in front of the tshum, he sat quietly 

 leaning on a sledge, with his face to the sun, whose warmth he 

 sought. Hadt was dead. 



