A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 233 



bread and salt fish to give the child. In his maudlin 

 way, HachenkofF was fond of her, and between his 

 drinking bouts he wept continually because he feared 

 that the child would die, and that it would be buried 

 under its mother's name and not under his own. 

 By and by a message came that he was awake and 

 sober, and Madame Antonoff sent word bidding him to 

 come and speak to her. But Vassilli Vassillievitch had 

 a guilty conscience, and presently he was seen slinking 

 away to hide himself in the tundra. However, Nill, to 

 whom his mistress' word was law, gave chase, and haled 

 the culprit back to the camp. Whereupon Madame 

 Antonoff gave the good-for-nothing creature a lecture, 

 which left him with nothing to say for himself, and sent 

 him back immediately to Och Marino under escort of 

 the grinning Nill. 



We decided to walk down the river to Och Marino 

 and spend the night there, returning on the morrow to 

 Swerifskye to pick up Sylkin and the boat. If the 

 weather did not improve, we should have to remain 

 where we were, and as we had brought only two days' 

 provisions with us, we should have to depend for food 

 upon the charity of the balagan people. 



Snowdrifts were still piled up along the western 

 shores of the Yenesei, for the mud-hills screened them 

 from the sun, and although the water drip-dripped 

 from their flanks, yet they never melted all the summer 

 through. 



Among these mud-hills, I stalked and shot a Siberian 

 herring-gull, and also procured a couple of turnstones, 

 the first that I had seen on the Yenesei. During this 



