A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 291 



tried to return on the previous evening, but the motor- 

 engine broke down and obliged them to take to their 

 oars. They rowed until midnight, and then, being 

 unable to make any headway against the stream, they 

 had put ashore again. For eight hours they lay in a 

 hollow in the tundra, with nothing to cover them from 

 the snow, and nothing to eat but a willow-grouse, which 

 they plucked and cooked as well as they could over a 

 fire of driftwood. Next morning, they set out again, 

 and by dint of rowing for eight or ten hours, they 

 reached the ship at last, completely worn out, but other- 

 wise none the worse for what might have proved a very 

 dangerous predicament. 



On 11th September, the Lena came up the river and 

 stopped for an hour at Nosonovsky. Her decks were 

 crowded with passengers, among whom, although we 

 could not distinguish her, was doubtless Nura 

 Antonoff. The Lena was the last of the southward- 

 bound steamers, and when she hooted thrice and steamed 

 away, those melancholy coasts seemed the sadder for 

 her going. She took off the remaining fisher-folk, and 

 a couple of days later the natives also packed up their 

 chooms and went — " daleho, into the tundra." It was 

 indeed time to flit, for the weather grew colder day by 

 day, and the mainland was already sugared over with 

 snow. The crew, who were unprepared for an arctic 

 climate, shivered in the bitter wind, and most of them 

 swore openly that they would never come to Siberia 

 again — for which decision, looking at the bleak shores 

 of the island, and bleaker waves on the river, it was 

 impossible to blame them. 



