A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 293 



Golchika, and such an event as the passing of the 

 English steamers would certainly set the whole place in 

 a flutter. It was curious thus to see from a distance a 

 place that we knew so well. In some sort, it gave one 

 the same sensation that the dead may be imagined to 

 feel if they are able to revisit scenes they knew in life. 

 On the other side of the river, we saw the balagans of 

 Swerifskye, all deserted now, and grey with snow. An 

 hour later, and we came abreast of Och Marino, where 

 the inhabitants came out to point at the ships as they 

 steamed past. There was Vassilli Vassillievitch, and 

 beside him the green apron of the girl, in front of the 

 dark sakooys of the natives. My last impression of 

 Siberia was of that terrible little house, surrounded on 

 three sides by grey water and on the fourth by the 

 snowy tundra. Its windows stared at us like blank, un- 

 seeing eyes as we rushed past it into life — into danger, 

 into misery, into battle of all we knew — but still into 

 life. We left it astern as if it had been a house of 

 the dead. Was Vassilli Vassillievitch still drinking — 

 drinking — smoking — smoking himself to death ? Was 

 the baby, with its dreadful eyes, still wailing day and 

 night ? And the girl — we did not like to think of her, 

 and wondered rather what the winter would bring to 

 the rest of our Siberian acquaintance. It was melancholy 

 to think that w^e might never see so many of them, 

 quaint or kindly as the case might be, again. We had 

 turned the page of the Yenesei, and were now going to 

 write a new one across the Arctic Ocean. 



All that day we steamed northwards beside the low, 

 bleak shore. Even Och Marino is not the uttermost 



