VII A MOVE TO THE WEST AND BERING SEA 125 



coast. It was roughly a distance of nine miles across the 

 narrowest part of the Peninsula at this spot. Early next 

 morning I left Burns's house, having thanked him for his 

 hospitality, and loaded myself with my two rifles, the tents, 

 and a small pack of provisions — in all a total of some 50 lbs. 

 weight. The two natives, Nicolai and Nikita, carried the 

 bidarki, and thus we turned our backs on the Pacific and 

 struck out for the Bering Sea. My only fear was that in 

 the proverbially rough waters of that sea we should be able 

 to make little, if any, progress in our sole craft, the tiny 

 bidarki. However, the old saying that " it is an ill wind 

 which blows no one any good " was about to be exemplified, 

 and shortly afterwards I struck one of those wonderful series 

 of lucky events which sometimes happen, and which com- 

 pletely changed the aspect of affairs. We had barely 

 travelled two miles along the trail before we came upon a 

 small and primitive kind of tent, beneath which I found a 

 man asleep. He heard us and woke up. In the course of 

 conversation I learnt that he was the owner of a schooner 

 which was lying in Herendeen Bay with a broken rudder, 

 having been disabled in a bad storm some; time previously. 

 He and the rest of the crew had left the vessel safely secured, 

 and he was now making his way across to Sand Point to try 

 to obtain materials, etc., to repair the damaged rudder. 



My story was soon told, and he remarked that he knew 

 something about the coast along which I wished to travel, 

 and thought it impossible for us to get very far with the 

 stores, etc., in our bidarki. Shortly after he said that at the 

 end of the trail which we followed he had a large sailing 

 dory moored, and that although he had never done such a 

 thing before, nevertheless, as times were bad, and he was 

 dead out of luck, he would lend me his dory and accompany 



