The Great Alone (2 page)

“This island, did you kill all the sea otter there before you sailed? Were there any left?” He glared at the man, who drew back from the piercing gaze of those dark, deep-set eyes and the silent menace of the jagged white scar that ran from brow to beard.

“Yes. I told you they were all around the island.” The man snatched the pelt and hurriedly retied the bundle, then moved away to find someone else interested in hearing his tale of survival.

His hands were empty, but Luka could still feel the sensation of the soft, thick pelt beneath his fingers. There were more questions he wanted to ask, but he raised no objection when the man scurried from him. Bundles of the valuable pelts were piled in front of him, and voices babbled on all sides. Yet his attention was claimed by none of these. His eye was on the distant horizon, beyond the small arm of Avatcha Bay, his gaze narrowing in an attempt to see beyond it.

His was the blood of the promyshlenik, running fast with the urge to see what was over the next mountain. But for Luka Ivanovich Kharakov, there was no mountain before him. The sea hemmed him in. Yet somewhere across that gray, storm-tossed water lay the “great land” of endless mountains and rivers, a place of untold riches.

While he looked at that which he could not see, he was tugged by a deep longing—peculiarly Russian—an exalting kind of homesickness for a place he had yet to see. His forefathers had crossed the Siberian steppes and the Stanavoi Mountains and entered the Kamchatka Peninsula, pursuing the sable. The old hunting grounds were nearly exhausted, yet he stood on the brink of a new one. Distance was nothing to fear. Only time. He was twenty-five, his youth gone. The wealth he sought waited out there.

Screeching gulls wheeled overhead, buffeted by the strong winds that blew the mist from the sea against his face. Low clouds scudded inland. Still he stared at the spot where the dark gray sky melted into a dark gray sea.

That he was here, on this day, to see with his own eyes the evidence that there were indeed islands where the sea otter swarmed, was surely an omen. Yesterday he had nearly decided not to spend the night in Petropavlovsk, and instead to push on to the gathering place where he was to meet with the other members of this winter’s hunting artel. He had only intended to stop long enough to obtain the priest’s blessing for a successful hunt. He hadn’t bothered to do that the year before and his sable catch had been small.

It bothered Luka Ivanovich Kharakov not at all that his sudden religious urge had superstitious origins and a moderate degree of avarice. Just as it had not bothered him to go from praying at the small church at Petropavlovsk to drinking with some of the Cossacks at the garrison.

The return of the survivors from Vitus Bering’s shipwrecked crew prompted Luka to delay his departure from the village one more day and participate in the celebration. The
praznik
that was given was one of the best he’d ever attended. Yesterday, meat, vodka, and tobacco had seemed to be in scarce supply, yet they appeared in abundance at the festivity. Guzlas furnished music for dancing, while women and young girls from the native huts were plied with liquor and otherwise cajoled to partner the men.

During all the merrymaking, Luka managed to speak to various members of the ill-fated crew. All, to varying degrees, corroborated the story of the first. He learned all he could about the craggy, treeless islands that rose from the sea and arched across it like a gigantic boom, and the surrounding waters teeming with fur-bearing sea mammals.

That winter, he hunted the sable in the Siberian steppes and, on the odd clear days, observed the three mock suns that formed an arc over the real one. He had time to reflect on the stories and visualize in his mind the multitude of pelts that had been stacked on that wharf. The faraway land called to him. During his young years, he had wandered the length and breadth of Kamchatka, and now his soul ached for the land beyond the horizon. He would go there, he vowed. It was his destiny. The fur wealth that had eluded him here in Kamchatka, he would find in those islands off America.

PART ONE

The Aleutians

CHAPTER I

September 1745

Bellied by the wind, the square sails of softened reindeer hides pulled at the leather straps that tied them to the spars of the double-masted vessel. Little water seeped through the moss-caulked cracks of the green-timbered craft as the bow nosed first toward the sky, then dipped toward the bottom of a wave trough. Modeled after a boat designed for the river trade on the Volga, the flatboat had almost no keel, which allowed it to be easily beached yet remain remarkably stable in the water. Because of the chronic shortage of iron, its green-timbered planks were lashed—or “sewn”—together with leather thongs, giving rise to its name
shitik
from the Russian verb
shi-it
which means “to sew.”

In any compass direction all that could be seen from the crowded deck of the river vessel was the sullen Bering Sea heaving and rising. Luka Ivanovich Kharakov stood on the crowded deck, his feet slightly spread against the roll of the shitik, watching the flat horizon to the southeast.

He was unconcerned that the shitik had never been intended for ocean waters. Two years before, a similar vessel commanded by a Cossack sergeant from a Kamchatka garrison had set out on an expedition to the Komandorskie island group, where Bering had died. It had returned safely last summer with a rich cargo of furs, proving to any doubters the seaworthiness of the craft. Luka had not been among the skeptics. He had been refused the chance to join the company of men who sailed aboard the shitik
Kapiton,
rejected in favor of the surviving sailors from Bering’s crew.

Nor did it bother him that this shitik had been constructed by men with no knowledge of shipbuilding. He had been one of them, whose experience was limited to the building of smaller boats to navigate Siberian rivers or traverse the lakes. The only one among them who could claim an acquaintance with the sea was the shitik’s navigator and commander. A silversmith by trade, Mikhail Nevodchikov had come to Siberia in search of fortune. At Kamchatka, it was discovered he had no passport and he was pressed into government service as a crew member aboard Bering’s ship, the
Sv Petr.
Despite the man’s dubious credentials, it was claimed by some that Nevodchikov discovered the near islands of America, the group Bering had called the Delusive Islands.

It was for these the shitik steered its southeasterly course. Six days before, the boat had sailed from the mouth of the Kamchatka River and bypassed the Komandorskie Islands, where the garrison sergeant had taken a second expedition. Favoring winds had steadily pushed the vessel toward their destination, the virgin hunting grounds they wouldn’t have to share with another hunting party.

With timbers groaning, the shitik climbed another swell. After six days at sea, the craft’s shuddering moans had become a companionable sound, not a cause for alarm. Many times during those first days, Luka had expected the watery canyons between the ocean swells to close and swallow the sailing vessel, but each time the boat had scaled the wall of a wave, then plunged sickeningly into the next deep valley and survived. At the beginning of the voyage, he had been plagued by a mild queasy feeling, but the heaving motion no longer bothered him.

The stomachs of some members of the hunting party were not so strong. The stench of seasickness mingled with the fetid odor of unwashed bodies and tainted the wind. Near him, someone groaned at the sudden lurch of the shitik into the next trough. Luka glanced indifferently at the man half sprawled on the deck and half propped against the rail. The man held his stomach with limp arms while his head lolled to the side, his eyes shut and his mouth sagging open, vomit drying on his beard and clothes.

Disinterestedly, Luka watched the Cossack Vladimir Shekhurdin move from one ailing man to another, wetting lips with a moist cloth and squeezing drops of water into parched mouths. Luka looked over his comrades on deck. The hunting party was composed of a rough breed of men, some fifty in number, promyshleniki by trade, but their backgrounds were varied. Some were criminals—thieves, tax evaders, or murderers. Others were exiles, others serfs fleeing the tyranny of their masters. And some were like himself, the sons of promyshleniki, possessed by a lust to roam. Their assorted pasts mattered little to him. His own life had its shadows, its brutality and violence.

His glance fell on the distinctive features of a Kamchadal—the thickly lidded eyes and the broad, heavy facial bones of the Mongol race. He touched a hand to the scar on his face, feeling the coldness of hatred course through him for this tribal cousin of the Chukchi who had butchered his father and permanently disfigured him. A handful of Kamchadals were included in the hunting expedition, baptized by the church and thus the equal of any Muscovite. But not to Luka—never to Luka.

Jostled from behind, Luka swung testily around, then controlled the impulse to retaliate for the accidental shoving as Yakov Petrovich Chuprov regained his balance on the heaving deck. He held the steady gaze of the man’s wise eyes for an instant, then curtly nodded to him. Chuprov’s reputation as a hunter was well known to him, and Luka chose not to tangle with this sandy-bearded man who might be elected to lead the hunt. Only moments ago he’d seen Chuprov talking with the navigator.

“How long before we reach the islands? Did Nevodchikov say?” Luka asked. Since passing the Komandorskie Islands, they’d seen no land, only slate-gray sea and sky with occasional glimpses of the sun splitting through the clouds.

“He thinks it will be soon.” A seagull swooped low across the shitik’s bow. “According to him, the seabirds are a sign we’re near land.”

Luka noticed the increased number of birds in the air, but he recognized few of them. He was versed in land animals rather than the creatures of the sky and sea. The prospect of finally seeing the land that had haunted him these past years filled him with hard satisfaction. “Do you believe Nevodchikov?”

“The winds have been steady and the weather fair.” The promyshlenik shrugged. “He’s been here before. I have not.”

From the starboard side of the deck, one of the seasick Kamchadal natives called for water. The tall, erect figure of the Cossack Shekhurdin made its way across the crowded deck. Luka gazed with contempt at the Cossack’s proud, lean face with its neatly trimmed beard.

“Are you going to waste our water on him, Vladimir Andreivich?” Luka challenged, addressing him by two names as was the Russian custom. The first was his own, the second his father’s, Vladimir son of Andrei.

“The man is thirsty.” Shekhurdin continued, undeterred.

But his way was quickly blocked by a second promyshlenik, a big, heavily muscled man. “You might as well heave it over the side as to give it to him. That’s where it’s going to end up anyway.” Belyaev’s grin revealed the wide gap that separated his front teeth, giving him a deceptively stupid look, but his black eyes were small and sly. Shekhurdin attempted to go around him, but Belyaev wouldn’t let him pass. “I say he doesn’t get any water.”

“I recall seeing you heave your guts over the side once or twice.” The Cossack wasn’t intimidated by the promyshlenik.

“But I fetched my own water when I was thirsty.” Belyaev continued to grin, the shaggy black beard and mustache around his mouth drawing attention to the dark space between his teeth. “If that Kamchadal can’t do for himself, throw him overboard. It will just make our share of the skins that much bigger.”

Luka agreed. All the men on the expedition had been engaged on a share basis. Half the proceeds of the hunt belonged to the two merchants who had financed the voyage, and the other half would be divided among the crew, one share to each man, with the exception of the navigator, who received three, the
peredovchik
—leader—two, and one for the church. If the hunt was successful, a promyshlenik’s share could amount to a small fortune, enough to buy a farm or a business—or stay drunk on vodka for a year.

“Look!” someone shouted. “What’s that black shape on the horizon?”

The confrontation on deck suddenly lost its importance as Luka swung around to scan the horizon that was sometimes above and sometimes below the plunging and rearing prow of the shitik. A man scurried up the rawhide rigging onto a spar of the square mainsail. Everyone tensely waited for some word to sound above the groaning timbers of the heaving boat.

“Do you see anything?” Luka shouldered his way to the railing near the bow.

Interminable seconds passed before an outflung arm pointed in the direction of the starboard bow. “Land!”

Everyone crowded closer to the right side of the deck. A minute later a cheer went up at the sight of a mountainous headland thrusting out of the sea. Even the weakest of the seasick men managed to find enough strength to haul himself up to the rail and stare at the blessed vision of land.

Slowly and steadily, the simple sailcraft approached the island. Luka felt a lift of excitement, the kind that always accompanied the coming into a new territory, a keening of the senses and sharpening of the wits. They were close enough to hear the breakers crashing onto the rocky shore at the island’s base.

As they skirted the north side of the island, Luka studied the treeless terrain, green with thick vegetation. Even the rocks wore a hairy growth of grasses. Inland, jagged mountains stood in tortuous ridges, indicating the island’s volcanic origins. They loomed forbiddingly, void of plant life, while below a lush valley beckoned, the wind rippling the tall stalks of thick rye grass into waves.