Table Of ContentJANET DAILEY
THE GREAT ALONE
Copyright © 1986 by Janbill, Ltd.
Introduction
While America was being settled by westward Expansion, Russia was
expanding its territory by moving east. Throughout its early history, the one
commodity Russia had in abundance to trade to both Europe and China was furs
—sable, ermine, fox, bear, and other valuable pelts. Everything was computed in
furs; taxes, salaries, penalties, and rewards were paid in furs.
It was the promyshlenik—or promyshleniki in the plural—a breed of coureurs
des bois comparable to American mountain men, who exploited this natural
resource. While serfdom prevailed in the rest of the country, forcing people to
work the land for the nobles, these men were free to go where they pleased,
traveling in bands, electing their own leaders, and sharing the profits from a
season’s hunt among themselves and the merchants financing the expeditions.
When they had hunted out a fur grounds, they moved to a new area—ultimately
confronting the vast wilderness of furrich Siberia.
The promyshleniki scouted, and the Cossacks followed to claim. A warlike
people from the steppes above the Black Sea, they were a social rather than an
ethnic class who robbed as frequently as they traded, and prized their freedom
highly. They had reached the Pacific in the 17th century and heard rumors of a
“great land” across the waters to the east. At the same time, European scientists
were speculating that Asia and America were connected at some northern point.
It was Peter the Great who ordered the first expedition to explore the
uncharted North Pacific and Arctic Oceans and to ascertain whether the two
continents were joined. In July of 1728, Vitus Bering, a Dane serving in the
Russian navy, sailed the newly built packet boat St. Gabriel from the shipyard
he’d constructed near the mouth of the Kamchatka River onto the sea that would
bear his name. Two short months later he returned, satisfied that no land mass
connected Asia and America, but bringing no proof.
A larger, more comprehensive exploration was ordered by Empress Elizabeth,
an expedition so massive it required eight years to transport all the men,
equipment, and supplies across Siberia and to construct two square-riggers, the
St. Peter, commanded again by Vitus Bering, and the St. Paul, commanded by a
Russian named Alexei Chirikov. In June of 1741, the two ships set sail from
Avatcha Bay on the Kamchatka Peninsula. After two weeks of sailing, the St.
Peter and St. Paul became separated in the rain and fog.
It is believed the crew of the St. Paul saw what is now known as the Prince of
Wales Island in extreme southern Alaska. They turned north and followed the
broken shoreline with its labyrinth of channels, bays, and inlets surrounding the
large and small islands of the Alexander Archipelago. Two days after the first
sighting of land, they anchored at the entrance of a great bay, believed to be
Sitka harbor. Chirikov ordered one of the ship’s two longboats to be put over the
side and sent his mate and ten men to explore the entrance. The boat was never
seen again. Several days passed before Chirikov sent his boatswain and six men
in the second longboat to look for the first. It, too, disappeared. The St. Paul
remained in the general area for several days, but there were no more boats, and
the drinking water was running low. Chirikov consulted with his officers, and it
was decided to return to Kamchatka with all possible haste.
The St. Paul reached Petropavlovsk, its point of origin, in October of 1741 and
the returning sailors told of the abundant wildlife they had seen—the swarms of
sea otter, seals, and sea lions along the rocky coasts.
The sister ship, the St. Peter, had taken a northeasterly course after losing sight
of the St. Paul. Its crew also saw land—the towering peaks of Alaska’s St. Elias
range.
During the return voyage to Kamchatka, the now scurvy-ridden crew had to
battle fog and rain, gale-force winds, and a violent storm which blew the ship
hundreds of miles into the Pacific. It wasn’t until the first of November that they
finally encountered a land mass, which turned out to be an island, one of the
Commodore group off the Siberian coast of Kamchatka. Bering, the captain,
died and was buried on the island that took his name. Other members of the crew
survived, recovered their strength and built a boat from the remains of their ship,
which had been wrecked when they landed. In August of 1742, forty-six of the
original seventy-seven-member crew sailed into Petropavlovsk with a cargo of
valuable furs obtained from the island.
Here was proof for the promyshleniki and the Cossacks that the land to the east
was rich in furs. The sea otter that ventured so rarely onto the Siberian coastline
existed elsewhere in great numbers. Undaunted by distance—after all, they had
already covered some five thousand miles—they were drawn by this far-off land.
The longing to see what lay beyond those waters was strong, a craving to
conquer this new land and claim it, too, for the Tsar. Russia already stretched
across Europe and Asia. Why not America as well?
By 1742, England had a dozen colonies along the Atlantic seaboard of North
America; France had claimed the territory of the Mississippi River from its
headwaters to its mouth; Spain had conquered Mexico and the California coast.
Russia looked to take her share of the rich North American continent.
PROLOGUE
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski, Siberia August 1742
Muffled shouts from outside roused Luka Ivanovich Kharakov from his
slumber. He came out of the crude bunk reaching for the musket he’d laid beside
it the night before. Nerves twitched along the jagged scar that half closed his left
eye and scored his cheekbone before it disappeared into a heavy beard. Now
fully awake and alert, he paused to determine the direction of attack, then caught
the tenor of the commotion outside, the lack of alarm in it. Simultaneously it
registered that he was inside the stockaded walls of the ostrog at Petropavlovsk,
not in some isolated winter hut in the wilds of Siberia.
As the twitching near his eye eased, Luka felt the heavy pounding in his head
take over, the result of a night spent drinking raka. The sounds of excited cries
and barking dogs continued outside. He slipped the hide-trimmed cloth mantle
over his head but didn’t bother to girdle the open sides shut with his belt. He
pulled a homespun hood over his shaggy hair, then went outside to investigate.
A dreary misting rain fell from the leaden clouds hanging over the August
green hills surrounding Petropavlovsk. Mindless of the miserable weather, the
inhabitants of the fortress were hurrying toward the harborfront located on a
quiet inlet of Avatcha Bay.
Luka followed them. Ships came painfully seldom to this southeasternmost tip
of the Romanov Empire of Russia, and any appearance of one was an event.
Only weeks ago, Luka had been told, Chirikov had sailed from this very port
in the Sv Pavel, bound for Okhotsk. The Cossacks stationed at the ostrog had
related to him the stories that the Sv Pavel crew had told them of their voyage to
northern coasts of the American continent, confirming the native rumors of a
bolshaia zemlia—a great land—beyond the dark waters, a voyage from which
their sister ship the Sv Petr had never returned. Perhaps the wretched, often
stormy weather of these seas had forced the Sv Pavel to turn back.
Luka hoped so. He wanted to learn more about the multitude of islands where
they claimed the sea otter, which were so rarely seen on the Kamchatka coast,
abounded in vast numbers.
A promyshlenik—fur hunter—he knew the value of skins, especially the rare
sea otter. Its pelt would fetch ninety rubles—more, it was claimed—on the China
frontier.
As he neared the wharf, Luka saw no ship at anchor in the bay, only a crudely
built craft no more than thirty-six feet in length tied up to the dock. Screeching
seagulls wheeled overhead, adding chorus to the turmoil attending the arrival of
the strange vessel. Everywhere, people were embracing wild-looking men
dressed in skins.
He recognized a Cossack who was hurrying back to the ostrog as one he’d
drunk with the night before and stopped him. “What is all this excitement? Who
are these men?”
“The Sv Petr! They did not die!”
Luka stared at the ragged bunch of men, some forty in number, many of them
with toothless grins and all of them with long, straggly beards, and dressed in
animal skins. The ship had not been lost at sea with all hands aboard as everyone
had believed, Luka realized. Some had lived to tell the tale—the tale of the great
land that Luka wanted most to hear. He moved into their midst, catching
snatches of conversation while he stared at their fur garments, recognizing the
pelts of sea otter, fox, and seal.
“Our cables broke and the ship was thrown onto the rocks …”
“… thought we had reached Kamchatka …”
“No. Bering is dead. Lagunov, too. We …”
“It turned out to be an island …”
Stopping, Luka turned toward the man who had just spoken. Half of his teeth
were gone and the rest were blackened from scurvy. But Luka observed the fox-
skin garment the man wore, not the stench of his body.
“Where is this island?” Luka wanted to know.
“East of here. I don’t know how far,” the man responded, eager to talk of the
misadventure now that it was over. “We sailed ten days ago, but our boat began
leaking only three days out. We had to throw most of our lead and ammunition
overboard to keep from taking more water. It’s a miracle we got here at all.”
Quickly he crossed himself, the gesture from right to left in the Russian
Orthodox fashion. “We built the boat ourselves from the wreckage of the Sv
Petr. All the ship’s carpenters had died and—”
Luka Ivanovich Kharakov was a promyshlenik, not a sailor; his interest
centered on the fur the man wore and where it had come from, not how the man
got here. “There were fox on this island?”
“Everywhere.” His unpleasant grimace exposed toothless gums on top. “When
we first went ashore on the island, the Arctic fox was the only animal we saw.
Bold they were, too,” he declared and cursed them roundly. “When somebody
died, we didn’t have a chance to get him buried before the foxes were there
tearing away at his corpse. It was nearly impossible to drive them away, and we
couldn’t spare the powder to shoot them. All of us were weak. Only a few had
the strength to hunt in the beginning.”
“What about the sea otter?” Luka indicated one of the other survivors clad in a
long garment made of sea otter pelts sewn together. “Were there many of them,
too?”
“The waters around the island were filled with them.” The man smiled
triumphantly, then caught Luka by the arm with taloned fingers and led him to
the wharfside. “Look.”
Bundles of furs sat on the ground, the stacks growing as more were unloaded
from the hold of the boat. Amidst the bales of fox and seal skins, Luka
recognized the dark, glossy pelts of the sea otter and knelt beside one of the
bundles. With a knife, he cut the rawhide strings that tied them together and the
skins tumbled loose.
He picked up one and ran his hand over the nearly black fur, watching the
iridescent shimmer the action created. He dug his fingers into the soft, thick hair,
burying them nearly an inch in depth before touching the hide. And the size of
the pelt—five feet long and two feet wide—almost three times the size of a sable
skin. It was a prime fur—worth its weight in gold. It was “soft gold.” All around
him were more bales, containing forty skins to a bale.
Once, two years ago, he had killed ten sea otter trapped on a massive ice floe
that had ground into the Kamchatka coast. Ten pelts, and Luka had thought
himself most fortunate. Now he looked on these hundreds with a reverent greed.
“… maybe nine hundred pelts. And that’s not counting the skins of the blue
fox and fur seals.”
Luka caught the last half of the man’s boast. The muscles in his throat
constricted with frustration and half-formed resentment. He was the hunter.
What were these sailors doing with a fortune in furs? Every winter he went out
into the wilds to trap sable and came back with fewer and fewer, barely making a
living while risking his life in the brutal Siberian cold among uncivilized tribes
of hostile natives, like the Chukchi, who had given him this scar he carried on
his face.
“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.
