Swords From the East (60 page)

Fedor watched for awhile; then, reassured, he went below to empty the vodka bottle that his companions had left unfinished.

The next day, clouds hid the sun and the wind ceased entirely. During the darkness the moving ice cakes had vanished, leaving a mirror of clear black water on all sides of the lugger. Except along the banks where a fringe of ice blurred the reflection of the pines, the channel of the upper Yenesei was clear.

"The last of the ice can't rightly be gone yet," pointed out Stolkei. "Here, you dog of a Finn, help me up with the anchor, for we had best be out of here while the channel is clear."

The bearded face of the skipper was bruised, and blood had dried in a gash under one eye. Lak had drawn a knife on him in the quarrel of the night before over the girl. The Finn's mouth was bruised and his shoulder stiff where Aina's spear had ripped the skin.

They worked at the rusted anchor chain by fits and starts. Over their shoulders they cast glances at the spot in the snow that was the hut of Ostak. Through his telescope, as they drifted down the river, Stolkei could see the fisherman busied about his skiff on the shore.

"You see he does not think of us," he pointed out to Lak. "I tell you I planted a few words in his ear. He thinks he is to blame for-for the girl. He will hold his tongue, I tell you."

Lak did not look at the skipper. Fedor, kicked out of a drunken slumber, remembered what he had seen in the night.

"Aye, chums," he grinned, "the wench is frozen solid by now under our keel. She went down like a plummet-splash, like that! The ice was gone when she jumped."

"A true word." Stolkei heartened himself. "And look-the ice is out of the bay. A good thing for us, because some dog of a Buriat would have found the spear and the blood stains, maybe. It's all wiped out, now; the girl's dead. Come now, Lak, you ain't afraid of a blind man who doesn't even think you killed his girl?"

Lak's thick lips twisted.

"Fedor-he did it. She got loose from him."

The thin Russian moved uneasily and spat.

"Well, wasn't it Papa Stolkei who spoke first and tried to buy her?"

With a laugh Stolkei turned to the tiller, ordering them to bend the sails.

"We'll be under way before the can spit in . The channel's clear. I've loaded the muskets-not that we'll need them. If Lak wants to dream of water spooks, let him, I say."

Still they made little progress that day for the sails flapped against the mast, and the rudder of patched-up wood-the lugger's rudder had been damaged by the ice-swung in its chains idly. When they dropped anchor that evening they were a bare two miles downstream, abreast the bay where the black square of Ostak's hut loomed, a few cables' lengths away.

Even the current of the river seemed to have lost its force. The pine tops rose immovably against the sunset, and there was not a whisper of wind anywhere.

All these things little Kam reported faithfully to Ostak. The blind fisherman knew well the meaning of the signs. Up the river the outgoing ice had jammed, holding back the floes behind it.

The water, rushing down from the freshets fed by melting snow, was heading up against the packed ice. During the hours of quiet on the lower river the ice was gathering above.

Soon, with the wind or a twist of the pent-up current, the jam would be broken and tons of ice, rushing behind a solid wall of water, would sweep down the breast of Father Yenesei. Not until then would the winter garment of Father Yenesei be thrown off, and the upper river be safe for vessels.

That was why the lugger was still the only craft to be seen, even by the sharp eyes of Kam. The skiffs of the fishermen, the sloops of the traders, all awaited the passing of the ice jam, drawn up on the banks, or anchored well into safe bays.

So near was the lugger that the creaking of the yards or rattle of the rudder chains could be heard on shore, mingled with a snatch of song or laugh as the men drank vodka before sleep.

Kam thought he recognized one of the songs. He remembered the words:

The keen ears of Ostak heard the song, where he worked with fat and tallow, greasing the bottom of his ramshackle skiff and the wooden oarlocks. He worked the harder, for the darkness was no hindrance to him, and his wasted sinews swelled strongly under the toil.

Lak only did not sleep on the lugger. He snarled at Stolkei's voice that sang the song. When the two others were snoring in the hold he paced the narrow space between them, listening to the night sounds on the water.

Once he thought he heard the dip of oars, but the sound did not come again. Again, when the creaking of the yards ceased, he fancied that another creaking went on, down by the water at the stern.

Lak listened for a long time and was sure of a tapping, a straining, and gnawing somewhere outside the ship. Then came a loud creak. A Finn is deeply superstitious, and Lak crossed himself before going on deck to look around.

But the lugger's deck was deserted. The gray sheet of water was undisturbed about the ship. Only the man's heavy footfall sounded. Uneasy at a curious murmur from the river, Lak went down to the hold again where his companions lay. So he did not see the dark shape of a skiff move out from under the shadow of the lugger's stem.

He was nodding, seated on his bunk, staring at a lantern, when the murmur about the vessel's sides became a ripple. The shadows in the hold moved up and down. The yards knocked against the mast.

In an instant Lak was up, head and shoulders out of the hatch. Wind struck his cheek. He could see the outlines of the banks under the gray lantern of dawn.

Lak jumped up and kicked Fedor. He grasped the shoulder of Stolkei.

"Wind," he yelled. "The river is rising!"

With a grunt Fedor turned over in his bunk. But Stolkei stumbled erect, and climbed on deck.

The two stared at the moving tops of the pines, and the ripples where the current eddied down the river. The eddies wavered back and forth curiously. Early daylight showed isolated cakes of ice wandering here and there.

"It is bad," said Lak. "There is something coming upon the river."

Stolkei nodded and the two fell to work at the anchor. Suddenly they looked at each other. Upstream, beyond the bend in the river there grew a murmur that rose to a roar.

"Ice! " yelled Stolkei. "An ice jam has broken." He glanced about swiftly. "We can make the bay here."

Lak was already at the sail ropes, and the skipper jumped to the tiller swearing thankfully because there was wind. A short run to larboard-

The lugger began to move down the river. Stolkei put over the helm. The vessel did not change its course. They were passing the bay.

Behind them a white line appeared around the bend. They could hear the crackling roar of grinding ice. Stolkei worked at the tiller frantically. But the lugger only turned slowly as it gathered speed. It was now drifting before the wind, stern first.

"You fool!" roared the Finn. "What are you doing?"

"She won't mind the helm. The rudder-"

Stolkei swung around to stare with distended eyes over the stern. Lak wrested the tiller from his grip. The two men struggled for it, snarling and maddened by fear. The movements of the tiller served in no way to check the course of the lugger downstream, faster each moment as the wall of water, surmounted by the ice field, drew nearer.

A segment of ice struck the quarter. The lugger was swinging violently, as the flood struck it. Lak had knocked Stolkei down, and when the white flood came over the stern the Russian was carried overside, struggling to hold his feet. Lak was torn from the tiller and swept against a mast.

He clung there, gripping the wood with his great arms. He saw the ice pack grinding against the sides of the ship. The foremast went down, and with it the yard above Lak. Enveloped by the sail, the Finn fought against it, only to feel himself carried off on a block of ice.

For a moment he clung to the edge of the cake, numbed. Then the circling block struck another, catching the body of the man in the impact; the arms of the Finn went up, and blood rushed from his mouth.

Out of the hatch the head of Fedor was stuck, and his screams reached the shore before the lugger, filling rapidly now, settled down under the breast of Father Yenesei.

As much of this as he could see Kam related to Ostak where the two stood on the hillside above the reach of the flood.

"Why did not the ship come into the bay, Uncle Ostak?" the boy asked. "Was it caught in a net from the sky?"

"Aye," said Ostak, "it was caught."

So Kam watched that night when the merry dancers came out and the flames rose into the northern sky. He noticed particularly that the purple lights were very bright and he fancied that the three lords from the ship must be dancing very hard to keep out the cold on their long journey without horses or dogs in the kanun-kotan.

When he went into the hut, he found Ostak had added another thing to the ornaments of the hut. There was a rudder, patched up with bits of wood, from a ship, standing by the spear and the walrus head. Kam played with it until he was too sleepy to play anymore.

It was not until years later, when Ostak had departed to the sky-world and Kam was a boy full-grown and master of the hut, that he thought to look at the marks on the rudder, the marks of a knife, where by great labor the rudder had been severed from the rudder post.

Foreword by Harold Lamb

"The Book of the Tiger" is four hundred years old. It was written by Babar, conqueror of India, the first of the dynasty known to us as the great Moghuls. The Book is his own story of his life's adventures.

From these original Turki manuscript and copies, two English men of letters, Dr. John Leyden and Mr. W. Erskine, made a remarkable translation a hundred years ago. In completing this translation-a work of years-all copies of the original manuscript were compared, with the help of a Persian scholar, and the result left no doubt of its accuracy.*

"The Book of the Tiger"-the memoirs of Babar-was held in veneration by the people of India during the Moghul era. It was acknowledged by European scholars to be a classic worthy to be placed beside the confessions of Rousseau, or Cellini; yet until now it has remained little known in America.