Steller looks on as two officers plot the ship’s course on a map of the world and place them in the wrong ocean, locating the ship in the Atlantic instead of the Pacific, but nobody corrects their mistake.
Then an animal rises to the surface, and he remembers why he agreed to this bothersome journey in the first place. The creature is approximately two cubits long. Its hide is covered in red fur and its head recalls that of a dog. It has alert, pointed ears and bulging eyes, long dangling whiskers that resemble the learned men of the Orient, but its behaviour is like that of a boisterous child. It frolics, dives underwater then returns to the surface with a tuft of seagrass in its mouth, tosses the grass into the air and snatches it again between its teeth. The crew gather to watch, and they clap their hands at the creature, but Steller summons the best sniper on the ship, a Cossack by the name of Toma Lepekhin, and instructs him to shoot the animal. Lepekhin takes a shot, but the bullet misses the heart, it pierces the skin but does not take the creature’s life. It dives back into the depths, but this time it does not return to the surface.
Steller is well acquainted with all the studies and travelogues, the catalogues of known animals stored in university libraries, but this animal he does not know. Weeks of nothing but seagulls and guillemots, and he lets the first interesting creature they encounter slip between his fingers. This simply won’t do, and he thinks his way through all the most bizarre shelves in all the cabinets of curiosity until, lying in his berth that evening, he finally hits upon what it is. He had to look far back in history, but there it is,Historia Animalium, Gessner’s great bestiary, and the Danish Sea Ape,Simia marina Danica, with its snakelike tail, its four wing-like fins, knobbly head and peculiar, playful character, everything fits, and now he can sleep, his mind content. His knowledge has not failed him; he is still able to classify the world.
In Gessner’s bestiary, the real and the imagined come together: tigers, dogs and rhinoceroses frolic alongside unicorns and satyrs. The sea ape belongs to the latter group. It is a creature unknown to science, a so-calledanimal paradoxum. The sea ape never became as infamous as the yeti or the scintillating snake residing in Loch Ness, but Steller’s observation does not go unnoticed, and future generations still pore over his words. It has been suggested that the creature Steller encountered, with its fins and other features, was in fact a deformed fur seal, but this is hard to believe. Steller was well acquainted with seals, and by his own account he was able to observe the animal long enough that it would have been curious indeed had he been unable to correctly identify a species with which he was so familiar. It has also been suggested that the sea ape was not an animal at all but a caricature of none other than Captain Commander Vitus Bering, a frustrated researcher’s mischief at the expense of his own captain, but if it were merely a joke, why did Steller not make it more explicit? Why depict the creature’s fins and tail if it were not in fact an animal at all but a jibe at a living person? Did Steller see an animal we know by another name? Or did he encounter a species that fell into extinction before its body could be preserved in solvent and transported back to the academies of the world for identification? Or didthe weary naturalist simply sketch the creature in his diary for his own amusement, to beguile those who came after him? We shall never know.
Every morning the navigator drops the plumb into the water, and every morning the line remains taut. The weight does not reach the seabed but cuts through 180 feet of black water; there is no ridge rising out of the sea into an inviting, verdant land in front of them. The crew knew to prepare themselves for a long journey, but the north-west coast of America remains further away than any of them had predicted. They have been sailing for six weeks, their freshwater reserves are beginning to dwindle, and the officers come to a decision: if they do not reach land within the next two weeks, the expedition will be abandoned. On the twentieth day of July, theSt Peterturns and heads home.
The Cossack Toma Lepekhin knocks on the door. Steller is sitting in his cabin writing up his notes, and upon seeing the Cossack he smiles and offers him some tea, but Lepekhin declines. Word is spreading on deck: the lookout believes he has spotted land. This is as yet unconfirmed, the horizon is shrouded in mist, it might be nothing but a rain front in the distance, but the lookout thinks he has seen a dark shadow in the sea, and with that Steller forgets all about the tea. They hurry up on deck and train their eyes on the horizon, an unbearable wait, the waves heave up and down, then the lookout shouts,yells so loudly that he is startled at his own voice:Terra firma! Terra firma!
The officers are enjoying dinner. The captain is not eating with them. He has been feeling tired and prefers to eat alone in his cabin, so Khitrov, the fleet master, is hosting the men. When Steller enters the room, their conversation dries up. The naturalist will not take no for an answer but continues raving about the ocean currents and pieces of seaweed to anyone who will listen to him, and he does not fall silent though he knows that the officers do not share his assessment of the situation. Khitrov has begun to suspect that Steller is adapting the laws of nature and the ocean currents at will simply in order to prove his superiors wrong, and now he has the nerve to interrupt their meal, he neither greets them nor deigns to remove his cap in their presence but gabbles at them, pleading with them to change course, until Khitrov informs him that he will check this observation himself once he has eaten. During the main course, rain starts to fall from the heavens. After the punch, their visibility is further impaired, and they must wait for a clearer day as the fleet master will not believe it before he sees it with his own eyes, no, and certainly not when the wrong man is trying to twist his arm.
The rain abates and the rising sun reveals the islands’ black shadows. Bering congratulates Khitrov, though in truth he could almost weep. He sees the men’s childish glee, the way they laugh and celebrate without sparing a thought for how far this new landis from any civilisation, or for all the dangers and delays that lie in wait for them as they chart this new coastline. They do not know the winds in this sea, winds that for all they know might blow them eastwards and prevent them from ever returning home. What a cruel twist of fate. They have already sailed far enough that no-one in St Petersburg would berate them; they could have returned home and proved that the journey is quite simply impossible. Four days more and they would have turned back, but now, to his great chagrin, they have discovered America.
On St Elias’ Day, theSt Peterlowers anchor off the coast of this green island. For two days they edge closer to the shore. Progress is slow, as the coastal waters are dotted with rocks and sandbanks, but the mood is buoyant. Weeks of nothing but the vast expanse of the sea, and suddenly an unknown land appears in front of them, a scintillating row of wooded islands and, beyond them, an alien shore. The world expands before their very eyes, they fill their glasses and their maps, and Khotyaintsov the underskipper adds ink to the places where until now there was nothing.
They name the island Cape St Elias, but Steller objects. The word “cape” denotes a strip of land stretching out from the coastline, and an island cannot be a cape, but the officers tell him to keep his mouth shut, and this name is duly added to the map.
The captain commander does not go ashore. His head is aching, he needs to remain on the ship and rest, so the fleet masterassumes leadership of the expedition. He selects the men who will go ashore, but there is no room for the naturalist in his boat. Steller asks Khitrov to explain how he can possibly examine the island’s terrain, the plants sprouting from the soil and the animals walking on its surface from the deck of the ship. Of course, he is excellent at his work, but even for his considerable skills this is one challenge too many. Until now, he has accepted the officers’ disdain without complaint, but he will not agree to this; he cannot agree to this. He joined this expedition in order to serve the Tzarina, the Academy, in the service of science no less, and now the fleet master is preventing him from doing his work. This simply will not do, he shall report the matter to St Petersburg, to the Academy, to the Tzarina herself! Bering is summoned on deck – why are they bothering me with these childish disputes? Let the naturalist go ashore with the dinghy sent to replenish the ship’s freshwater supplies. Steller clambers into the dinghy. The trumpeter sends him off with a mocking fanfare, and Khitrov bows to Steller from the prow of his boat and laughs.
Steller is allowed to take one assistant with him, and he chooses Toma Lepekhin. The Cossack tries his best to calm the doctor, who looks so angry he could kill a man, but as they approach the shore, Steller forgets all his woes. He jumps out of the dinghy and almost trips and falls into the waves, his boots touch solid ground, but his head is still spinning, and he is forced to grip the side of the vessel to stay upright. How intriguing – he knows that seasickness can be alleviated with a tea steeped frombishopwort, but he wants to know what causes the phenomenon in the first place, that and why his body can remember the movements of the sea though the ground beneath his feet is solid. The seamen begin rolling water barrels ashore, Steller steels himself and strides off towards the edge of the forest, muttering the names of birds and trees under his breath. Lepekhin hurries after him. They have come ashore on a strange island in a strange continent, they have no notion of what beasts and souls might be concealed in these forests, and he decides to keep his rifle at the ready.
Steller’s foul disposition has vanished. A short walk around the vicinity and he has already encountered several new species, the Cossack has shot some birds for him, and he has found evidence of human settlement, a path leading to the mouth of what might once have been a root cellar. Inside he found carefully preserved berries, fish, and sundry supplies, and he takes with him an arrow, a flintstone and a strap braided from seagrass. He presents these items to the sailors, and they search their belongings, rummage through their pockets and find pieces of green glass, a knife, a string of pearls and two pipes, which Steller leaves in place of the items he has taken, then he asks for more men to row ashore. He needs a draughtsman, assistants to string up a net for the birds, scouts to search for the island’s inhabitants, but the dinghy brings him a brusque reply instead. The barrels have been refilled, and if Steller does not return to the ship immediately, he will be left on the shore. He has no option but to comply, but that evening he writes a bitter entryin his diary: it seems we have undertaken this journey merely to carry water from America back to Asia.
Bering, however, has no interest in the scruffy birds or the natives’ trinkets. No, they shall begin their return journey that same evening. The crew shall store as much water in the cargo as will be needed for their journey home, a full six weeks at sea, and with that they hoist the sails, and Steller’s worst fears are realised. They try to sail out towards the open sea, but a stubborn wind keeps pushing them off course. Weeks of nothing but the empty sea, and now they cannot leave land behind them; they have reached the Catherine Archipelago and a merciless wind keeps pushing them back towards the row of two hundred volcanic islands.
Steller argues his case, but Bering is adamant. The expedition will not go ashore on these islands, and neither will the ship stop to chart or examine them. Steller can no longer claim that they are preventing him from doing his work, and he will have to make do with the birds and grasses he has collected from Cape St Elias. Their mission is complete, they have located the American coastline, and now they can return home. For twenty years, Bering has watched his colleagues surpass him, he has had nightmares about the expedition that claimed the lives of five of his children. He will not wait any longer: he will return to St Petersburg and leave his detractors red-faced.
Steller slits open the blue jay’s chest, taking pains not to damage its plumage, removes its inner organs, and casts them over therail and into the water. He watches as the seabirds gobble up everything he throws them and wonders whether the gulls realise they are eating one of their own kind or whether they gulp down their prey unaware that this is an act of cannibalism.
He peels off the skin, removes the rest of the innards, then drops the flayed body into a vat of water, and the process of decomposition begins. Every morning, he changes the water and removes small pieces of flesh loosened from the bones, until all that is left are the bones. Reconstructing a bird’s skeleton requires dexterity, precision and patience, but on this expedition he has no shortage of time – what a laughable scientist he is, examining the new world from his cabin, where all he can do is imagine the contents of these islands. He brushes the skin with preserving solution. Some scientists preserve birds by submerging them in fluid, locking them in barrels, drowned in alcohol, but this method quickly causes the feathers to lose their lustre: blackcurrant-blue, deer-brown, chantarelle-yellow and heather-red fade into a single soggy colour, and all too often the collector opens up the barrel only to discover that the alcohol has evaporated and all that remains of the birds is a foul-smelling sludge. By using glass vessels, one can observe the birds’ state, but glass is always at risk of smashing. At the university, his teachers had suggested using spices, they filled the birds’ stomachs with alum, ginger, pepper, myrrh and cinnamon. The smell of these collections recalled the birds’ exotic origins, but despite their expensive innards, they too soon succumbed to fleas and their colour lost its brilliance.Steller believes neither in alcohol nor spices. Once long ago he came across a trusted recipe: five ounces of camphor, two pounds of arsenic, two pounds of soap, twelve ounces of potash, four ounces of quicklime, and the decomposition process stops altogether; this tincture he spreads on the skins, and with that the bird is beyond the reach of death.
He has no eyes. He will have to order some from St Petersburg, where the master glassblower will fill their eye sockets with small pearls, each complete with a tiny round oculus.
He attaches labels to their stiff legs, gives names to those that lack one, and arranges the birds in neat rows. The seamen are horrified at his collection. Blind birds, their eye sockets gaping and empty, but Steller simply laughs – these are nothing but lifeless, hollow skins. He does not tell them that as darkness descends he too hears the flapping, the fluttering of dead birds on his shelves. It must be this ship, causing an incessant superstition to spread from one man to the next like a plague.
A storm is coming in. They can sense it, there is a heaviness in the air, and rolling clouds begin to gather along the horizon like a great reef. They decide to guide the ship towards the shore of a nearby island and anchor theSt Peterin a secluded cove. The crew takes advantage of the stop, sends a dinghy ashore to exchange stale drinking water for fresh, and the captain relents before an argument can get underway. Steller is allowed to accompany the water-bearers, and he examines the shoreline,the creatures living in its sands. At the edge of a small woodland, he finds a spring, a deep pool with clear water, where he washes his face and drinks. After weeks of stuffy water, stagnant in its barrels, this tastes more magnificent than any wine or mead, and he drinks his fill, hurries back to the water-bearers and tells them he has discovered the best water on earth. But the seamen have already filled the barrels, lowered them into a rippling rockpool near where they came ashore and let them bubble until they are full.
Steller is horrified. Can’t you see? The surface of the pool is rising and falling with the waves! That means the two are connected somehow, that somewhere at the bottom the seawater and the rainwater mix together. He orders them to light a fire, he takes a pot and fills it with water from the pool, boils the water in the pot and shows the men the sediment gathered at the bottom, the salt and limescale, but the rowers are tired. They have no desire to start their task over again, and they ask the officers to make the final decision, which comes as no surprise to anyone. The officers side with the sailors and dismiss the naturalist’s objections: water is water, regardless of where it comes from, and with that Steller fills his waterskin from the spring, his pockets with berries growing along the shoreline, and decides not to assist when Khitrov’s gums begin to bleed and his teeth start to fall out.
The wind dies down, and it is time to hoist the sails. Before their departure, the navigator says he wants to measure thedepth of the water by the shore, to mark it on the map to help the ships of the future, but the plumb slips from his hands. The string slithers from between his fingers and spins down into the depths, and silence descends upon the deck. Dropping the plumb is the worst of all omens. They hoist the sails in silence, avoiding one another’s eyes, and theSt Peterglides glumly on its way.
Steller writes up his notes, cleans and catalogues his instruments. Four times a day he notes down the prevailing weather conditions, the forms and colours of the clouds, anything to take his mind off the sediment at the bottom of the barrels, and he gazes at the night sky, eager to know why it is that when one trains one’s eyes into the darkness, what at first looks empty eventually reveals tiny specks of light. He asks the navigator to teach him the constellations, and he studies the sky, practises identifying the bears, unicorns, foxes and ravens that live there, Ursa Major, Monoceros, Vulpecula and Corvus. To him, they do not look like animals, and he would gladly suggest some improvements to the system.
Back in Kamchatka, a local cooper had fashioned wooden hoops for their water barrels. They had been expecting metal ones, but the metal never reached the harbour, it must have been forgotten about, or stolen and sold on, and now the hoops holding the barrels together are beginning to rot and fall apart in the ship’s damp hold. The wood gives way and the water seeps through the gaps in the barrels.
Before long, the crew is running low on food, and they institute a system of rationing. Each man is given his daily allowance first thing in the morning. They wet the pieces of rusk with spittle, chew the floury mush first in one cheek then the other, swallow, and feel an instant pang of guilt: how had this mouthful disappeared so quickly? Hadn’t he resolved to savour it a moment longer?
They had intended to return to Avacha Bay by the end of September to avoid the autumn storms, but as the weeks pass, the wind obstinately refuses to turn in their favour, and a sea dotted with islands can be treacherous. Their progress is painfully slow. The end of September comes and goes, they are nowhere near the harbour, and then the gales start to pick up.
Khitrov closes the door behind him, and Bering slumps into his berth. These days the fleet master reports directly to the captain’s quarters. This is handy. Sitting by his desk, he can make a note of what he hears right away, and they can scrutinise the maps and decide upon the best route to keep the ship as secluded as possible in winds becoming more ferocious by the day. If truth be told, the reason Bering does not climb the steps onto the deck is because the exertion makes him catch his breath, and on deck he stares at the fleet master’s lips without understanding a word he says. A little rest is all he needs, a few days without exerting himself, then he will be himself again, but the tip of his tongue keeps prodding the gap between his front teeth and his toothsuddenly moves, his tongue touches the tooth, and the tooth and the root holding it in place give way, and Bering catches the taste of blood in his mouth. He pulls his tongue away in horror. This cannot be real, he must be mistaken, he just needs some rest, a few days in bed and he will be on his feet again. He stares at Khitrov and nods, hopes he is nearing the end of his monologue, and when the door finally shuts, he staggers to his berth, careful not to touch his teeth, and finds oblivion in sleep.
Able seaman Nikita Shumagin dies in the early-morning dim. The crew wraps him in a sheet and buries his body on the shore of a nearby island, they dig a pitiful, shallow grave in the sand and name his resting place in his memory. But Shumagin is merely the first of many. Initially the men begin to feel weak and drowsy, then pale blotches appear on their skin, and they lose control of their limbs. After this, it is not long until they stop breathing, and nobody names islands after them anymore. Death is just death, numb and endless.
On the twenty-sixth day of September, waves come crashing over the deck. The autumn storms have arrived.
2ndOCTOBER
