Three or four steamers were in winter quarters, and the Korsackoff was to join them immediately.  Both at Stratensk and Nicolayevsk it is the custom to remove the machinery from steamers during winter.  It is carefully housed to prevent its rusting, and I presume to lessen the loss in case of fire or damage from breaking ice.

We talked with our new friends till late in the evening, and then prepared to continue our journey.  Lovett gave me his blessing and a feather pillow; the former to cover general accidents and the latter to prevent contusions from the jolting vehicle.  Borasdine obtained a Cossack to accompany us on the road and ordered our baggage made ready.  The Cossack piled it into a wagon and it was transported to the ferry landing and dumped upon the gravel.  We followed and halted in front of the palisaded hotel of the exiles.  The ferry boat was on the opposite shore, four or five hundred yards away.  Borasdine called, but the boatmen did not rise.

“Dai sloopka!” (send a boat.)

After a moment’s pause he repeated: 

“Dai sloopka!”

He added the usually magic word “courier!” but it had no effect.  He shouted repeatedly and grew hoarse.  Then I lifted up my voice like a pelican in the wilderness, but with no better effect.  When we had almost reached the pitch of despair a man appeared from behind a wood pile and tried his vocal organs in our behalf.  At his second call a reply was given, and very soon a light twinkled at the ferry house.

[Illustration:  STRATENSK, EASTERN SIBERIA.]

The boat was a long time coming, and while we waited its arrival a drunken Bouriat made himself unpleasantly familiar.  As often as I changed my position he would come to my side and endeavor to rest his dirty arm on my shoulder.  I finally walked through a pile of brushwood and crooked sticks, which was too much for the native with his weak knees and muddy brain.  After struggling with a persistency that would have been commendable had the object to be attained been commensurate to the effort, he became inextricably tangled, and I left him in the loving embrace of a decayed tree-top.

The boat came with four shaggy ferrymen, who had some difficulty in reaching land.  It was a kind of large skiff, high at both ends and having a platform, like that of a hay-scale, in the center.  The platform projected a foot or more beyond the sides of the boat, and had no railing to prevent a frightened horse or drunken man going overboard.  This is the general style of river ferry boats in Siberia.  The boatmen do not appear very skillful in handling them, but I learned that serious accidents were very rare.

We piled our baggage and left the shore, running upon two rocks and colliding with a sandbar before getting fairly away.  I fell asleep during the crossing, satisfied that the crew did not need my assistance.  We landed where the road is cut into the rocky bank, and were obliged to lift the baggage over a pile of stony debris.  The boatmen said it was impossible to go to the regular landing, but I suspect they wished an extra gratuity for handling our impedimenta.  Before the work was finished they regretted their manoeuvre.