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“How have you got on?”

“Any sick?”

“Any dead?”

“Have you shot many bears?”

“How’s trade?”

The islanders had suffered very much from scurvy during the year. The day before the vessel arrived a man had died of it and Vassily Vassilitch saw the funeral. It took place about midnight. From one of the huts came the klak, klak, klak, of the nailing up of the coffin. The coffin issued from the little village borne on a dog-drawn hearse, then followed the priest in his gilded raiment, the frantic widow, the mourners. “Holy God,” they sang, “Holy Strong One, Holy Immortal,” and the dogs all whined and howled. In the bitter shadowy night they bore the corpse away, over grey earth and rags of snow, far away to the side of a black tumbling river, and the midnight sunshine gleamed on all the snowy mountain peaks, catching the light from the horizon where the sun seemed poised.

Vassily Vassilitch showed me a copy he had made of a diary kept by a Russian peasant who had died of scurvy. Two Russian peasants settled on a desolate part of the island to spend the winter and hunt. It was somewhat pathetic that the man doomed to die should have had the idea of keeping a log-book. The story tells much of Russian patience, simplicity, tenderness, pluck. I only quote a few entries from the diary:—