Lee Scoresby disembarked at the port in the mouth of the Yenisei River, and found the pla chaos, with fishermen trying to sell their meager catches of unknown kinds of fish to the ing factories; with shipowners angry about the harbor charges the authorities had raised to cope with the floods; and with hunters and fur trappers drifting into town uo work because of the rapidly thawing forest and the disordered behavior of the animals.
It was going to be hard to make his way into the interior along the road, that was certain; for in normal times the road was simply a cleared track of frozeh, and now that even the permafrost was melting, the surface was a s of ed mud.
So Lee put his balloon and equipment into ste and with his dwindling gold hired a boat with a gas engine. He bought several tanks of fuel and some stores, a off up the swollen river.
He made slress at first. Not only was the current swift, but the waters were laden with all kinds of debris: tree trunks, brushwood, drowned animals, and ohe bloated corpse of a man.
He had to pilot carefully ahe little engiing hard to make any headway.
He was heading for the village of Grummans tribe. Fuidance he had only his memory of having flowhe try some years before, but that memory was good, and he had little difficulty
in finding the right course among the swift-running streams, even though some of the banks had vanished uhe milky-brown floodwaters. The temperature had disturbed the is, and a cloud of midges made every outline hazy. Lee smeared his fad hands with jimsonweed oi and smoked a succession of pu cigars, which kept the worst at bay.
As for Hester, she sat taciturn in the bow, her long ears flat against her skinny bad her eyes narrowed. He was used to her silence, and she to his. They spoke when they o.
On the m of the third day, Lee steered the little craft up a creek that joihe main stream, flowing down from a line of low hills that should have been deep under snow but now were patched and streaked with brown. Sooream was flowiween low pines and spruce, and after a few miles they came to a large round rock, the height of a house, where Lee drew in to the bank and tied up.
"There was a landing stage here," he said to Hester. "Remember the old seal hunter in Nova Zembla who told us about it? It must be six feet under now."
"I hope they had sense enough to build the village high, then," she said, hopping ashore.
No more than half an hour later he laid his pack down beside the wooden house of the village headman and turo salute the little crowd that had gathered. He used the gesture universal in the north to signify friendship, and laid his rifle down at his feet.
An old Siberian Tartar, his eyes almost lost in the wrinkles around them, laid his bow down beside it. His wolverine dasmon twitched her Hester, who flicked an ear in response, and then the headman spoke.
Lee replied, and they moved through half a dozen languages before finding one in which they could talk.
"My respects to you and your tribe," Lee said. "I have some smokeweed, which is not worthy, but I would be hoo present it to you."
The headman nodded in appreciation, and one of his wives received the bundle Lee removed from his pack.
"I am seeking a man called Grumman," Lee said. "I heard tell he was a kinsman of yours by adoption. He may have acquired another name, but the man is European."
"Ah," said the headman