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While we had been talking with Andrei, Viushin had built a fire and prepared breakfast, and just as the sun peered into the valley we sat down on bearskins around our little candle-box and ate some "selánka," or sour soup, upon which Viushin particularly prided himself, and drank tumbler after tumbler of steaming tea.
There were the Major, Viushin, and Dodd, perched upon gaunt Kamchadal horses, with their knees and chins on nearly the same level, half a dozen natives in eccentric costumes straggling along by their sides at a dog-trot, and a large procession of bareheaded men and boys solemnly bringing up the rear, punching the horses with sharp sticks into a temporary manifestation of life and spirit.
A timid tourist, meeting us as we galloped furiously across the plain toward Pushchin would have fallen on his knees and pulled out his purse without asking any unnecessary questions. Being well mounted on fresh, spirited horses, the Major, Dodd, Viushin, and I rode far in advance of the rest of the party throughout the day. The excitement, I can conscientiously affirm, was terrific.
Viushin, however, with characteristic energy, hauled the drowning wretches in by their hair, rapped them over the head with a paddle to restore consciousness, pushed the boat off sand-bars, kept its head up stream, poled, rowed, jumped into the water, shouted, swore, and proved himself fully equal to any emergency.
The Major decided to go with Dodd in the whale-boat, and gave me command of the land party, consisting of our best Cossack, Viushin, six Kamchadals, and twenty light horses.
Viushin scraped a small handful of dirty crumbs out of our empty bread-bag, fried them in a little blubber, which I suppose he had brought to grease his gun with, and offered them to me; but, hungry as I was, I could not eat the dark, greasy mass, and he divided it by mouthfuls among the Kamchadals.
Viushin was ordered to send for the starosta, or head man of the village, and in a few moments he made his appearance, bowing with the impressive persistency of a Chinese mandarin. A prolonged colloquy then took place in Russian between the Major and the starosta, broken by explanatory commentaries in the Kamchadal language, which did not tend materially to elucidate the subject.
They looked as if they had been discovered in the bag of some poor rag-picker who had fished them up out of a gutter in the Five Points. Kolmagórof tied the two pieces together, wrapped them up carefully in an old newspaper, thanked Viushin for his trouble, and, with an air of great relief, bowed again to me and went out.
Wondering what use he could make of such a worn, dirty, tattered article of clothing as that which he had received, I applied to Viushin for a solution of the mystery. "What did he want that tippet for?" I inquired; "it isn't good for anything." "Anadyrski bol!" I repeated in astonishment, never having heard of the disease in question; "what has the 'Anadyrski bol' got to do with an old tippet?"
Viushin unslung his double-barrelled fowling-piece, and proceeded to pepper him with duck-shot; Dodd tugged at his revolver with frantic energy while his horse ran away with him over the plain; the Major dropped his bridle, and implored me by all I held sacred not to shoot him, while the horses plunged, kicked, and snorted in the most animated manner.
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