t or of some wayside hut, and closely covered by day, Rezanov
at first merely cursed the inconvenience of the rain; but while
crossing the river Allach Juni, his guides without consulting him
having taken him miles out of his way in order to avoid the hamlet of
the same name where the small-pox was raging, but where there was a
government ferry, his horse lost his footing in the rapid, swollen
current and fell. Rezanov managed to retain his seat, and pulled the
frightened, plunging beast to its feet while his Cossacks were still
shouting their consternation. But he was soaked to the skin, his
personal luggage was in the same condition, and they did not reach a
hut where a fire could be made until nine hours later. It was then that
the seeds of malaria, accumulated during the last three years in
unsanitary ports and sown deep by exceptional hardships, but which he
believed had taken themselves off during his six weeks in California,
stirred more vigorously than in Sitka or Okhotsk. He rode on the next
day in a burning fever. Jon, minding Langsdorff's instructions,
doctored him--not without difficulty--from the medicine chest, and for
a day or two the fever seemed broken. But Jon, sick with apprehension,
implored him to turn back. He might as well have implored the sky to
turn blue.

"How do you think men accomplish things in this world?" asked Rezanov
angrily. "By turning back and going to bed every time they have a
migraine?"

"No, Excellency," said the man humbly. "But health is necessary to the
accomplishment of everything, and if the body is eaten up with fever--"

"What are drugs for? Give me the whole damned pharmacopeia if you
choose, but don't talk to me about turning back."

"Very well, Excellency," said Jon, with a sigh.

The next day he and one of the Cossack guard caught him as he fell from
his horse unconscious. A Yakhut hut, miserable as it was, offered in
the persistent downpour a better shelter than the tent. They carried
him into it, and his bedding at least was almost as luxurious as had he
been in St. Petersburg. Jon, at his wits' end, remembered the'
practice of Langsdorff in similar cases, and used the lancet, a heroic
treatment he would never have accomplished had his master been
conscious. The fever ebbed, and in a few days Rezanov was able to
continue the journey by shorter stages, although heavy with an
intolerable lassitude. But his will sustained him until he reached
Yakutsk, n