In March 1730, within one month of the time he returned to St Petersburg, Bering was again ordered to prepare to carry out the dead emperor's command--'to find and set down reliably what was in the Pacific.' The explorer had now to take his orders from the authorities of the Academy of Sciences, whose bookish inexperience and visionary theories were to hamper him at every turn. Botanists, artists, seven monks, twelve physicians, Cossack soldiers--in all, nearly six hundred men--were to accompany him; and to transport this small army of explorers, four thousand pack-horses were sent winding across the desert wastes of Siberia, with one thousand exiles as guides and boatmen to work the boats and rafts on the rivers and streams. Great blaring of trumpets marked the arrival and departure of the caravans at the Russian forts on the way; and if the savants, whose {16} presence pestered the soul of poor Bering, had been half as keen in overcoming the difficulties of the daily trail as they were in drinking pottle-deep to future successes, there would have been less bickering and delay in reaching the Pacific. Dead horses marked the trail across two continents. The Cossack soldiers deserted and joined the banditti that scoured the Tartar plains; and for three winters the travellers were storm-bound in the mountains of Siberia. But at length they reached Avacha Bay on the eastern shore of Kamchatka, and the waters of the Pacific gladdened the eyes of the weary travellers. At Petropavlovsk on the bay they built a fort, houses, barracks, a chapel, and two vessels, named the _St Peter_ and the _St Paul_. Early on the morning of June 4, 1741, the chapel bells were set ringing. At dawn prayers were chanted to invoke the blessing of Heaven on the success of the voyage. Monks in solemn procession paraded to the water's edge, singing. The big, bearded men, who had doggedly, drunkenly, profanely, religiously, marched across deserts and mountains to reach the sea, gave comrades a last fond embrace, ran down the sand, jumped into the jolly-boats, rowed out, and clambered up {17} the ships' ladders. And when the reverberating roll of the fort cannon signalled the hour of departure, anchors were weighed, and sails, loosened from the creaking yard-arms, fluttered and filled to the wind. While the landsmen were still cheering and waving a farewell, Bering and his followers watched the shores slip away, the waters widen, the mountains swim past and back. Then the _St Peter_ and the _St Paul_ headed out proudly to the lazy roll of the ocean.