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For each of our ten sledges, Bjaaland made during the voyage a pair of loose runners, which it was intended to use in the same way as the Eskimo use theirs. These primitive people have or, at all events, had no material that was suited for shoeing sledge-runners. They get over the difficulty by covering the runners with a coating of ice.
But Jack on arriving speedily dissipated that illusive hope; they could only get through the gorge by taking off the wheels of the wagon, placing the axle on rude sledge-runners of split saplings, which, with their assistance, he would fashion in a couple of hours at his cabin and bring down to the gorge.
Then, whenever he wanted to ice his sledge-runners, which was as often as three times an hour, he coolly capsized the pavoska, propped it up with his spiked stick, and I stood on my head while he rubbed the runners down with water and a piece of deerskin.
Then, if you insist on gathering and carrying along with you such pocket-loads of specimens, plants, rocks, etcetera, as you've brought in this evening, I'll have to build a sort of Noah's ark, or omnibus on sledge-runners, to carry them." "And suppose I don't insist on carrying these things, what then?"
The drivers disputed as to whose troyka should go ahead, and the youngest, seating himself sideways with a dashing air, swung his long knout and shouted to the horses. The troyka-bells tinkled and the sledge-runners squeaked over the snow. The sledge swayed hardly at all.
We were up on the following morning long before daylight; and, after a hasty breakfast of black-bread, dried fish, and tea, we harnessed our dogs, wet down our sledge-runners with water from the teakettle to cover them with a coating of ice, packed up our camp equipage, and, leaving the shelter of the tamarack forest around the yurt, drove out upon the great snowy Sahara which lies between the Malmofka River and Penzhinsk Gulf.
The purchase of the Goryachkin grove was a matter of immense importance to him. By that one deal he hoped to make perhaps ten thousand rubles. He began mentally to reckon the value of the wood he had inspected in autumn, and on five acres of which he had counted all the trees. 'The oaks will go for sledge-runners.
The water under the sledge-runners was splashing, the muddy snow was kicked up by the hoofs of the horses. "How foolish man is in his youth!" exclaimed Mayakin, in a low voice. Foma did not look at him. "Before him stands the stump of a tree, and yet he sees the snout of a beast that's how he frightens himself. Oh, oh!" "Speak more plainly," said Foma, sternly. "What is there to say?
The tracks left by the sledge-runners were immediately covered by snow and the road was only distinguished by the fact that it was higher than the rest of the ground. There was a swirl of snow over the fields and the line where sky and earth met could not be seen. The Telyatin forest, usually clearly visible, now only loomed up occasionally and dimly through the driving snowy dust.
At times a drifting haze, always imperceptible from below, veiled the view; a chill wind blew through the vehicle, and made the steel sledge-runners that hung beneath the wagon, ready to be shipped under the useless wheels, an ominous provision.
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