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Every detail of the scene is strange, wild, arctic, even to the fur-clad, frost-whitened men who come riding up to the tents astride the shoulders of panting reindeer and salute you with a drawling "Zdar-o-o-va!" as they put one end of their balancing poles to the ground and spring from their flat, stirrupless saddles.
In splendid, solitary grandeur he lay awaiting the end of all things the call of his Creator in the grey ice-fields of the North. The darling of his ship, he had died with a smile in his blue eyes and a sad little jest upon his lips to cheer the rough fur-clad giants kneeling at his side. It is only the old that are quite beyond his powers; he cannot touch them. Mrs.
One rifle he carried in his hand, another slung across his back. It was like a silent scene on a stage. The snow-white clearing, with long-drawn tracks across it where the snow-shoes had passed, the still trees, the brilliant sun, and the blue depths of the forest behind; while Paul, like the hero of some grim Arctic saga, a huge fur-clad Northern giant, stood alone in the desolation.
Another was when an enumerator wrote on his schedule under 'language spoken, "Some pesky lingo; I know most of their talk, but this was too much for me and the hut was too strong to stay in long." Such comments made it easy to create a picture of the semi-savagery of the fur-clad fishers on the shores of the Arctic Sea.
But they came, following closely upon the spark of light, which was borne in the hand of a man on snowshoes. The fur-clad figure swung his lantern to and fro. He moved himself from post to post of the great gateway. Then he stood in his original position. The spark of light came on. It was another lantern, borne in the hand of another fur-clad figure. It passed through the gateway.
He answered it with joy in his tone and shambled on. Now two dark figures loomed up in the grey twilight. They were moving swiftly along the ledge towards him. They cried out something in a foreign tongue. He did not understand, but his joy was no less. They came up, and he saw before him the short, stout figures of two fur-clad Eskimos. He was saved.
The imagination could scarcely conceive a more desolate picture than that upon which we gazed the plain of sombre snow, beyond which the black huts of the village were faintly discernible, the stunted woods and bleak hills, which night and the raw snow clouds had half obscured, and yonder fur-clad figure gliding silently along beside his reindeer.
In the morning he was about to climb back to the trail he had prudently left the night before when he saw five bearded, fur-clad men looking much the same as Ulffa's people. Ross hugged the earth and watched them pass out of sight before he followed.
Under the sheltering canopy, among the luggage of the fur-clad gentleman, sat and reclined four travellers, whom the owner of the vehicle had gradually picked up, and who formed a motley company.
The Chukchis were honest and decent people, and the only roguery they permitted themselves was to try and persuade the men of the Vega that a skinned and decapitated fox was a hare. When it grew dusk the fur-clad Polar savages went down the staircase of ice from the deck, put their teams in order, took their seats in the sledges, and set off again over the ice to their tents of reindeer skins.
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