United States or Curaçao ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
About midnight our travelers, whose anguish of mind was terrible, felt the great iceberg afloat. Its oscillations were fearful. Sakalar alone preserved his coolness.
"And where are you going?" cried Sakalar when the young man had somewhat appeased his hunger. "To the North Sea, in search of the great ivory mine!" said Ivan, abruptly. Kolina started back in terror and surprise, while Sakalar fixed his keen eye on the youth with sorrow and curiosity, and almost unequivocally, testified his belief that his favorite pupil in the chase was mad.
And yet she felt no ill-will to Ivan, and never changed her resolve to be the faithful companion and attendant of her father and his friend in their wild journey to the supposed islands in the Frozen Sea. The five days fixed by Sakalar for preparing for the journey were wholly devoted to the necessary arrangements. There was much to be done, and much to be talked of.
Sakalar drove the first team, Kolina the second, and Ivan the third. The Kolimak men came afterward. They took their way along the snow toward the mouth of the Tchouktcha river. The first day's journey brought them to the extreme limits of vegetation, after which they entered on a vast and interminable plain of snow, along which the nartas moved rapidly.
The harness had broken off, and Sakalar remained alone on the crest of the hill. He leaped off the nartas, and stood looking at it with the air of a man stunned. The journey seemed checked violently. Next instant, his gun in hand, he followed the dogs right down the hill, dashing away too like a madman, in his long hunting-skates.
A few hours brought him to the curious plain of the Miouré, where he expected to find the camp of his friend Sakalar. Leaving an almost desert plain, he suddenly stood on the edge of a hollow, circular in form and six miles across, fertile in the extreme, and dotted with numerous well-stocked fish-ponds. The whole, as may plainly be seen, was once a lake.
Sakalar sat gravely upon a fallen tree a pipe in his mouth, and his eye fixed on the distant horizon. For some time nothing remarkable caught his gaze; but at last he saw a number of dark objects on the snow, galloping directly toward the camp. Sakalar at once recognized a number of reindeer. It was the Tchouktchas on their sledges, bounding with lightning speed along the frozen surface!
The hunters, however, were ready. The bears marched boldly on as if savage from long fasting. No time was to be lost. Sakalar and Ivan singled out each his animal. Their heavy ounce balls struck both. The opponent of Sakalar turned and fled, but that of Ivan advanced furiously toward him. Ivan stood his ground, axe in hand, and struck the animal a terrible blow on the muzzle.
Word Of The Day