Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 31, 2025
Squaw Charley hastened back to the shingle roof for an armful of fuel. Returning, he entered the wigwam and knelt beneath the smoke-hole. And while he arranged the sticks carefully upon a twist of grass, the aged crone hovered, hawk-like, over him, ready with fist or foot for any lack of haste, or failure with the fire.
Winslow meantime had stirred up the embers of a fire near the doorway of the hut, and the flame leaping out cast a wild and fitful glare over the scene, in the midst of which Hobomok, climbing the stout pole in the centre of the cabin, thrust his head through the smoke-hole at the top, and after emitting a hideous war-whoop shouted the names of Tisquantum and Tockamahamon at the top of his voice, for one of the women had assured him that the former was alive, and that Corbitant was already many miles on his homeward way.
"Nobody home!" said Jesse, looking about the dark interior, where the smoke had blackened all the wood, and where only a little light came through the door and the smoke-hole, there being no window at all. "Nor has there been for a long time," said Rob. "These bits of fish are all dried up. The ashes have been wet with rain for a long time.
Hows'ever, we'll say no more about that if we get out of this cursed smoke-hole; and as we are like to come off ill if these Jack-thieves keep us here a week or so and get nothing by it, 'twill be best to tell 'em the honest truth, and acquaint them that we are no gentle folk, but only three poor English mountebanks brought hither on a wild goose chase."
There, standing in a beam of golden light that, passing through the smoke-hole, pierced the soft gloom of the hut, stood the most beautiful creature that I had ever seen that is, if it be admitted that a person who is black, or rather copper-coloured, can be beautiful.
With the sole exception of the smoke-hole, the whole thing was so covered with earth, and capped with snow, that, expecting a mere cave, one was surprised at the wood-lining within. The Boy was still more surprised at the concentration, there, of malignant smells.
There lay the enormous tree, its bark covered with grey mosses and clumps of a giant species of maidenhair fern. On our side of it was the open space which may have measured forty feet across, where the light fell in a perpendicular ray, as it does through the smoke-hole of a hut.
We packed the game in the stone mound, and piled stones and brushwood against its entrance and smoke-hole; and then with our guns, and the jug of what was left of the coffee on a sling between us, we started on our way. That day's journey is a distressing remembrance. Despite the cold, we advanced briskly enough until noon. Then the wind grew stronger, whilst we got weak from the exposure.
Entering on his stomach, he found himself in a room about sixteen by twenty feet, two-thirds underground, log-walls chinked with moss, a roof of poles sloping upwards, tent-like, but leaving an opening in the middle for a smoke-hole some three feet square, and covered at present by a piece of thin, translucent skin.
When the feast came to be served up, and they were summoned to be in attendance, one of them, a sprightly young fellow of an inquisitive turn of mind, was found upon the roof of the lodge, with his head half way down the smoke-hole, with a view to learn what they were to have for dinner.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking