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It was a fine piece of work, and did all honour to its designers. It paid, too Hassel could now fetch coal at any time under cover, and escaped having to go out of doors. But this was not the end of our great underground works. We wanted a room where Wisting could store all the things in his charge; he was specially anxious about the reindeer-skin clothing, and wished to have it under a roof.
The rain continuing during the whole of the night and forenoon of the 21st, we found it necessary by sufficient rest to strengthen ourselves for future watchfulness. An Esquimaux travelling bed consists of a large bag of reindeer-skin, with the hair turned inward, covered with seal-skin, the hair turned outward.
The first thing we did now was to dry all our reindeer-skin clothes; they were wet through. This was not to be done in a hurry. We had to stretch the garments that were to be dried on lines under the ceiling of the room, so that we could not dry very much at a time. We got everything ready, and made some improvements in our outfit for a last depot journey before the winter set in.
Here, as elsewhere in the cold, it was found that boots with wooden soles were the best for sedentary work; but for some reason or other the occupants of the Clothing Store would not give their adherence to the wooden-sole principle, and continued to work all through the winter in their reindeer-skin and sealskin boots.
Her black hair lay right over him, and she was as soft and warm to the touch as a ptarmigan when it is frightened and its blood throbs. Jack put the reindeer-skin over Seimke, and the boat rocked them to and fro on the heavy sea as if it were a cradle. They sailed on and on till night-fall; they sailed on and on till they saw neither headland nor island nor sea-bird in the outer skerries more.
The women were all busy; one was weaving shoe-bands of bright colors, red predominating; another was just finishing a "kapta," and a third one was putting a lining of red flannel over the seams upon a tiny pair of reindeer-skin shoes for a child; the girls were sewing some undergarments. Wasara's father's first name was Pehr, he was a fine-looking Lapp, about seventy years old.
It needed to be strongly pitched, for in these regions the blast is more quick and sudden than in any place perhaps in the known world, pouring down along the fields of ice with terrible force direct from the unknown caverns of the northern pole. Within the tent, which was of double reindeer-skin, a fire was lit; while behind a huge rock, and under cover of the sledges, lay the dogs.
Such were the tools with which they fashioned the heads for two spears, which they polished and sharpened on stones, and then tied them fast with strips of reindeer-skin to thick sticks, with which they were supplied from the branches of trees which had been wafted on shore. Thus armed, they attacked a white bear, and after a desperate struggle, they succeeded in killing him.
Taking refuge abaft, a tall old man, with bald forehead and gray moustache, had lashed himself to a stanchion, by winding a piece of rope round his body, whilst he clasped in his arms, and held fast to his breast, two girls of fifteen or sixteen, half enveloped in a pelisse of reindeer-skin.
Nicholas had risen again, his mouth set hard, his small hands shaking. He unrolled an old reindeer-skin full of holes, and examined it. At this the girl, who had been about to make up the fire, threw down the bit of driftwood and hid her face. The sick man babbled on. Faint under the desolate sound another sibilant, clearer, uncannily human.
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