So we ranged the hay diagonally across the room into one long bed, and took the dirty sheet, and with strings to form the ridge, and thorns to pin the ends, and stones to hold down the sides, built us a tent some four feet long, on which we placed high hopes. To be sure it would only hold a head and shoulders of each of us, but the sleeping-sacks would sufficiently protect all parts which projected.
It required skill to get inside. We rolled our coats and put them in the middle of the tent to serve as pillows, and then we got into our sodden blanket-sacks, lay down on the hay, and cautiously wriggled our heads in under the opposite ends of the tent. There were three lusty mosquitoes inside when we arrived, and as these objected to being slaughtered without a chase, we had managed completely to disarrange the tent before they had met their due reward. This entailed a reconstruction of the entire edifice, and as Hayter said he was the least clumsy of the two of us, he crawled outside, replaced the stones on the sides, and jabbed in fresh thorns where they were needed. Inside I had plenty of work killing the mosquitoes which he let in during the process. Finally he crawled in again, and after the slaying of two others of the little pests which had managed to secrete themselves up till then, we lay still in the ecstatic hope that we were going to taste again of that almost forgotten luxury, easy sleep.
But did we so much as get into a doze? I fancy not. We lay there motionless on the hay, with our lower extremities hidden from the insects by the wet blankets, and our heads roof to roof beneath the odorous tent; and the sweat dripped out of us at every pore. A midnight sun was blazing high above the hut, and the air in the room was like that of an oven. The heat under the tent was stifling. Ever and again first one mosquito, and then another, and then a third, would get inside our defences, and we would have to bestir ourselves to slay them. The hay, too, was full of ticks, which added to our torments. When we lay down, our faces were puffed and blotched with the bites till we could scarcely see from our eyes; our hands were puffed out like boxing-gloves; and our arms were swollen till they fitted tight inside a coat-sleeve. And each of the million bites was a centre of irritation. Yet every minute this state of torture was being added to.
We passed that night in a condition bordering on frenzy, and let not those who merely know the mosquito in Africa, in India, and the Americas, judge us too hardly when I say that at times we wished most heartily we had never set foot in so detestable a country. Cold, we could have endured; privation, we were prepared for; but this horrible stew of flies ground upon the nerves till we were scarcely responsible for our actions.
In that plan of route we originally laid down at Enare, we had expected to find Ivalomati to be a village of tolerable size, and hoped to get carriers there who would take us on across the country to Pokka, and possibly to Scurujarvi. This idea was of course exploded, and so we set to work to try the power of blarney upon Pedr, Pat, and Johann, and persuade them to come farther on.
They did not see it one little bit. They said they had come much too far from home as it was, and had not the least wish to go farther. They were quite pleasant over their refusal, and quite determined. Johann mimicked the pair of us carrying the loads ourselves, tramping through the country, getting bogged in swamps, and losing the way, and finally dying of hunger and being covered up (like the babes in the wood) with a drift of grass and branches; and he roared with laughter at his own witty pantomime. Pedr glanced towards the direction in which Pokka lay, turned his back on it with decision, and smiled beautifully. And Pat, the unshaven Pat, looked so obsequious and so sly, and referred to his imaginary sore heel with such a roguish eye, that one really expected him to throw away disguise, and address us as “yer honours,” and beg for John Jamieson’s whisky there and then on the spot.
It was funny, but it was not business. Was our tramp across the country going to be broken after we had got so far and gone through so much, so very much? We rubbed our aching bites, and reasoned with the carriers still more earnestly. We besought them almost in formâ pauperis (seeing that we had not got the power to command), and gradually their mood changed. It is humiliating now to remember how our spirits rose as they began to yield. And at last they consented to go with us as far as Pokka; but no farther. Be it well understood, they pointed out, they would only escort us to Pokka—only. Well, sufficient for the march (we told ourselves) were the carriers thereof. Subsequent marches must be left to provide for themselves.
Once they had agreed to go, there was no more delay. We borrowed a canoe, a very rotten canoe, got on board, and set off up the Ivalojoki.
We had trouble at first, because the river, which was almost as wide as a lake, was full of weeds, which clung to the canoe and clogged the paddles. But these cleared as the river narrowed, and we worked up between low banks where scrub birches grew amongst angular blocks of gray, lichened stone.