He admitted that he knew of our needs, but protested his inability to supply them. He said that all available males were far away from Pokka on one errand and another, and he alone was left as protection of the women and children. We pointed out that failing other carriers, we should impress him into our service himself, whether he liked it or whether he did not. And upon that he remembered where there was one man, and set out there and then to find him.
We accompanied him into the lobby. Pat was there with the squinting lady, making a purchase of butter. The butter-store was pressed down into a tub without salt, and emitted a fine rancid scent. The lady with the squint gouged it out with her delicate fingers and packed it in a birch-bark box, which she afterwards weighed on a steelyard. Pat in the meanwhile was helping himself from an ancient cask of evil-smelling buttermilk, in which the grimy dipper hung ready for all who chose to thirst.
It is curious to note how the Lapp and the Northern Finn contrives to make his food unappetising. Of course a constant diet of fresh milk would entail constant biliousness; milk curdled, or slightly acid buttermilk, is much more wholesome. But they go to the far extremes of decomposition. They never eat fresh fish: they split, gut, and partly dry the produce of the river, and then allow it to go half rotten, and then they eat it. They prepare their reindeer meat and their cow meat in the same way. A French peasant, even if he were as slack and lazy as the Finn, would out of the Finn’s provisions live deliciously. But this slouching fisher-farmer of the North prefers to feed on carrion, and any luckless foreigners who come into his country must accept his diet (if indeed they can persuade him to sell them food) or else they must starve.
We took a turn outside to sketch an iron cresset for winter fishing, like the one we had seen at the upper end of Enare See; and then we went back to the dairy and did a little tailoring at the more important rents in our garments. The children of Pokka were brought in to stare; it was an education for them to see strangers; and at intervals an unattached female with soft, cows’ eyes came and loafed in the doorway. She had rather pretty feet, and Hayter set to work sketching her with one hand whilst he beat off the flies with the other. But as soon as she saw that portraiture was in the wind, she brisked up. She bade him wait a minute, and trotted away. And presently she came clumping back again, in a pair of brand-new, light brown top-boots with turn-up toes all complete, and posed against the log wall with her skirts drawn tightly back so as to show as much leather as possible. She was very proud of those boots.
Whilst this portrait was progressing, the master of the house came back, bringing with him a tall, gaunt Finn with a black chin-beard, a haggard face, and sunken eyes. He wore his trousers stuffed into high boots, and his upper man was decorated with a red striped shirt. A huge sheath-knife dangled from his broad-buckled belt, and at intervals he delivered himself of a most dramatically racking cough. As the imitation of a stage pirate struck with illness and remorse he was very fine, but as a carrier he was obviously useless.
We pointed this out, and the man with one ear admitted it. He mentioned that he had told us so already. He said it was a solemn fact that Pokka had no men in residence who could come with us as carriers, and suggested that we should take on the three Lapps who had brought us so far. The pirate took a keen interest in the proceedings. He went out and fetched the Lapps, and they stood against the doorway with expectant smiles. They thought they were going to be paid off.
The proposition was put to them that they should take us on farther through the country, and promptly their faces grew gloomy. They pointed out their sore feet and galled shoulders, and explained volubly that they had already come a great deal farther from home than they had originally intended. They were very like children in their changes of facial expression. Johann, in particular, who came into the room on the full, broad grin, looked for all the world as though he were on the verge of blubbering.
What a weary argument it was! First Hayter spoke, then the one-eared Finn lifted up his voice, and then I chimed in; and between each separate piece of talk the pirate expostulated and coughed and explained till he was breathless. The three Lapps did not reply in words. They merely stood in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot, and looking sulky and frightened and sullen. Only one thing kept them from being complete masters of the situation: their earned wages were still in our pockets.
The beauty of acquiring a still further store of marks did not appeal to them in the least; what was owing already was a fortune to each; and from time to time they besought us to pay up honestly and let them begone, and we as steadily refused. There were no new arguments to bring forward, no new objections to raise, and we, and the pirate, and the one-eared Finn with the expressionless face, talked on for four mortal hours, before the delectable three saw fit to give way. I believe they enjoyed the harangue; I am sure the pirate did; and I am equally sure that we two foreigners did not.