First came Tom Sawyer, high-booted, one-braced, preternaturally solemn and important. He marched with knapsack on back, axe over shoulder, and coat slung to knapsack, though of course he might just as well have put these impedimenta on the sledge. He “blazed” unnecessary trees, and peered into every thicket. He was evidently on the look-out for the local story-book equivalent for “Injuns.” He was inexpressibly funny. Then came the little liver-and-white steer, half maddened by the mosquitoes, rushing under every foliage tree on the way to brush off the intolerable insects. At its heels the sledge bumped and swerved, and beside the sledge stalked Huckleberry Finn, with the check-rope in his hand and words of direction on his lips. And behind the tail-board of the sledge came us two foreigners, ready to lend a hand when the sledge threatened to capsize, which it did some four times every three minutes.
The pace was not exhilarating. When everything went well, we covered some four thousand yards to the hour. But every mile or so the steer would get tired and flop down to rest, and on these occasions Huckleberry would groom down its back with a sponge of moist pink moss, and anoint its nose and eye-sockets with tar out of his private bottle; whilst Tom Sawyer, in full panoply, stood afar off on watch and guard; and the mosquitoes bit all of us still more terribly.
During one of these halts a figure showed itself amongst the tree aisles which we had left, and presently who should come up but the grim-visaged midwife we had left in Scurujärvi. She trudged on sturdily with a pack on her back and her head well up, and she was soon out of sight amongst the zigzags of the trees ahead. She had done her work at Scurujärvi, and was going on to take up her next piece of employment fifty miles away.
There was nothing new in the country we passed through: forest alternated with swamp, and swamp with forest, and the mosquitoes would have done justice to the worst corner in hell. The journeying was infinitely tedious. In one of the morasses it seemed as though we should get stuck permanently. Only the sledge floated on the treacherous surface. The steer was stuck in to the shoulders, and we four were sunk to the breasts in trying to pull it out. There was no piece of sound ground within a mile to get a purchase from, and how we ever did get clear I do not know. That march is bad even to look back at. It seems like the torment of some ghastly dream.
About half-way (I should think it must have been) we came upon men again. They were builders, and they were making a house. For temporary shelter they had run up a rough lean-to of slabs, and when we came up they were eating, and the midwife, who had joined camp with them, was eating also. Huckleberry and Tom joined in at the meal, producing their own provision.
There was a good deal of difference between these builders of the Arctic Zone and the sturdy British workman at home. The artificers here get their orders, take provisions, a pair of axes, a grindstone, and a couple of cross-cut saws, and start off to the site of their work. The forest provides materials, which they cut as they want them; and from these materials, and with their simple utensils, they evolve the whole house and all the furniture thereof. How they live in the meanwhile I have shown; and when they were not asleep they were at work. Remarkably well they looked, too, under the experience.
We got into talk with one of these builders, and he told us a strange thing. He said that a week before he had chanced to look up from his work, and saw something “like an enormous bird without wings” move quickly across the clearing far above his head. It was coloured green, and he guessed it to be some sixty feet in length. Round its neck was a big projecting ring, which made a whirring noise. He had never seen anything of the like before, and did not know what to make of it. Could we give an explanation?
Well we had ideas on the subject—distinct ideas—but we did not let them out just then. This seemed very much the same thing that Johann had talked about, describing it as a green fish, and which we had discussed together over so many marches afterwards; and now we wanted to know more about it. But that was all the builder could tell. He was a man of fair intelligence, but he had only seen the thing for a very few seconds, and had not gathered anything but a general impression. We asked him if it was an air-ship, but that was a conception he could not understand. He was certain, however, that he had seen no men on the concern, though there was plenty of room for men inside—for twenty men for the matter of that; and he was equally certain the whole thing was not an illusion of the senses. He had seen what he said, neither more nor less, and he stuck to it doggedly. And having said his say, he got up, and took an axe and set it on the grindstone preparatory to work.