We got our caravan under way again after that, and perfunctorily tried to talk on what we had heard; but the labours of the journey and the horrible mosquito-plague were too heavy to give mere empty speculation much of a chance. And when later on we discerned that the travellers with the leg-shackles we had met at Scurujärvi had not been at either Küstula or Kittila, as they asserted, then the subject got a new interest. We connected them, somehow or other, with this mysterious air-ship—we had convinced ourselves it was an air-ship by then—and formed a thousand theories as to what might be their business. I wonder if at any time we guessed anywhere near the truth?
A drenching dew came down as the night wore on, and the mosquitoes lessened somewhat in their maddening attentions, and we marched a trifle more easily. But we carried the marks of their work written on us in ugly letters. Our arms were swollen from wrist to elbow, so that they fitted tight in the gloves; we were bitten, bitten, bitten all over, through corduroy, under boot-laces, under hair. The scraps of paper in my pocket, on which I had been scribbling notes, were splodged with blood till they were unreadable, and in this torment we had been marching for ten consecutive hours before the dew came and brought relief.
At last we came to an unmistakable track, which grew with use till it became a real muddy lane running between two walls of forest. It was made by the feet of men and cattle, and never had we been so pleased to see mud before. It led us to a lake, which we skirted; and then we came to another lane, and then another lake with fishing canoes drawn up and nets hung out to dry. And there on the flank of a gently sloping hill we saw a fine settlement of quite a dozen farms, well built and prosperous. It was Küstula, and we had got there at last.
But the houses lay at the farther side, and to reach them we passed between potato gardens, and a water-cress pond, and rye and barley fields all fenced in and well tilled.
The steer was very nearly done, and so were we; but ahead of our caravan there still marched the indomitable Tom, with the axe across his shoulder and the knapsack dangling from his back. We drove up to the biggest house and came to a halt in the courtyard, formed by the farm buildings at its back.
There was a well in the courtyard, with the column of water sheathed in white transparent ice. We rushed to it, lowered the bucket on the end of the derrick, and hoisted again and again. I think we must have drunk a bucketful apiece of that ice-cold water before the fever of our throats was satisfied. It was six o’clock in the morning, and our clothes hung on us dank with perspiration. The sun had never ceased beating upon us and our hurts all the way from Scurujärvi.