“Oh, no; you’re ill. It’ll be all right. If we can only just manage to fit in, it will be square strax (immediately). You won’t be too warm,” continued he, pulling a slate over the smoke-hole; “the night is very cold.”
So, in the brothers got, merely divesting themselves of their coats and waistcoats, while I had on all the coats in my wardrobe, like some harlequin in his first début at a country fair. At first, the squeeze was very like the operation one has so often witnessed in the old coaching days, of wedging any amount of passengers into a seat made to hold four—“Higgledy piggledy, here we lie.” Truly, necessity makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows. But by degrees we shook down. When a tea-cup is full to overflowing, there is room for the sugar. However, it was necessary, whenever one of us changed his position, for the others to do the same, like the poor niggers on board the slaver in the Middle passage. The coverlets were of the scantiest; but there did not seem to be any unfair attempt made to steal a skin from one’s neighbour when he had gone to sleep, as the Kansas men are said to be in the habit of doing when bivouacking out.
The others had, if possible, less elbow-room than we three. The two elder were allowed to take the middle places, while the younger ones were pressed against the damp, hard wall. The hut was soon quiet; outside it was frosty, with no wind, and the only noise within was the occasional snoring of one of the party, which was so sonorous, that it made me think of “the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe” (see Shakspeare)—though I can’t say I ever heard one. At last I fell off. How soundly I slept that night, with the exception of a slight touch of nightmare, in which, by an inverted order of things, I rode the mare instead of the mare riding me; scudding along at one time after the reindeer, over stock and stone with wonderful celerity; at another, dashing in snow-shoes after the otters, or whirling among the moors, in the midst of an odd set of elfin coursers and riders.
CHAPTER IX.
The way to cure a cold—Author shoots some dotterel—Pit-fall for reindeer—How mountains look in mountain air—A natural terrace—The meeting of the waters—A phantom of delight—Proves to be a clever dairymaid—A singular cavalcade—Terrific descent into Tjelmö-dal—A volley of questions—Crossing a cataract—A tale of a tub—Author reaches Garatun—Futile attempt to drive a bargain.
The grey light of the morning was peeping through the hole in the roof, when I was awoke by Nicholas bestirring himself, and kicking his way through the conglomerate of prostrate forms. Thank goodness, my feverish chill had left me. “Richard was himself again!” The superfluity of vestments, together with the animal heat generated by seven human beings, packed as we had been, had done the business. The black wall I found trickling with moisture, like the sides of a Russian bath, from the hot smoke and steam, condensed by the colder stones. I felt no return of the complaint, and doubtless the sovereign nostrum for me, under the circumstances, was the one I accidentally took.
After a cup of coffee, some cold trout and biscuit, I was ready to start; before doing which I put a trifle in Nicholas’ hand, which he pronounced a great deal too much. As we trudged along, a solitary raven or two were not wanting to the landscape; while, contrasting with their funereal plumage and dismal croak, was the cheerful twittering white-rumped stone-chat (steen-ducker), bobbing about from stone to stone, seemingly determined to enjoy himself in spite of the Robinson Crusoe nature of his haunts. Presently I let fly at a large flock of dotterel—“Rundfugel,” as the guide called them—and made a handsome addition to the proviant.
In one spot, where the available space for walking was narrowed by the head of a lake on one side, and an abrupt hill on the other, we came upon what looked like a saw-pit, four feet long and two feet broad, but which had been filled up with large stones. This, I was informed, was once a pit-fall for the reindeer, but now discontinued. It was judiciously placed in a defile which the deer were known to make for when disturbed.