From a seaman's point of view that orange-bodied spider was a marvel of dexterity. He threw bowlines over the buzzing wings of the horse-fly, got a purchase on them, hauled them home against its body, and made them fast there with clever hitches. One by one he disentangled the horse-fly's legs from the mesh, and roped them up too. And then he marled the victim's body up into one helpless bundle, and carried it off to eat alive under a thatch of the juniper leaves.
Pat, to secure a longer rest at this halt, must needs change the grass in his boots, to do which entailed pulling it out, spreading it abroad to dry, and then packing it back again with one hand whilst he used the other as a last. Inserting the naked foot into the nest thus made was a matter for niceness and accuracy, and it was not usually managed at the first attempt. And then the coarse flannel trouser--which was very much like the trunk-hose of our own ancestors--had to be carefully brought round inside the mouth of the boot, and snugly made fast there with five feet of red, embroidered, inch-and-a-half-wide bandage, which sported the two orthodox thongs for tying at its outer end.
The other two Lapps filled in time by capturing horse-flies and mosquitoes and "taking it out of them," after the manner of the story-book naughty child at home. I suppose we ought to have taught them better; but we did not: we felt that a little cruelty was justifiable.
On through more forests of pines we went, and through more swamps, with cloud-berries tantalisingly unripe beside our feet. We had visions of cloud-berries from other days,--plump, yellow, juicy fruit, ice cold, and slightly acid,--and with the fever of the bites constantly upon us, and mouths like dried leather, they were visions which made us sigh. Verily in this world--especially in the Arctic part of it--man cannot get all he wants, even though he offer in exchange much fine gold.
We sheltered under a new kind of roof at the end of that march--a regular Arctic casual ward. It was a rude house of logs twenty feet square, furnished with fixed bunks and a table set against the wall, one movable bench, and a fire-hearth in one corner built of rubble stone. The nearest human habitation was the squalid hut with the hump-backed woman we had left behind us at Menesjärvi. We were in a place of shelter built for the benefit of the sleigh traveller should he be caught in one of the whirling storms of winter. It was the distant finger of Holy Russia, showing how even the least-considered of her subjects is not left without some paternal care.