Their fishing-tackle for the summer was simple. It consisted merely of short small-mesh nets with floats of birch-bark rolls coiled along the head rope, and pebble sinkers to the foot; and the catches were small. It was in the dark months that they were more successful. Then they were able to spear by torchlight, and secured the heavier fish. We saw the apparatus used lying on foreshore. It consisted of an iron cresset (_parrila_) with four spear-headed prongs and a long curved iron stem, which ended with a fork of wood to make fast to the canoe's bow. Long pitch-pine splinters are laid lengthwise between the prongs, and lit at the outer end. The wind, or the canoe's motion through the air, keeps them blazing. The paddler sits in the stern facing forward. The fisher stands in the bows behind the _parrila_, watching for the fish as they are attracted upwards by the glare. His weapon is the _arrina_, which is very like the grains we use here at home for spearing eels. The shaft is of wood, eight feet long, and fitting into a socket at the head. There are six spears to the head, the outer two the heaviest, all barbed inwards, and all converging from the bottom inwards. It is a formidable implement, and once one gets the knack, very deadly. But it is no child's play to acquire that said knack, as many an energetic British poacher can vouch. I fancy, though, that the average fisherman from these sporting islands would prove himself pretty deadly if he could take his own tools to the lakes and rivers of Arctic Lapland.
We did not go to sleep that night very confident of a peaceful start down-lake on the morrow. The squint-eyed man and his friends had been making irruptions into our room at intervals all through the evening, noisily, and flatly refusing to be satisfied with their lawful wage. We, on the other hand, had quite made up our minds not to pay three shillings for one, and so expected that next morning they would try to put in force the local equivalent of a _ne exeat regno_. In which case there would be trouble. Because come what might we were firmly determined to get under way.
ENARE SEE TO ENARE TOWN, IN A SQUARE-SAIL VIKING SHIP
When it came to the point, our Neiden carriers, to use a colloquialism, climbed down abjectly. We roused very early, escorted our baggage (once more made up into three twin sacks) down to the shore, and stowed it in the boat on either side of the mast. The carriers hung about, but we ignored them as though they had been men of glass. At last the squint-eyed headman stated their willingness to accept their just dues, and they were handed the contracted-for number of rouble notes with a few impressive remarks thrown in. The discomforts of the place where thieves eventually frizzle was described to them with a lurid wealth of colour, which, being Lutherans, they thoroughly appreciated. And as we had a few minutes on hand whilst the boat was being ballasted, Hayter sketched on a smoothed board a few spirited recollections from Doré's _Dante's Inferno_, so as to ram the matter home. They grew awed and limp, just like so many naughty children, and we left them thoroughly repentant; and I fancy that the next stray English who come in contact with that squint-eyed Finn and his friends will meet with more tender entreatment.