The Squire wiped the perspiration from his face and sat down; Nilas brought out his cognac-bottle and handed a nip all round; and then the pair of them settled themselves to steady paddling. We ourselves were glad enough of the opportunity for _far niente_. We had come through a surfeit of ill-usage, over-exertion, over-biting, and under-feeding, and as regards personal appearance we were a couple of gaunt, blotched, hollow-eyed wrecks. So we lay on the baggage and the springy green boughs, and watched the banks go by in luxurious idleness.
Comely banks they were too, laid out by Nature with grasses, and planted with birches, hazels, and pines. They were like bits of the Thames at Mortlake, or the Dee above Chester. It was hard to realise that in winter all this was a place of howling gales and tangled snow-drifts.
Now and again we passed a fisher's camp by the water-side--just a fire, some drying nets, and a piece of cotton cloth which served more as mosquito-bar than tent; and now and again we met a woman paddling a boat whilst a man in the stern fished. Some were Lapps, but most were Finns.
We would pass mile after mile of river-bank which had never been touched by man since the river carved its channel, and mile after mile of forest which had never felt the axe; but still there was not wanting occasional evidences that we were getting into a country less sparsely populated than the aching wilderness we had so wearily tramped through, and the idea made us think back at some of the halts where we had stayed. Those at the farther end were already growing faint and hazy: we seemed to have gone through so much since we had left them.
"I can dimly recall," said one of us, "that years ago we came up to the Polar Sea in a canoe called the _Windward_. But where was it from? I forget."
"A settlement called 'London,' wasn't it?" said the other.
"The place where we got something to eat."
"Ah, I remember, sour milk, wasn't it, and that dog-biscuit stuff? And the natives came to see us off."...
We were talking half seriously too. All those early stages of our expedition seemed so distant and nebulous. We had lived a good many years in those last few weeks.
From all that toil and starvation and strain this river-journey came as a delightful revel. The paddles _cheeped_ against the gunwales, and the water trickled musically. Cuckoos called to us from behind the woods. We took our eyes from one beautiful picture on the shore, only to drink in the pleasures of the next. And then the Finns would take their paddles out of the water altogether, and we would drift down the stream and bask in the sweet, warm silence.