The little craft was very much like a Canadian canoe in her lines, and floated corkily. She was stained a rich saddle-colour with tar, which came off in generous patches where one leaned against it. The younger Lapp (whom we called Morris, through his resemblance to an acquaintance) sat on the floor-boards forward, with his back in the curve of the bow, and sculled with a pair of paddles which worked in withy beckets on thole pins. Feodor, the skipper, squatted aft, with his paddles also in beckets, and laboured on whichever side was required. As no more paddles were available, we two English posed as passengers, and lay in magnificence amidship on a luxurious couch of young green birch shoots, with our worldly goods and chattels bestowed fore and aft of us. The canoe just held her load, and there was nothing much to spare, and the Lapps occupied another half hour in getting her trimmed to their satisfaction. Then Morris pushed out into the swirling rapids of the Pasvik, and we left behind us Elvenaes, and those who waved us farewell, probably for always.
That journey down the Syd Varanger lingers in the memory. A blazing sun dwelt overhead, in a sky as blue as one could see in Tripoli. The fjord sides were sloped in graceful curves and draped with comely greenery. The cuckoo cried to us from the woods. The air above the deep-blue water was dancing with heat, and flights of whirring cormorants and duck gave it life. I think, too, that our sense of comfort was accentuated by the knowledge that not a dozen miles to the northward the cold waves of the Varanger chilled the fishers to the bone, and frozen cliffs and snowy ridges glared icily at the sky. Comfort and complacency depend so much upon comparisons.
The absence of mosquitoes, too, was very grateful. Our faces were all mottled in close patterns from the bitings of the day before, and we told ourselves then that we had paid the initiation fee and had earned immunity for the future. We thought that past experience had taught us all about mosquitoes, but we were destined to learn a deal more about the Northern variety of the breed before we were through at the other side of Arctic Lapland.
The two Lapp canoe men provided us in the meanwhile with plenty of food for observation. Feodor was the wily one. Work was not a thing Feodor loved, and he shirked it like a diplomatist. One or other of his thole pins was constantly carrying away. That naturally had to be replaced. To do this he unshipped his paddles (which had blades shaped like the "Warre" oar at Eton) and clambered forward over the baggage, and sorted amongst the green boughs which formed our couch, till he found a piece of stick of suitable diameter. He had got a reliable eye, and always chose one that would be certain to break if properly handled; and then he went aft again and whittled it accurately down to size with his sheath-knife. Then he would give the withy beckets a thoughtful overhaul, and by the time he had got his paddles shipped again and in the water, he had usually earned a good twenty minutes' shirk. He was a wrinkled little gnome, this skipper of ours, incredibly dirty, and brimming with good humour. He had one available eye that gleamed like a bird's, and over the other he wore a grimy patch made fast with a piece of rope yarn round his lank black hair. Later on, when we got into a breeze, this patch kept blowing up and caused him much annoyance. It seemed that the eye itself was missing, and the wind got into the empty socket and gave him cold in the head. For which very sufficient reason he shipped his starboard paddle and held the patch in place with the spare hand, so as to keep out the draught. He was a wonderfully agile "sugarer" was this elderly Skolte Lapp.