kept at all hours, while much was
necessarily trusted to the dogs. All day one of the party was on the
lookout, while at night the hut had its entrance well barred. Several
days, however, were thus passed without molestation, and then Sakalar
took the Kolimsk men out to hunt, and left Ivan and Kolina together.
The young man had learned the value of his half-savage friend: her
devotion to her father and the party generally was unbounded. She
murmured neither at privations nor at sufferings, and kept up the
courage of Ivan by painting in glowing terms all his brilliant future.
She seemed to have laid aside her personal feelings, and to look on
him only as one doing battle with fortune in the hope of earning the
hand of the rich widow of Yakoutsk. But Ivan was much disposed to
gloomy fits; he supposed himself forgotten, and slighted, and looked
on the time of his probation as interminable. It was in this mood that
one day he was roused from his fit by a challenge from Kolina to go
and see if the seals had come up to breathe at the hole which every
morning was freshly broken in the ice. Ivan assented, and away they
went gaily down to the bay. No seals were there, and after a short
stay they returned toward the hut, recalled by the distant howling
of the dogs. But as they came near, they could see no sign of men or
animals, though the sensible brutes still whined under the shelter
of their snow-heaps. Ivan, much surprised, raised the curtain of the
door, his gun in hand, expecting to find that some animal was inside.
The lamp was out, and the hut in total darkness. Before Ivan could
recover his upright position, four men leaped on him, and he was a
prisoner.

Kolina drew back, and cocked her gun; but the natives, satisfied
with their present prey, formed round Ivan in a compact body, tied
his hands, and bade him walk. Their looks were sufficiently wild
and menacing to make him move, especially as he recognized them
as belonging to the warlike party of the Tchouktchas--a tribe of
Siberians who wander about the Polar Seas in search of game, who cross
Behring's Straits in skin-boats, and who probably are the only persons
who by their temporary sojourn in New Siberia, have caused some to
suppose it inhabited. Kolina stood uncertain what to do, but in a few
minutes she roused four of the dogs, and followed. Ivan bawled to her
to go back, but the girl paid no attention to his request, determined,
as it seemed, to know his fate.