s not a particle of skin
left on the end of it, and then continued the friction with my mitten
until my arm ached. If energetic treatment would save it, I was
determined not to lose it that time. Feeling at last a painful thrill
of returning circulation, I relaxed my efforts, and climbed up the
steep bluff behind Dodd and the Major, to the Korak village of
Kamenoi.

The settlement resembled as much as anything a collection of titanic
wooden hour-glasses, which had been half shaken down and reduced to a
state of rickety dilapidation by an earthquake. The houses--if houses
they could be called--were about twenty feet in height, rudely
constructed of driftwood which had been brought down by the river, and
could be compared in shape to nothing but hour-glasses. They had no
doors, or windows of any kind, and could be entered only by climbing
up a pole on the outside, and sliding down another pole through the
chimney--a mode of entrance whose practicability depended entirely
upon the activity and intensity of the fire which burned underneath.
The smoke and sparks, although sufficiently disagreeable, were trifles
of comparative insignificance. I remember being told, in early
infancy, that Santa Claus always came into a house through the
chimney; and although I accepted the statement with the unreasoning
faith of childhood, I could never understand how that singular feat
of climbing down a chimney could be safely accomplished. To satisfy
myself, I felt a strong inclination, every Christmas, to try the
experiment, and was only prevented from doing so by the consideration
of stove-pipes. I might succeed, I thought, in getting down the
chimney; but coming out into a room through an eight-inch stove-pipe
and a narrow stove-door was utterly out of the question. My first
entrance into a Korak _yurt_, however, at Kamenoi, solved all my
childish difficulties, and proved the possibility of entering a house
in the eccentric way which Santa Claus is supposed to adopt. A large
crowd of savage-looking fur-clad natives had gathered around us when
we entered the village, and now stared at us with stupid curiosity as
we made our first attempt at climbing a pole to get into a house.
Out of deference for the Major's rank and superior attainments, we
permitted him to go first. He succeeded very well in getting up the
first pole, and lowered himself with sublime faith into the dark
narrow chimney hole, out of which were pouring clouds of smoke; b