taking us sharpened sticks, roasted and
charred and toasted the meat in the doorway of the stove and over the
gap in its lid. And in time we made a satisfying meal, though the
courses straggled, and their texture was savage. And so on to pipes,
and water boiled in a pewter flask-cup with whisky added, whilst the
injured Se champed over juicy rib-bones in his corner.

The hum and crackle from the stove, the grinding of the gray dog's
teeth, the bumping and hissing of the gale outside, the boom of the
cascades at the precipices, made up most of the sounds for that
evening. Of chat there was a paucity. My knowledge of Norsk extends to
few parts of speech beyond the common noun; and Ulus, ignorant person
that he is, has no Sassenach: pantomime makes our usual phrase-book.
Talk under these circumstances is a strain, and we were too tired for
unnecessary athletics. So we smoked, and pondered over the slaying of
the great deer.

In a while we discarded the stump-stools and trundled them aside. A
bunk ran along the farther side of the hut where the bark had been
stowed, but I had my doubts about its vacancy, and surrendered it to
Ulus. His hide is tough; he had no qualms. I spread for myself a spring
mattress of birch-bark upon the floor. Se annexed the clammy skin. And
so we were all satisfied.

One does not wind up watches in these regions, and as time is
arbitrarily marked off by the cries of the gastric juices, I cannot
tell you how the hours were reckoned up that evening. I think we two
humans verged into a semi-torpid condition after that barbaric meal.
Repletion, heat, and fatigue were too strong a combination for complete
wakefulness; and though perhaps not exactly asleep, we were, like
hibernating animals, very dully conscious of passing events. Se's
condition was inscrutable. His eyes were closed, but that is no
criterion. He may have been asleep. But yet he possessed certain senses
more keenly active than ours. As evidence of this, when the night had
worn on to a tolerable age, we heard him give a growl in
_crescendo_, and then a short yap.

Se in general is undemonstrative to a degree. Hence the short
culminating bark, which might have been overlooked if emanating from
another dog, in his case commanded attention.

I rose on an elbow, but could hear no new sound except the soft rustle
of Ulus's wet clothes. He was moving too. There was a pause. Presently
he whispered "_Bjorn_," and I saw in the stove's faint