a halt became necessary.

Ivan was the first to raise his fair companion from the ground; and
then with much difficulty--their hands, despite all the clothes,
being half-frozen--they again put the nartas in condition to proceed.
Sakalar had not stopped, but was seen in the distance unharnessing his
sledge, and then poking about in a huge heap of snow. He was searching
for the hut, which had been completely buried in the drift. In a few
minutes the whole six were at work, despite the blast, while the dogs
were scratching holes for themselves in the soft snow, within which
they soon lay snug, their noses only out of the hole, while over this
the sagacious brutes put the tip of their long bushy tails.

At the end of an hour well employed, the hut was freed inside from
snow, and a fire of stunted bushes with a few logs lit in the middle.
Here the whole party cowered, almost choked with the thick smoke,
which, however, was less painful than the blast from the icy sea. The
smoke escaped with difficulty, because the roof was still covered with
firm snow, and the door was merely a hole to crawl through. At last,
however, they got the fire to the state of red embers, and succeeded
in obtaining a plentiful supply of tea and food: after which their
limbs being less stiff, they fed the dogs.

While they were attending to the dogs, the storm abated, and was
followed by a magnificent aurora borealis. It rose in the north, a
sort of semi-arch of light; and then across the heavens, in almost
every direction, darted columns of a luminous character. The light was
as bright as that of the moon in its full. There were jets of lurid
red light in some places, which disappeared and came again; while
there being a dead calm after the storm, the adventurers heard a kind
of rustling sound in the distance, faint and almost imperceptible,
and yet believed to be the rush of the air in the sphere of the
phenomenon. A few minutes more and all had disappeared.

After a hearty meal, the wanderers launched into the usual topics
of conversation in those regions. Sakalar was not a boaster,
but the young men from Nijnei-Kolimsk were possessed of the
usual characteristics of hunters and fishermen. They told with
considerable vigor and effect long stories of their adventures, most
exaggerated--and when not impossible, most improbable--of bears killed
in hand to hand combat, of hundreds of deer slain in the crossing of
a river, and of multitudinous heaps