Their provisions consisted
of a tin of bully and four edible tiles or army biscuits, with some
margarine in a Y.M.C.A. envelope.
The story they told on their return--for they did return and in good
time for dinner--was mostly Honnell's, but I must admit that Swan could
not be got to refute it. As they approached the village--some huts on a
white hillside above a frozen lake--a representative of the dog-colony
came to meet them, waving his tail with an anti-clockwise circular
motion impossible to the dog of temperate zones. Having inspected
them he escorted them on their way in a perfectly civilised and even
courteous manner.
So far from being resisted, their entry was ignored save by the little
fur-capped boys, who collected at their heels as if they had formed the
vanguard of a circus, and the little brightly-kerchiefed girls, who
bolted for cover. All the adult male inhabitants, fiercely-bearded
little men like trolls done up in reindeer-skin from top to toe,
appeared to be engrossed in the manufacture of sleighs, although the
village was already littered and cluttered up with them; and all the
ladies were indoors sewing reindeer-skin into trousers or making tea.
Having exchanged a noise like "_Sdrastetye_" (which in these parts seems
to mean "_Bon jour_") with everybody they saw, our two friends sat on a
log, and rested, while Honnell set about sketching, as he calls it, the
primitive wooden church.
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