fine black fox.
They had had their meal and were stretched at full length by the fire.
Luka had gone off to sleep. Godfrey was almost dozing when he heard a
slight rustle in the grass, and opening his eyes saw a black fox
standing at a distance of ten paces. It had evidently been attracted by
the smell of some fish they had been frying, and stood with its nose in
the air sniffing. Godfrey's gun was lying beside him, the left-hand
barrel he always kept loaded with ball. His hands stole quietly to it,
and as he grasped it he sat up and fired a snap shot at the fox as it
turned and darted away. To his surprise as well as delight it rolled
over.

"There is a piece of luck, Luka," he said, as the latter sprang to his
feet bow in hand at the report. "That is a pure fluke, for I fired
without raising the gun or taking the least aim."

Luka examined the fox. "It is one of the largest I ever saw," he said,
"and the fur is in splendid condition."

"Its skin will come in handy, Luka. We must put in and replenish our
stores at Droinik, at the mouth of the Petchora. We are running very
short of tea and tobacco, we have been very extravagant lately, and we
have had no flour since those scamps robbed us. It is very lucky Jack
was so sound asleep. I often scold you, Jack, for being such a sleepy
little beggar, but for once it is lucky, for if you had heard the fox
coming he would have been off without my getting a shot at him."

Accordingly when they reached the mouth of the Petchora they landed
three miles from Droinik, and Luka, taking the fox-skin and those of
other smaller animals they had shot during their excursions, went into
the town, and returned with four pounds of tea, as much tobacco, forty
pounds of flour, two large tin kettles, each capable of holding a gallon
of water, to carry an extra supply, and sixty silver roubles.

"I am heartily glad you are back, Luka, for I have been nearly eaten
alive; the mosquitoes are awful--worse, I think, than at any place we
have landed."

They had indeed entirely given up sleeping ashore since their forced
stay on the Gulf of Obi, always pushing off two or three hundred yards
from the shore and anchoring, for the mosquitoes were terrible; and upon
their hunting expeditions they always smeared their faces, necks, and
hands thickly over with bears' fat, but even with this they suffered
severely. Nowhere, indeed, are mosquitoes so great a scourge as along
the shores of the Arctic Sea