xplained.

"No like man. See?" He showed how the skirt of her deerskin parki,
reaching, like her brother's, a little below the knee, was shaped round
in front, and Nicholas's own--all men's parkis were cut straight
across.

"I see. How's your father?"

Nicholas looked grave; even Princess Muckluck stopped laughing.

"Come," said Nicholas, and the Boy followed him on all fours into the
Kachime.

Entering on his stomach, he found himself in a room about sixteen by
twenty feet, two-thirds underground, log-walls chinked with moss, a
roof of poles sloping upwards, tent-like, but leaving an opening in the
middle for a smoke-hole some three feet square, and covered at present
by a piece of thin, translucent skin. With the sole exception of the
smoke-hole, the whole thing was so covered with earth, and capped with
snow, that, expecting a mere cave, one was surprised at the wood-lining
within. The Boy was still more surprised at the concentration, there,
of malignant smells.

He gasped, and was for getting out again as fast as possible, when the
bearskin flap fell behind him over the Kachime end of the
entrance-tunnel.

Through the tobacco-smoke and the stifling air he saw, vaguely, a grave
gathering of bucks sitting, or, rather, lounging and squatting, on the
outer edge of the wide sleeping-bench that ran all round the room,
about a foot and a half from the hewn-log floor.

Their solemn, intent faces were lit grotesquely by the uncertain glow
of two seal-oil lamps, mounted on two posts, planted one in front of
the right sleeping-bench, the other on the left.

The Boy hesitated. Was it possible he could get used to the atmosphere?
Certainly it was warm in here, though there was no fire that he could
see. Nicholas was talking away very rapidly to the half-dozen grave and
reverend signiors, they punctuating his discourse with occasional
grunts and a well-nigh continuous coughing. Nicholas wound up in
English.

"Me tell you: he heap good friend. You ketch um tobacco?" he inquired
suddenly of his guest. Fortunately, the Boy had remembered to "ketch"
that essential, and his little offering was laid before the
council-men. More grunts, and room made for the visitor on the
sleeping-bench next the post that supported one of the lamps, a clay
saucer half-full of seal-oil, in which a burning wick of twisted moss
gave forth a powerful odour, a fair amount of smoke, and a faint light.

The Boy sat down, still staring about hi