y our only practicable way to the coast--to home, dinner, dry things,
and other matters longed for. And on this lake a lake-sea was running,
short, quick, and steep, which is the wettest of all seas for small
craft to tackle. The boat which had carried us up was one of those
_retrousse_-nosed punts peculiar to the country, the very worst
possible breed of craft for the weather. She would not face it for
thirty seconds. Her turn-up snout would fall off the moment we left the
shingle, she would fill and swamp, and we should be left a swim without
having in any degree furthered our cause. Wherefore I also bowed to the
inevitable, but like Ulus I said things. There was no chance of
reaching the abodes of men by any other route. We were booked till the
gale chose to ease--at any rate till morning; and for myself, I
contemplated a moist bivouac under streaming Jove, with one clammy
elk-skin for a joint coverlet.

But luckily Ulus was a man of the land besides being a vagrant hunter.
He led back into the forest. A score of yards from the margin, in an
overgrown clearing, was an abandoned _saeter_ hut. It was in none
of the best of repair, was seven feet square inside, and held five feet
of head-room under the roof-tree. It was about half filled with dried
birch-bark, piled up against the farther end. It also contained a rude
wooden trough and ball for pounding up coffee, three sections of
pine-stem for seats, and a rusted old stove which had not been worth
carrying away.

Four words made a division of labour. Ulus set off to revisit the
_stor bock_, Se going with him in case there should be any doubt
about the track. It was my task to create a blaze with the dry,
spluttering birch-bark, and collect a stack of solider fuel to feed it
with. Afterwards I went and stopped the more obvious gaps in the roof
with turf and logs, and by the time these things were done hunter and
hound had returned. Then we wrung the supersaturation of wet from our
clothes, and Se had a centrifugal shake; and so prepared, we went
inside. Thanks to wasteful use of an absent person's store of
birch-bark, the place was warm as an oven. Such an atmosphere was
grateful and comforting. Se indeed revelled in the heat too much at
first, and pressing over near its source, thrust out a moist black
nose, and got the full effect. There followed a hiss and a howl, and a
sulky retreat to the farther angle. Then we two bipeds hacked off
gobbets from the venison, and