GOLOVINSKY, irj 



with me, we should be able to hold out for a week 

 at least, in which time I should probably have 

 obtained my coveted bear-skin. 



Outside the hut all was beauty. The hut itself 

 was as nearly as possible the centre of a bay of 

 fairly high hills, enclosing a couple of hundred 

 acres or so of plain covered with low shrubs. 

 Beyond the first chain of hills, which was wooded 

 to the top, rose another and a higher chain, and 

 so one after another, in successive semicircles, they 

 rose range above range, until far away in the 

 sapphire sky shone the white glory of the snow- 

 peaks. Out at sea a long line of pelicans lay 

 tossing on the little waves, like a small fleet riding 

 at anchor. Within the hut all was squalor and 

 filth. The place consisted of two rooms, in one 

 of which was a telegraphic apparatus of the 

 simplest kind, with a handle like that of a barrel 

 organ, and a face like the face of a clock with 

 letters in place of numerals. This was the deity 

 of the place and Stepan's pride and fear. Near it 

 was a camp bedstead, and here the list of the 

 furniture ends. The other room was merely a 

 shed, in which such cooking as we had to do was 

 done ; and though the appliances were of the 

 simplest, we never taxed them overmuch. The 

 floors throughout were of mud, and several inches 

 deep in refuse, dating from the time of Stepan's 

 arrival in his den. 



I 



