CHAPTER I 
IN SCHAROK CAMP 
So the Samoyeds were gone, and again we were 
alone. 
There was no help for it, and the best we could do at 
the moment was to prowl about and see exactly how we 
lay. 
We made for the huts—they were about as cheerful 
and promising as a group of tombs. 
Three were ‘ombara’—rickety shanties, designed as a 
cover for barrels and skins. 
Three were ‘isba,’ or dwelling-huts: one was locked, 
the other two we entered. The first was Uano’s. 
The door—so low that you had to bend down as you 
passed—opened into an antechamber, some ten feet 
square, and blocked with barrels full of fat. The floor 
was of earth, covered with a good deep layer of melted 
seal-blubber. It had run from the tubs out through the 
doorway and was smeared all about. A still smaller 
door led into the living-room. On either side of this 
was a wooden settle, a small table stood between the 
two, a tiny window looked out across the sea, and on the 
wall hung a little Russian cross of wood. 
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