236 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 
quietly, ‘Put it down.’ He obeyed like a lamb, putting 
it on the ground exactly where I pointed my finger. 
Poor old chap! he looked at me deprecatingly, as your 
retriever will sometimes look. ‘Uano good, very 
good,’ he said. But I felt I must give him a lesson 
somehow. So I said, ‘Bring some water.’ He fetched 
it in a wooden bowl, and then I made him pour it 
into the cap. This done I swished it round, emptied it, 
and said, ‘ Now put it on the boat again.’ He did it all 
so humbly and obediently that I fairly wanted to smack 
him on the back with ‘All right, old fellow, no bones 
broken over that.’ But I felt that this impression might 
be of lasting use in case we should ever have to leave 
our things unguarded. So he crept away to his choom. 
I was sorry, and instinctively knew I had lost ground. 
If they once began to fear me they would retire into 
themselves with all the old reserve they showed at first, 
and then good-bye to my Samoyed studies. This came 
home to me forcibly at breakfast-time. Instead of little 
Wanka coming running down with ‘Ortow Ahnglia!’ 
at the top of his voice, as he usually did, there comes old 
Uano very solemnly, with a wooden bowl of goose and 
salt and bread. This he offers to me as though I were 
the great god Naim himself. I took it for this once. 
The heat beat us all. The men and women put off 
their skins for the first time, and came out in red shirts 
with the knife-belt round the waist, and the shirt tails 
outside in Russian fashion. Young Yelisei had a green 
