It was funny, but it was not business. Was our tramp across the country going to be broken after we had got so far and gone through so much, so very much? We rubbed our aching bites, and reasoned with the carriers still more earnestly. We besought them almost _in formâ pauperis_ (seeing that we had not got the power to command), and gradually their mood changed. It is humiliating now to remember how our spirits rose as they began to yield. And at last they consented to go with us as far as Pokka; but no farther. Be it well understood, they pointed out, they would only escort us to Pokka--only. Well, sufficient for the march (we told ourselves) were the carriers thereof. Subsequent marches must be left to provide for themselves.
Once they had agreed to go, there was no more delay. We borrowed a canoe, a very rotten canoe, got on board, and set off up the Ivalojoki.
We had trouble at first, because the river, which was almost as wide as a lake, was full of weeds, which clung to the canoe and clogged the paddles. But these cleared as the river narrowed, and we worked up between low banks where scrub birches grew amongst angular blocks of gray, lichened stone.
The banks came closer together as we paddled on, and the river increased in pace, and the way of the canoe grew less. Johann, with his mouth open and the sweat dripping from his chin, tugged manfully at the sculls in the bows. Pedr, who was squatted aft with the steering paddle, had his work cut out to keep clear of rocks round which the water swirled noisily, and occasionally there was a _bump-bump-bump_ as we dragged over some submerged boulder which he had not seen.
The little old canoe strained and shivered in the stress of the stream, and leaked so abundantly that Hayter, who was labouring mid-ships with the baler, could barely keep the water under; and presently, as she showed a disposition to swamp altogether, we had to run into the bank and lighten her burden. Pat, much to his disgust, was ousted from his rest among the baggage, and made to force his way through the tangle of shrub and swamp and grasses which made the river-bank; and we two foreigners went ashore with him. The two Lapps unshipped their paddles, and punted cannily up the rapids with eight-foot poles. They had hard work, but we on shore did not exactly find it easy going. Back-washes branched off the stream, sown with yellow lilies, and some we jumped across, and some we jumped into; and when the rapids came to an end some half mile higher up, and we were able to get on board again, liquid mud oozed from us into little black pools.