But did we so much as get into a doze? I fancy not. We lay there motionless on the hay, with our lower extremities hidden from the insects by the wet blankets, and our heads roof to roof beneath the odorous tent; and the sweat dripped out of us at every pore. A midnight sun was blazing high above the hut, and the air in the room was like that of an oven. The heat under the tent was stifling. Ever and again first one mosquito, and then another, and then a third, would get inside our defences, and we would have to bestir ourselves to slay them. The hay, too, was full of ticks, which added to our torments. When we lay down, our faces were puffed and blotched with the bites till we could scarcely see from our eyes; our hands were puffed out like boxing-gloves; and our arms were swollen till they fitted tight inside a coat-sleeve. And each of the million bites was a centre of irritation. Yet every minute this state of torture was being added to.
We passed that night in a condition bordering on frenzy, and let not those who merely know the mosquito in Africa, in India, and the Americas, judge us too hardly when I say that at times we wished most heartily we had never set foot in so detestable a country. Cold, we could have endured; privation, we were prepared for; but this horrible stew of flies ground upon the nerves till we were scarcely responsible for our actions.
In that plan of route we originally laid down at Enare, we had expected to find Ivalomati to be a village of tolerable size, and hoped to get carriers there who would take us on across the country to Pokka, and possibly to Scurujarvi. This idea was of course exploded, and so we set to work to try the power of blarney upon Pedr, Pat, and Johann, and persuade them to come farther on.
They did not see it one little bit. They said they had come much too far from home as it was, and had not the least wish to go farther. They were quite pleasant over their refusal, and quite determined. Johann mimicked the pair of us carrying the loads ourselves, tramping through the country, getting bogged in swamps, and losing the way, and finally dying of hunger and being covered up (like the babes in the wood) with a drift of grass and branches; and he roared with laughter at his own witty pantomime. Pedr glanced towards the direction in which Pokka lay, turned his back on it with decision, and smiled beautifully. And Pat, the unshaven Pat, looked so obsequious and so sly, and referred to his imaginary sore heel with such a roguish eye, that one really expected him to throw away disguise, and address us as "yer honours," and beg for John Jamieson's whisky there and then on the spot.