“Oh, these heroes!  Are they not exasperating, Frona?  But what about the reindeer-stealing and the greasy princesses?”

The Gold Commissioner’s wife beamed upon him, and glancing for permission to Frona, he went on.

“The coast people were Esquimo stock, merry-natured and happy, and inoffensive.  They called themselves the Oukilion, or the Sea Men.  I bought dogs and food from them, and they treated me splendidly.  But they were subject to the Chow Chuen, or interior people, who were known as the Deer Men.  The Chow Chuen were a savage, indomitable breed, with all the fierceness of the untamed Mongol, plus double his viciousness.  As soon as I left the coast they fell upon me, confiscated my goods, and made me a slave.”

“But were there no Russians?” Mrs. Schoville asked.

“Russians?  Among the Chow Chuen?” He laughed his amusement.  “Geographically, they are within the White Tsar’s domain; but politically, no.  I doubt if they ever heard of him.  Remember, the interior of North-Eastern Siberia is hidden in the polar gloom, a terra incognita, where few men have gone and none has returned.”

“But you—­”

“I chance to be the exception.  Why I was spared, I do not know.  It just so happened.  At first I was vilely treated, beaten by the women and children, clothed in vermin-infested mangy furs, and fed on refuse.  They were utterly heartless.  How I managed to survive is beyond me; but I know that often and often, at first, I meditated suicide.  The only thing that saved me during that period from taking my own life was the fact that I quickly became too stupefied and bestial, what of my suffering and degradation.  Half-frozen, half-starved, undergoing untold misery and hardship, beaten many and many a time into insensibility, I became the sheerest animal.

“On looking back much of it seems a dream.  There are gaps which my memory cannot fill.  I have vague recollections of being lashed to a sled and dragged from camp to camp and tribe to tribe.  Carted about for exhibition purposes, I suppose, much as we do lions and elephants and wild men.  How far I so journeyed up and down that bleak region I cannot guess, though it must have been several thousand miles.  I do know that when consciousness returned to me and I really became myself again, I was fully a thousand miles to the west of the point where I was captured.

“It was springtime, and from out of a forgotten past it seemed I suddenly opened my eyes.  A reindeer thong was about my waist and made fast to the tail-end of a sled.  This thong I clutched with both hands, like an organ-grinder’s monkey; for the flesh of my body was raw and in great sores from where the thong had cut in.