Working night and day, it took three days to cut in and try out the whale. While the work was going on, the decks were so greasy that we could run and slide anywhere for long distances like boys on ice. After the whale had been tried out and the oil casks had been stowed below, we fell upon the decks and paint work with lye and water. Hard work soon had the ship looking as bright as a new pin. CHAPTER XIII SHAKING HANDS WITH SIBERIA The ship's prow was turned northward after work on the whale had been finished. I expected we would soon run into the ice again. We sailed on and on, but not a block of ice big enough to make a highball did we sight. The white floes and drifts and the frozen continent floating southward, along the coasts of which we had cruised for whales and which had surrounded us and held us captive for three weeks, had disappeared entirely. The warm water from the south, the southern winds, and the spring sunshine had melted the ice. Its utter disappearance savored of magic. A long hilly coast rose ahead of us covered with grass, barren of trees or shrubs, dotted with blackened skeletons of old ice--an utterly desolate land. It was Siberia. We put into a bight called St. Lawrence Bay. There was an Eskimo village on the shore. The huts were made of whale ribs covered with hides of walrus and reindeer. In the warm weather, some of the hides had been removed and we saw the white gleaming bones of the frame work. We could see the dogs with tails curling over their backs frisking about and could hear their clamor as they bayed the great white-winged thing that had come up from over the sea's verge. In this first part of July it was continuous day. The sun set at eleven o'clock at night in the northwest. Its disc remained barely below the horizon--we could almost see its flaming rim. A molten glow of color made the sky resplendent just above it as it passed across the north pole. It rose at 1:30 in the morning high in the northeast. All the time it was down a brilliant twilight prevailed--a twilight like that which in our temperate zone immediately follows the sinking of the sun behind a hill. We could see to read without difficulty. Soon boats and kyacks were putting off from the village. When we were still a mile or two out, strange craft came alongside and Eskimo men, women, and children swarmed aboard. Very picturesque they looked in clothes made of the skins of reindeer, hair seals, dogs, and squirrels, oddly trimmed and decorated with fur mosaics in queer designs. Some of the women wore over their furs a yellow water-proof cloak made of the intestines of fish, ornamented with needle-work figures and quite neat looking. The men and the older women had animal faces of low intelligence. The young girls were extremely pretty, with glossy, coal-black hair, bright black eyes, red cheeks, lips like ripe cherries, and gleaming white teeth forever showing in the laughter of irresponsibility and perfect health.