Some four or five of the women, with Amazonian strength, were hauling from one shed a huge kettle, in which it was evidently meant to try the fat from certain portions of the seal.
Caius held his horse still upon the edge of the ice, too well diverted with the activity on the shore to leave it at once.

Behind the animated scene and the row of gray snow-thatched sheds, the shore rose white and lonely.

Except for the foot-tracks on the road by which they had come, and the peak of the lighthouse within sight, it would have seemed that a colony had suddenly sprung to life in an uninhabited Arctic region.
It was from this slope above the sheds that Caius now heard himself hailed by loud shouting, and, looking up, he saw that O'Shea had come there to overlook the scene below.

Some women stood around him.

Caius supposed that Madame Le Maitre was there.
O'Shea made a trumpet of his hands and shouted that Caius must not take his horse upon the ice that day, for the beast would be frightened and do himself harm.
Caius was affronted.