CHAPTER XIV.
ANOTHER FISHING EXCURSION—LANDING A SALMON—THE CARRIOLE—BOATS ROWED BY LADIES—DEPARTURE FROM LARVIG—CHRISTIANSAND HARBOUR—RETURN TO BOOM—SINCERE WELCOME—ANGLING AT THE FALLS—THE FORSAKEN ANGLER—A MISUNDERSTANDING—RECONCILIATION—ST. JOHN'S DAY—SIMPLICITY OF MANNERS.
On Tuesday morning, at three, I joined R—— and P——, and took a second trip up the river, to indulge in this pastime of angling.
When we arrived on our fishing ground, the salmon were seen springing two or three feet out of the water into the air, a sign not always good for the sportsman; for the Norwegians say, that when the fish begin to leap out of the water, they are moving up the river, and disinclined to take food. It was entertaining to observe them, as they leaped in various places, from rock to rock, up the stream of the Foss; and although they would be brought back by the immense volume of water, nothing disheartened, would repeat the leap again and again. Seated in the pram, I watched in the clear stream, the caution with which some of the salmon approached the fly, and after darting away from it, returned and sported round it, as if perfectly aware of the deceitful manner by which the hook was hid; but in a reckless moment, just as the fly was moved along the top of the water, resembling the living insect with such exactitude that I could be deceived, they would make a sullen plunge, and then as if aware of the foolish act they had committed, secure their death by running away with the whole line before they could possibly feel the hook. A slight jerk is given to the tackle, and their doom is sealed.
I saw one salmon caught through his own folly; for had he been less violent, he might have gratified his curiosity by tasting the fabricated fly, and could, when he found that it was nothing more than a macaw's feather, have quietly spitten it out; but as soon as the hook lanced his lip, the fish made a leap of several feet above the surface, and on falling into the river again, shot like a silver arrow, towards any weed or rock he saw, sheltering himself behind it, as if he deemed this retreat secure. But when he felt a motive power, over which he had no control, gently drawing him by the head from his old abode, and the consequent slight, shooting pang of the hook, away he flew, right up towards the pram, flapped his tail furiously to the right and left, and then bounced about his native pool, indignant of the vile trick that had been played him. R——, was soon rowed to the bank, and I stood by his side gaff in hand.
"Look out," said R——, in an under tone; and, turning up the sleeve of my coat, I gave the gaff the full length of the handle. The fish, however, saw me move, and like a flash of lightning, clove the water to its lowest depth. The line passed with such rapidity between R——'s thumb and forefinger, that it almost cut them off.
The manœuvring of ten minutes more brought the salmon within a few feet of the bank, and crawling through the rushes, I remained ready to perform my part of the tragedy. Near and nearer, turned on his back, and panting laboriously, the fish allowed himself to be drawn towards the shore. Lowering the gaff slowly into the stream, till I guessed it was two or three inches below the fish, and then making a sudden lunge, I pierced the soft part of the stomach a little behind the two fore fins, and lifted the salmon from the water.
"You did that devilish well," exclaimed R——, hurrying up to remove the hook. The salmon plunged in every direction violently; and it was with great difficulty I could keep my hold of the gaff.
"Make haste," I said, "or he will be off the gaff; see, how the flesh of the stomach is ripping!"
And so it was. The weight of the salmon was sufficient to tear the tender part of the flesh under the stomach, and the longer I held the fish from the ground to allow R—— to remove the hook, the more probable it appeared, that, the salmon by his furious struggles, would lacerate and divide the flesh, and fall from the gaff.
"Poor wretch!" said R——, as he strove to unfasten the hook from the ligaments of the jaw, "I am keeping him in his pain a long time; but I can't help it."
"I must put him on the ground," I observed, when the fish by its struggles nearly twisted the gaff from my hand.
"No; for heaven's sake, don't!" exclaimed R——. "He'll knock both of us into the water if you do. There," continued R——, holding the hook, at last, in his hand, and cleansing it from slime and gore on the cuff of his coat, "put him down;" and opening a clasp-knife, he ran the blade into the crown of the salmon's head. The creaking sound of the bone as it yielded to the passage of the sharp knife, like the cutting of a cork, made my teeth ache. The fish stirred not; but the blood trickled from his mouth in small bubbles, and stretching out all his fins, as a bird would stretch its wings to fly, a spasmodic shudder succeeded, and then the fins gradually relaxed and adhered close to his sides, while the blood still oozed from the mouth and gills, and striking his tail once or twice on the ground, the salmon seemed to fix his round, staring, glassy eye on me, as if in accusation of the torture I had caused, and gaping, died.
"If I ever gaff another fish, may I be gaffed myself," I said.
"Fish do not feel so acutely as you imagine," replied R——, wiping the penknife on his handkerchief with the coolness of an anatomical operator; "all the quivering you observe is not from actual pain, but merely from muscular action."
"Well, I am not surgeon enough to know that," I answered; "but if you talk for three years, you will never persuade me that a fish does not feel, as well as every other creature, in proportion to its size, the anguish of bodily torture as sensibly as you, or I."
"Never mind arguments," cried R——, "here, let's see what he weighs."
And R—— drew from his coat-pocket, a small balance that he always carried about with him, and hooking the defunct salmon on it, held it up.
"Twenty-two pounds to a fraction," he said; and took a little book from his other pocket, and noted down the weight. Casting up the figures to himself in a sort of whisper common to all calculators, R—— observed aloud, when he had concluded his addition,
"I have killed forty-five pounds myself. That's not so bad, eh? Come on;" and hurrying into his pram, was rowed away.
I did not remain much longer on the bank of the river, and desiring a change, I walked towards the road that ran parallel with the stream. A Norwegian peasant, driving a carriole soon overtook me, and asking him in the most grammatical and simple manner I could, if he were returning to Larvig, he made me a long speech in reply; but beseeching him in my second address to give me a monosyllabic answer, either affirmatively or negatively, as I was a foreigner, the man bowed his head till his chin came in contact with the bone of his chest, and said,
"Ja!"
I then asked him if he were as desirous of letting his carriole, as I was of hiring it; and he again said,
"Ja!"
I tendered several small silver coins, amounting to an ort, a piece of Norwegian money equivalent in value to eight-pence sterling, and begged the peasant to tell me if the offer were sufficiently generous. He counted the coins in the palm of my hand. When he had done so, he smiled, and said,
"Ja, tak;" and shaking hands with me, he gave me the rope reins.
The carriole is an elegant, comfortable, but most unsociable vehicle; for it is as unfit to hold two persons, as an ordinary arm-chair. To sit properly in a carriole, you should be rather round-shouldered, as its shape is not unlike half a walnut, scooped out. The post-boy sits behind, or stands up, as a groom does in England; but his position must be uncomfortable in the extreme, as the carriole has no springs, and bounds and jumps heavily over ruts and pebbles, causing him to fidget at intervals, and make an exclamation of discomfort most irregularly. The shafts and wheels are slight, and the body painted uniformly of a chocolate colour. The foot-board is not larger than a tea-tray, about six inches square, and in order to reach it, the legs are so extended as to bring the tip of the toes and the apex of the knees on the same plane. Nor does the driver look down on his horse, as he would in England; but the eye has a level view along the back of the animal, and his neck, or wooden collar obstructs any further perspective.
I could not make the man, or skydsgut, as he is called, who accompanied me, understand ten consecutive words I spoke; but asking a multitude of questions, I thought I must have collected a multitude of information. Disliking the dulness of my companion, I drove at a swift pace, but the skydsgut did not seem to like it, and several times I could guess from his manner, that he was expostulating with me. The Norwegians love their horses with the strong, feminine devotion of Arabs, and it is not an uncommon sight to see the skydsgut, if he be a boy, burst into a passionate fit of tears should you lash his horse twice in a mile. He will strive to tell his grief, but if the language of his sorrow be not understood, he will cover his face with his hands, and weep aloud by the road side. The Norwegians have given Englishmen the credit of being impatient travellers, and from their desire to pass over the greatest quantity of ground in the smallest quantity of time, they are said to use the whip more frequently than is necessary. I do not know that this is an incorrect opinion. As one man has peculiarities that another man has not, so one nation may be noted for eccentricities, of which another nation is devoid; and, for my own part, I am inclined to think, that, however superciliously Englishmen may regard the usages and habits of foreigners, there are no people who give strangers a truer idea of maniacs than Englishmen themselves.
R—— and P——, returned in the evening with a boat full of salmon, and one fine fish, weighing nearly thirty-two pounds, was smoked and prepared to be sent as a present to England. I passed the whole of the subsequent day at Larvig, and the Consul begged, that as I was alone, I would dine with him. I accepted his invitation. After dinner, in the cool of the afternoon, his daughters, two very lady-like and pretty girls, requested me to join an excursion they were about to make across the fiord, to the opposite shore. These ladies would insist upon rowing the boat the whole distance, upwards of two miles, themselves. I objected for a time; but when they told me it was the custom of the country, and, that the art of sculling was as much an accomplishment as the softer allurements of the harp, or guitar, I felt more reconciled, and fully appreciated an honour that could never be offered to me again.
At half-past ten o'clock, shortly after we had returned from our trip, and while I was standing on a high rock, from which an extensive view of the fiord could be seen, and talking to the Consul and several ladies, a gun was fired from the yacht.
"His Lordship is returned," said the Consul to me, "and I think that is for you."
"If it be so, they will fire again," I replied. The echo of the cable, as the men began to heave it, left the Consul's conjecture no longer chimerical; and after a little while, the flash and report of another gun leaped one after the other, from crag to crag, through the dusk of evening, and whirling above our heads, bounded over the summit of the mountain.
"Come, there's no doubt now," observed the Consul, turning round towards me.
"No," I answered; "but they don't suppose I can get on board without a boat."
"You can have mine, with pleasure;" and the Consul, addressing his little son, desired that a boat should be kept in readiness.
"Oh! there! look there," exclaimed two, or three ladies, pointing towards the cutter.
"Ay, the anchor's away," said the Consul; and the yacht, with flapping jib, began to move, like a colossal swan with erected crest, proudly through the water.
The main-sail being well brailed up, the two boats were hauled alongside to the davits, and while they were being hoisted on them, a third gun was fired. The ladies, delighted with the flash and thundering of the guns, begged me to linger a little longer, that another gun might be fired; but fearful that R—— would play some mad prank, and stand out of the fiord without me, I promised the fair dames, that the next time I came to Norway, I would comply with their request, and never leave them, or Larvig again.
The Consul's eldest son soon rowed me to the yacht. When I stood on deck, and looked towards the shore, I could see the white handkerchiefs of those whom I had just left, waving through the dusky air.
"There are some of your loves," said R—— to me.
"They do not wish you well less than they do me," I replied.
The separation from Larvig was the feeling of a second regret I confessed since my departure from England. Dear old Larvig! It is the green oasis where recollection, ever loving, turns to rest; and where the springs of Friendship's warm simplicity, may quench the thirst of him who sighs for Sympathy upon the Desert of Society.
At midnight we cleared the Larvig Fiord, and shaped our course for Christiansand. The weather had been sultry and calm; and at three o'clock in the morning, a tremendous thunder-storm spent the principal part of its anger upon us. The rain descended as if it had been spouted at the yacht through water-pipes; and the uproar of the thunder among the mountains, and the frequency and vividness with which the lightning gleamed, showing every object on the sea and land, were so terrific, that, each man turned in his hammock, and rubbing his eyes, wished to know what all the noise and light on deck were about.
"Lord! how it thunders!" I heard one man growl, as the peal awoke him.
"The lightning's no better," answered another, as a strong, red flash followed close after the sledge-hammer blow of the clap. The officer of the watch gave some command in muffled tones, and immediately afterwards the man at the helm muttered in a gruff voice,
"Seven bells."
When the hour had been struck, the silence was again profound; and only the pattering of the drops of rain on the deck, as the storm receded, could be heard.
The next morning, before I was up, there was an altercation on deck; and the word "stuff" seemed to prevail over every other.
"Here, D——," I heard R—— exclaim to the sailing master, "just look here;" and then a short pause ensued, until D—— reached the after part of the yacht, where the jolly-boat had been secured on deck.
"As long as you fellows can stuff yourselves," R—— continued, "that's all you care about; but, after that, my property may go to the devil."
Then there was a dialogue, in an under tone, explanatory of something that had gone wrong.
"I am sure, my Lord," pursued D——, "I am as careful as I can be, and I endeavour to make every man the same."
"It's all very fine to say so," answered R——, "but I wish you would act after the same fashion; for here's a salmon I ordered to be cured at Larvig, for the purpose of sending to England as a present; and just because not one man would take the trouble to throw a piece of tarpaulin over it last night, to keep off the rain, it is perfectly spoilt."
The cured salmon had been placed in the jolly-boat the evening before, and orders were strictly given, that it should be covered during the night; but the attention paid to those orders amounted to what I have related. The salmon, however, was hung up in the shrouds, and after a great deal of trouble and attention, it was sufficiently preserved to arrive in England, three weeks afterwards, and to command the praise of every one who tasted it.
At two o'clock in the afternoon we entered Christiansand Harbour; and taking our old berth a little to the westward of the castle, fired a salute, to let our friends know we had returned. Several gentlemen came on board, and made many inquiries about our travels; and when they had learned all, arrangements were made for us to fish in the Toptdal River, at Boom, as long as we liked.
Early on Monday morning we weighed anchor, and reached up the fiord as far towards the mouth of the Toptdal River, as the depth of water would permit; and after an hour's sail, the yacht was brought up in a beautiful little bay, about three miles from Christiansand, and about four from Boom.
From a sky azure and warm as in an oriental clime, not a cloud was reflected on the smooth, transparent water, and scarcely a breath of air stirred the leaves of the trees. So absolute was the stillness, that the voices of fishermen, who dwelt among the rocks, could be heard in conversation, although their forms were diminished by distance to the size of a rook.
At five o'clock we were at Boom again, and our friend the Anglo-Norwegian was shaking us by the hand. His eyes sparkled with delight at the renewal of our acquaintance; and promising us the best of sport, he led us towards the cottage in which we had lodged on our first visit. The peasant, our landlord, came forth to the cottage door, pipe in hand, to salute us; while his wife gazed at us through a small window; and, when she caught our glance, smiled, with a sunnier language on her face than she could have uttered with her tongue, the sincerity of her joy to see us once more. I felt as if I had been a long time a wanderer, and had returned home. The three beds in the cottage were ordered to be got ready for us, and a lodging in a neighbouring farm-house was secured for the four men who had rowed the gig.
The fish did not take the fly willingly, for only one or two were caught between R—— and P——; but the amazing number of salmon that kept leaping out of the water, during the whole afternoon, bade us not despair of being more prosperous on the morrow. The Toptdal River is the property of a celebrated merchant resident at Christiansand, and he derives a considerable income from the sale of fish caught in it. It is one of the most famous salmon streams in the south of Norway; and its celebrity may in some way be tested when I state, that, two and three hundred salmon have been taken in the nets in the course of one day at Boom, and the same quantity has been continued through several successive days. Great numbers are still caught, but not in such multitudes as formerly; and the diminution is ascribed to the circumstance of no law existing in Norway to protect, or rather, preserve the salmon at certain seasons; and poaching has been, of late years, so extensive, that unless the Government take a little more care of a fish that has become almost a staple commodity of the country, and arrest the nefarious system at present without bounds, the extinction of salmon in the southern rivers of Norway must be immediate and complete. Indeed, we visited some places which a few years ago were famous for the beauty, size, and multiplicity of their salmon; but we were told on our arrival, that, not a fish was now to be caught or seen, from the mouths to the sources of these rivers.
Early in the morning, by daylight, I heard R—— and P—— pulling on their jack-boots, and winding and unwinding their tackle. The clicking noise of their reels awoke me.
The Toptdal River is uninterrupted by rapids from Christiansand up to our cottage, but as I mentioned, there is before the door a tremendous fall, and a pool of great depth has been formed, by the eternal force and action of the tumbling water. This pool is nearly circular, and about a quarter of a mile in circumference. A large rock, considerably above the level of the water, stands in the middle of this pool; and perched on it the sportsman may presume that he has attained the most choice position for angling. From this rock, made slippery by the ascending spray of the cataract, Mr. H——, the gentleman to whom I have referred as the proprietor of this river, is wont to fish; and he is allowed to be one of the most distinguished and sagacious anglers in the vicinity of Christiansand or Boom.
Pursuant to the mode of the country, and the recommendation of the natives, my two companions embarked in a pram to seek the piscatory treasures of this pool. The surface of the water was not so clear and smooth as at Larvig; for it boiled and eddied, and the wrath of the thundering cataract made it white as Parian marble. R—— and P——, notwithstanding the difficulty of throwing their flies daintily, from the uneasy motion of the pram, discovered another more serious obstacle to this united possession of the same pram; for, now and then, P——'s silver pheasant fly would buz very close to R——'s right ear, and R——'s white moth fly would hover around and settle at last on P——'s pepper-and-salt cloth cap, and whisk it into the water. In short, the danger of proximity in fly fishing was as obvious as the deductions of any mathematical problem. The union could not exist. A remedy was to be found; and P—— sat down on the grating over the well of the pram, and gave himself to contemplation. His inquisitive mind lost no time.
"Hollo!" he suddenly exclaimed, "there's that rock; can't I get on it?"
"Let's pull and see," assented R——; and the boatman was desired to row towards it. When the pram was driven by the force of the whirling stream against the rock, P—— jumped on it, but nearly slid off on the other side.
"Oh! ah! this is capital," he said, raising himself cautiously by the aid of both hands. "This will do."
And having, after several efforts, stood upright, he commenced untwisting his line from the rod.
"All right?" asked R——, impatient to begin.
"Yes, all right," replied P——; and away the pram, borne by the thousand intertwining currents, shot with R——.
The high peaks of the mountains now began to shine in the rising sun, and, like the ebbing surface of an ocean, the line of light gradually descended towards the valley. One by one, the cattle came forth from their sheds; and the cock, flapping his wing, stood a tip-toe, and crew most lustily. Under the weather-vane, on the farm-house roof, the pigeons trimmed their feathers, and cooed. Unfelt the coolness of the morning air, (for they were hot with exertion,) and regardless of moving shadows, or cooing doves, my two friends gave up the sense of hearing to their reels, and that of seeing to the career of the little zinc hooks at the end of their gut lines. When I looked at the insular P——, and his active rod, I thought him like to Archimedes who had found his extramundane spot of ground, and, as he threw the fly, and bent his back to let it touch the water lightly, was endeavouring to fasten his lever to the base of the adjacent mountain in order to consummate his wish of raising the world; and the circumfluous R—— with his long tackle, that hissed when he cast it with the petulance of an angry switch, appeared an ocean god, who had selected a shorter route to the North Cape by the Toptdal River, and was urging his reluctant grampuses up the cataract.
R—— and P—— might have angled for five hours, and the result of their assiduity was as diverse as pain is to pleasure, whatever the Stoics may have said to the contrary; for P—— caught fifteen salmon, and R—— not one. Disappointed, no doubt, that such trifling profit should succeed to so much labour, R—— wound up his ten or twelve yards of cat-gut, and desired the boatmen to row ashore. It was now eight o'clock; and when people rise at two in the morning, it does not require much calculation to tell how keen the appetite must become when it has grumbled five hours in vain for aliment. P——, however, was callous to hunger, or thirst; and as he made capture after capture, all thought of food decreased in an inverse ratio. When R—— had alighted from the pram, the boatman drew it up on the shore, lest it should get adrift, for it was the only available pram at Boom; and touching his slouch hat, signified to R—— his intention of going to his morning meal. R—— consented. We sat down on a piece of timber by the river's brink, and R—— watched his successful fellow-angler. P——'s very soul seemed to be diving about in the pool entirely unconscious of every earthly thing but salmon.
"By Jove! there's another bite," exclaimed R——, as P——'s reel spread the tidings with the tongue of a Dutch alarum clock. After a little play, the salmon ceased to live in the Toptdal River.
"I can't tell how he manages," said R——, in a sort of soliloquy. "I don't get a rise in two days. My flies must be bad; or, I think, P—— always takes the best place." And R—— pulled his fly-book from his pouch, and began to examine the flies attentively, one by one, from the largest to the smallest.
"Your flies are very good," I observed; "but you have not application. Look at P——; he is part of that rock, apathetic to every idea of life, but the idea that he sees his fly."
"A great deal of it is luck," answered R——; "but let us go to breakfast. I am preciously thirsty; I must swill something."
We both rose, and walked towards the cottage. The sun had now risen above the tops of the mountains, and shone brightly in the very centre of the valley through which the Toptdal River wound. Not a cloud spotted the sky, and the declining languid motion of the atmosphere gave token of a torrid noon. Entering into jocular conversation with our Anglo-Norwegian friend, who was bustling about the cottage on our behalf, we became so intimate and open-hearted, that R—— begged him to partake of breakfast if he had not eaten his own; and seating himself in the third vacant chair, the Norwegian did as much justice to our hospitality, as the hungry steer does to clover. Time wore on, for the shade of the tall trees became short and shorter; and when our little stout Northern guest went from under the cottage roof, to give some orders to a labourer, I observed that the huge flaps of his felt hat sheltered his round projecting van and bulbous flank, and, that, to the contemplative man with downcast eye, his whole frame, fat though it were, would appear quashed into a circular shadow moving along the ground.
After breakfast, R—— lit his pipe, and the Norwegian made a quid both round and opaque, and bowing to us, stuffed it into his mouth. Its proper arrangement with his tongue kept him silent for a second, and in that second, we heard the prolonged, faint call of a man in distress; but it was so indistinct, that the gentle rustling of the juniper leaf interrupted our attention to it.
"Is not this delicious?" observed R—— to me; and the gray-blue tobacco-smoke spouted, like a small fountain, from his mouth. "In London I should be just thinking of getting out of bed, and here I have been up these nine hours, and eaten like a bricklayer."
"I should not mind living here, and like this, all my life," I answered, "and paddling about on that river."
"Ja," interposed the Norwegian in a broken dialect, but he thought himself a good English scholar; "dat is goot, but you not tak care you roltz down de foss; one old vomans roltz down de foss."
"Ah?" said I.
"Ja," replied the Norwegian; "she row one praam cross de top of de foss, and de praam roltz over, and she vas drowntz."
The same dull, faint, long cry, fell on our ears; but we took no heed of it, for our native companion said it was the signal shout of huntsmen in the mountains.
"Did you ever find the old woman's body?" I asked.
"Ja," the Norwegian answered, twisting his quid from the left to the right cheek, "she vas foundtz; and vat is droltz de bags of flour she have in de praam, dough dey been long timetz in de vater, vere quite drytz—de middle quite drytz."
"And what did you do with them?" I asked.
"I eatz dem," said my friend.
Again the long, low cry stole mournfully through the still air, and it moaned like a melancholy spirit of the night that had been left behind by its fellow spirits, as they hurried from earth at dawn of day, and which, concealing itself in some mountain cavern, was wailing their absence, and telling the torture it suffered from the glaring light.
"I say, old cock, have you any goblins in this place?" asked R——, walking close up to the Norwegian, and blowing the smoke from his pipe so voluminously in the little man's face, that he coughed till he nearly spat his quid out of the window.
"Nej, nej," replied the Norwegian, as soon as he could breathe to speak, in a tone of surprise that R—— should suppose such a thing. The Norwegians are superstitious, and believe as confidently in ghosts, as I do in the heat of fire.
"What the devil then," continued R——, "is that confounded groaning about? Some fellow has committed murder. You had better go and see."
"Nej, nej," remonstrated the Norwegian, scratching his head, and moving nervously in his chair at the suggestion. The Norwegian was stable as his mountains; and R——, laughing at the man's apparent terror, resumed his seat, and increased the generation of his genuine Latakia tobacco-smoke.
It was now mid-day; and the hollow sounding tread of human feet clad thickly, made R—— and me turn our eyes towards the threshold of the cottage. Cased, like a shrimp-catcher, up to his hips in water-proof boots, his landing-net, gaff, and fishing-rod, borne on his left shoulder, P——, the very picture of impersonated anger, stood before us. Dashing landing-net, gaff, fly-book, and his only fly-rod on the table, regardless of crockery,
"A pretty trick you have played me!" he thundered out. We had never given P—— a thought until the moment we saw him, nor did we, for one instant, remember that, like Robinson Crusoe, he had been left on a desert rock, and that the doleful cry might be his.
"It's now twelve," P—— continued angrily, "and you have quietly eaten your breakfast, and allowed me to remain on that rock since six o'clock."
"But my dear fellow," said R——, "could you not call for the boat?"
"And what have I been doing these four hours?" P—— exclaimed. "No; it's just like you both; if you can satisfy your confounded selfishness, the devil may take any one else's comfort."
"A boat would have put off to you," persisted R——, "if you had hailed some of the workmen about."
"What nonsense that is," said P——, with wrath. "Do you think I stood there like a fool, and held my tongue? Of course I hailed every one I saw; but I should like to know who could hear me, stuck, as I was, close under that Fall."
"Well, my dear fellow," answered R——, in a pacifying tone, "I tell you the truth, I never thought of you until I saw your face at that door."
"That's just what I say; so long as you are comfortable, every one else may go to the deuce;" and P—— snapped his finger, and walked to the window. "Besides that," he added, "I am your guest, and entitled to look for a little more respect."
"Oh! hang the respect," replied R——, quickly.
"Then you may fish alone," said P——; "for I'll be hanged if I will stand being treated in this kind of way. Suppose, for one moment, you had been in my place, and I had forgotten you, what would you have said and felt? the case is the same."
"Why didn't you come ashore with me?" R—— asked, getting rather testy himself; "am I your nurse? Am I to wait and watch for you?"
"Yes, you ought," said P——; "I would have done it for you. I can't fish and have my eyes about me, in all quarters, at the same time. I think it cursed unmannerly of you both."
R—— looked at me with one of his comic faces, and I looked at him.
"As to my manners," R—— answered aloud, "whether they be vulgar, or whether they be genteel, I take no credit to myself; for an extra allowance was made for my education, that I should be polished brightly like a gentleman, and if you perceive a failure on that score, the fault is not mine, but the preparatory school's. Moreover, if a man has any mental, or personal defect, it is hardly fair to make allusion to it, and by wounding his feelings to seek the gratification of anger."
R—— gave me a wink, as much as to say, "I have the weather-gage of him." P—— spoke not in reply; but continued standing at the window, and, with his back to us, looking out upon the fatal rock and cataract.
"We have left you a couple of eggs," observed R—— pacifically.
"You had better send them back to the hen to be hatched," P—— replied.
"Come, my dear fellow," continued R——, "don't let such a little thing part us. Your being left on the rock was quite an oversight. Exercise a christian spirit, and drink this delicious coffee."
Pouring out a cup of coffee, R—— held up the Norwegian wine-bottle of milk by its long neck, and said to P——, "do you like a little, or a good deal, of milk?"
"Oh! middling;" and moving from the window, P—— walked towards the table.
"There," said R——, pushing the cup across to P——, "there's some real Mocha for you."
P—— raised the cup to his lips.
"Capital!" he exclaimed, taking breath after a long pull.
"So it is!" reiterated R——, expelling a tremendous and satisfactory cloud of smoke that took the shape of a balloon, and ascending towards the cottage beams, puzzled me, by its great dilatation, to think, how such a gigantic volume of sooty exhalation, as Dr. Johnson would say, could be compressed into a small compass, like R——'s mouth.
When pacification took place, and conciliatory explanations were made over and over again, R—— and P——, tumbling out their flies, commenced to repair those that had been damaged by the fish, and manufactured others, more suitable to the transparent water, and the timidity of the salmon. While they were thus engaged, I loitered about in the open air.
The day was hot to oppression; and it required no flight of the imagination to forget that the country was Norway, and fancy myself in the interior of Congo. Numerous insects, that flew with a droning noise about me, and a multitude of adders basking in the sun, or hurrying through the grass as I approached, gave new force to the illusion.
In the afternoon R—— and P—— caught thirty or forty salmon between them. Such success made them determine to remain for some days longer at Boom; but being desirous of a change of scene, as well as recreation, I returned to the yacht, and sleeping on board that night, went the next morning to Christiansand.
It was the 24th of June, known as St. John's Day; and on my arrival at Christiansand, I learned that the festival was commemorated with great ceremony by the Norwegians. Along the tops of the mountains, ever where the eye wandered, piles of faggots, and old boats were collected together, like funeral pyres. Men and women, children and dogs, congregated in multitudes around them, watching for the set of sun; and when the weary god sank down to rest, and with closing lids gave darkness to the earth, a hundred bonfires simultaneously blazing forth on the summits of the mountains, strove to reach his throne in the meridian, and imitate the day. The sight was certainly fine, but could not be compared with an ancient warlike and similar custom among the Scottish Highlanders.
I called on some ladies and gentlemen whom I knew at Christiansand, and learned a usage prevalent among the Norwegians, that should still more endear their simplicity of heart, and the truthfulness of their character, since it is void of all the artfulness and social fiction of England. Approaching the house of a family, from the different members of which we had received much kindness and hospitality, a servant met me at the door, and while she was endeavouring to explain how much her mistress was engaged, the eldest daughter of my fair hostess made her appearance, and extending her hand to me, said, shaking her head,
"Herr, kan icca ta imod;" which meant, that I could not be received. This is the usual phrase; and it tells you the simple fact, that the lady of the house is at home, but her domestic occupations press upon her so much at the moment, that she is unable to receive you.