[CHAPTER II]
ACROSS THE VARANGER FJORD TO ELVENAES, WITH
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE FISHING OF FINNER
WHALE, AND A NARRATIVE OF TRAVELS WITH A
JEW.
One of the most looked-forward-to items of our original programme had been to see the Windward pull her anchors out of European mud for the last time before she went to wrestle with the Arctic floe. But the ship’s carpenter ashore who had in charge that new main-topsail yard was slow even in his sober moments; and although every one in authority raged at the delay, not even statements in Anglo-Saxon (or Scottish) as to his personal worthiness could bustle him out of his dawdling gait. So in the end the Windwards saw us off, instead of our doing the like by them.
We took passage across the broad Varanger fjord to Jarfjord in a little coaster, and as she steamed out between the harbour walls and met the roll outside, all hands on the Windward, both forward and aft, yelled themselves hoarse, and we sent back our voices in reply. Then up and down from their peak went the blue ensign, as the big expedition wished the little one luck, and we found a Norwegian flag stopped on the rail, and hoisted that up to the head of the poop-staff (which was as high as my chin), and dipped it with all goodwill in reply. There were Norwegians, and Finns, and Russians, and Lapps on the coaster, come from the villages on the Varanger to do their marketing at the big town, and at first I fancy they thought us Englishmen mad, but after half an hour or so they most of them retired to the ’tween decks very sea-sick, and after that they ceased to give us any thought at all.
We lolled down the northern coast of the Varanger in the trough of a lusty swell, and periodically we called in at some small, bleak, dreary harbour, where drying nets formed a festoon before the houses, and drying cod on their wooden racks, and masses of gray inhospitable stone blocked in the background. Then when we had negotiated all our ports of call the helm was starboarded, and we stood out across the broad waters of the fjord towards the gleaming snow mountains which hedged in the country of the Lapps thirty miles away on the other side.
Fishers we passed on the way, Russians with long hair and Tartar faces, clumsy high-booted Finns, and queer-garbed Lapps, swinging over the swells in their viking boats, toiling at their miles of long-lines. And then a rain squall drove down, blotting out the view, and we cowered under the green canvas dodger in front of the wheel on the little coaster’s spar deck, and shivered at the chill.
But presently, out of the grayness of the rain squall there came an old familiar scent, and the mate at the wheel pulled lustily at the syren string to advertise our whereabouts. An answering hoot came back, and then through the mist a small green-painted steamer of some thirty tons burden loomed out, slowly bearing down upon us. Her pace was almost imperceptible, but a cumbersome harpoon-shell gun on her stem-head gave us the necessary hint as to her occupation, and presently we could make out two towing hawsers astern of her, and a bloated finner whale made fast, tail foremost, to each.
The fish were blown up like balloons with decomposition, and like balloons they were striped with longitudinal gores. Their jaws were just awash, and oil oozed from them in a slimy fan. The smell of them was almost past endurance. The little green whaler had killed, perhaps, three hundred miles away, and was towing her catch back to the home factory for realisation. And a valuable catch it was too. The big black bull was worth all of £250; and although the cow whale, which showed her ivory-white belly, was smaller, she would probably fetch her £200 with bone at its then enormous price.