Glimpses of Three Coasts

by Helen Hunt Jackson

"I think you shall be very glad if you have it," remarked Sanna. "Oh!" she exclaimed with a groan, "there is Bob."

Bob is Sanna's dog,—a small black spaniel, part setter, with a beautiful head and eye, and a devotion to his mistress which lovers might envy. Never, when in her presence, does he remove his eyes from her for many minutes. He either revolves restlessly about her like an alert scout, or lays himself down with a sentry-like expression at her feet.

"Oh, what is to do with Bob?" she continued, gazing helplessly at me. The rascal was bounding along the road, curvetting, and wagging his tail, and looking up at us with an audacious leer on his handsome face. "He did understand perfectly that he should not come," said Sanna; hearing which, Bob hung back, behind the carriage.

"Nils must carry him back," I said. Then, relenting, seeing the look of distress on Sanna's face, I added, "Could we not take him with us?"

"Oh, no, it must be impossible," she replied. "It is for the lambs. He does drive them and frighten them. He must stay, but we shall have trouble."

Fast the little Norwegian ponies clattered down to the wharf. No Bob. As we went on board he was nowhere to be seen. Anxiously Sanna searched for him, to give him into Nils's charge. He was not to be found. The boat began to move. Still no Bob. We settled ourselves comfortably; already the burdensome rug was welcome. "I really think Bob must have missed us in the crowd," I said.

"I do not know, I do not think," replied Sanna, her face full of perplexity. "Oh!" with a cry of dismay. "He is here!"

There he was! Abject, nearly dragging his body on the deck like a snake, his tail between his legs, fawning, cringing, his eyes fixed on Sanna, he crawled to her feet. Only his eyes told that he felt any emotion except remorse; they betrayed him; their expression was the drollest I ever saw on a dumb creature's face. It was absurd; it was impossible, incredible, if one had not seen it; as plainly as if words had been spoken, it avowed the whole plot, the distinct exultation in its success. "Here I am," it said, "and I know very well that now the steamer has begun to move you are compelled to take me with you. My heart is nearly broken with terror and grief at the thought of your displeasure, but all the same I can hardly contain myself for delight at having outwitted you so completely." All this while he was wriggling closer and closer to her feet, watching her eye, as a child watches its mother's, for the first show of relenting. Of course we began to laugh. At the first beginning of a smile in Sanna's eyes, he let his tail out from between his legs, and began to flap it on the deck; as the smile broadened, he gradually rose to his feet; and by the time we had fairly burst into uncontrolled laughter, he was erect, gambolling around us like a kid, and joining in the chorus of our merriment by a series of short, sharp yelps of delight, which, being interpreted, would doubtless have been something like, "Ha, ha! Beat 'em, and they 're not going to thrash me, and I'm booked for the whole journey now, spite of fate! Ha, ha!" Then he stretched himself at our feet, laid his nose out flat on the deck, and went to sleep as composedly as if he had been on the hearth-rug at home; far more composedly than he would had he dreamed of the experiences in store for him.

"Poor Bob!" said Sanna. "It must be that we shall send him back by the steamer." Poor Bob, indeed! Long before we reached our first landing, Bob was evidently sea-sick. The beautiful water of the great Hardanger Fjord was as smooth as an inland lake; changing from dark and translucent green in the narrowing channels, where the bold shores came so near together that we could count the trees, to brilliant and sparkling blue in the wider opens. But little cared Bob for the beauty of the water; little did it comfort him that the boat glided as gently as is possible for a boat to move. He had never been on a boat before, and did not know it was smooth. Piteously he roamed about, from place to place, looking off; then he would come and stand before Sanna, quivering in every fibre, and looking up at her with sorrowful appeal in his eyes. His thoughts were plainly written in his countenance now, as before; but nobody could have had the heart to laugh at him. Poor fellow! He was not the first creature that has been bowed down by the curse of a granted prayer.

Presently there came a new trouble. All along the Hardanger Fjord are little hamlets and villages and clusters of houses, tucked in in nooks among rocks and on rims of shore at the base of the high, stony walls of mountains, and snugged away at the heads of inlets. Many of these are places of summer resort for the Bergen people, who go out of town into the country in summer, I fancy, somewhat as the San Francisco people do, not to find coolness, but to find warmth; for the air in these sheltered nooks and inlets of the fjords is far softer than it is in Bergen, which has the strong sea wind blowing in its teeth all the while. On Saturdays the steamers for the Hardanger country are crowded with Bergen men going out to spend the Sunday with their families or friends who are rusticating at these little villages. At many of these spots there is no landing except by small boats; and it was one of the pleasantest features of the sail, the frequent pausing of the steamer off some such nook, and the putting out of the rowboats to fetch or to carry passengers. They would row alongside, half a dozen at a time, bobbing like corks, and the agile Norwegians would skip in and out of and across them as deftly as if they were stepping on firm floor. The Norwegian peasant is as much at home in a boat as a snail in his shell,—women as well as men; they row, stand, leap, gesticulate, lift burdens, with only a rocking plank between their feet and fathomless water, and never seem to know that they are not on solid ground. In fact, they are far more graceful afloat than on ground: on the land they shuffle and walk in a bent and toil-worn attitude, the result of perpetual carrying of loads on their backs; but they bend to their oars with ease and freedom, and wheel and turn and shoot and back their little skiffs with a dexterity which leaves no room for doubt that they can do anything they choose on water. It would not have astonished me, any day, to see a Norwegian coming towards me in two boats at once, one foot in each boat, walking on the water in them, as a man walks on snow in snow-shoes. I never did see it, but I am sure they could do it.