Sunrise found the whole bivouac in a stir; the habits of the Norwegian are always early—at least in the summer time—and many of the parties had to travel to the yet distant sœters and wilder uplands: cows are not very fast travellers, and the load which a dairyman carries on his back when he is bound to those fjelds, which are inaccessible to carts, is by no means a light one: ponies sometimes carry the heavier loads, but this is not often, as they are useless in the fjeld life, and in the summer are generally wanted for posting, as well as for agricultural purposes; the loads are generally carried by the men—sometimes by the women even,—and the milk-kettle which crowns the pack is alone a weight which few would like to carry far, even on level ground.
The white smoke was already curling about the trees in long thin columns, and the girls were already bringing in their pails of new milk, a very fair proportion of which would be consumed with the morning’s gröd, which was already bubbling in the kettles.
Gröd, in high life, means all sorts of eatables that are semi-liquid; but in the fjeld it is invariably made thus: the water is heated in the great milk-kettle to a galloping boil, and its temperature is raised to a still higher point by the addition of salt; meal, generally rye-meal, is then thinly sprinkled into it, the great art being to separate the particles, so as to prevent them from forming lumps. As soon as the contents of the kettle are thick enough for the bubbles to make little pops, the gröd is taken off the fire and served up with milk. When that milk is fresh, no one need desire a better breakfast; but when, as is generally the case, they mix it with milk that has been purposely kept till it is curdled over with incipient corruption, in which state they prefer it, it is as disgusting a mess as ever attained the dignity of a popular dish.
In the present instance they were obliged to put up with fresh milk, no other being procurable; and the fishermen, having grilled the remains of their gjep (an especial delicacy), and added to it some of the contents of their havresacs, sent a deputation, headed by Birger, to invite Miss Lota and her hand-maidens to partake of their breakfast. This was a proceeding which Torkel regarded with very questionable pleasure. He was flattered, no doubt, at the attentions paid to his lady-love by the fishermen, who could not speak Norske; but, at the same time, was rather jealous of those of Birger, who could.
Lota, however, was in no way disconcerted; she came smiling and blushing, indeed, but without any sort of affectation or bashfulness, and listened graciously, and without laughing, to the blundering compliments paid her by the Englishmen; and without any great amount of coquetry, considering the rarity of guardsmen in the Tellemark, to the tender elegance of the Swede. Torkel had very good reason to be proud of her, and none at all to be jealous, particularly as the knapsacks were already packed up for the march.
The fishermen were in no particular hurry: the track to Soberud was perfectly known; even if the droves of cows and the flocks of sheep that had come up it the day before had not already marked it very sufficiently. The way was not long either, for it was but a day’s journey to the herds; the breaking up of the bivouac was very picturesque; Lota was very pretty, and Birger found her very entertaining. It is no wonder that they lingered.
However, the shadows of the trees began to shorten. Party after party came up with their merry “farvels;” the songs and the laughter, and the tinkling of the bells, sounded fainter and fainter from under the arches of the forest; and, last of all, the fishermen, reluctantly shouldering their knapsacks, took their journey down the glade; with the exception of Torkel, who, having something to adjust about his straps, was not exactly ready, and in fact was not seen for a couple of hours afterwards. He did not join them, indeed, till the party had made their first halt near the banks of a mountain lake.
The halt was called somewhat sooner than usual, for the Captain, who, with his gun in his hand and old Grog at his heels, was a little in advance, and had first caught sight of the lake, had caught sight also of an object floating quietly along in the middle of it, which his practised eye at once assured him was that very rare and beautiful bird, the northern diver.
He threw himself flat on the ground, an action in which he was implicitly imitated by the rest of the party, who, though they had not seen the bird, were quite aware that there was some good reason for the caution.
In truth, there are few birds more difficult to kill than the northern diver; to the greatest watchfulness he unites the most wonderful quickness of eye and motion, and, large as he is, he is fully able to duck the flash, as it is called,—that is to say, to dive between the time of seeing the flash and feeling the shot.