Early rising is not pleasant at sea. Captain Basil Hall may talk of the joyous morning watch if he likes,—but there is nothing joyous in washing decks, and that is what most ships are occupied with at that hour. The Parson did not make his appearance on deck till after breakfast, and he was the first of the party.
The steamer was now approaching the end of her voyage, for the land, closing on both sides, showed the estuary of the Gotha. Most of the party were not sorry for the conclusion of the voyage, enjoyable as the earlier part of it had been; for the steamer,—after coasting all the way to Christiania, where the party had supplied themselves with carioles for their land journey, which, with their wheels unshipped, were stowed away snugly forward,—had taken her course, southward, over the tumbling Skagarack—a part of the world notorious for sea-sickness.
All the morning long, preparations had been going forward for making a creditable appearance on arriving in port, and the discomforts of the early-risers had been considerably increased by a very liberal use of the holy-stone,—an amusement which, as the men were still employed in blacking the rigging, gave promise of an early repetition.
Slung from a block at the mainmast head was a small triangular stage, made of three battens, on which sat a very dirty individual with a pot of slush before him and a tarring-brush in his hand, with which he was polishing off his morning’s work on the shining mast.
Seated on the bitts below was a sturdy Norwegian, who, as if disdaining the compromise usually adopted by the coasting inhabitants, appeared in the caricature of a full-dressed Tellemarker, with a strip of jacket like a child’s spencer, of orange tawny wadmaal, great loose blue trousers with a waistband over his shoulder blades, crimson braces, and two strings of silver bullets dependent from the collars of a very dirty shirt. He was caressing a particularly ugly dog, which he called Garm,—an appellation which proved him to be what in England would be called a fast man; it is much as if an English young gentleman were to call his dog Satan. He was haranguing, of course, on the vast superiority of Norway to Sweden, and the infinite degradation which the former country had received from the union of the crowns,—that being not only the most favourite topic of Norwegian declamation, but, in the present instance, at all events, the most injudicious and unsuitable subject in which to exhibit before so mixed an audience.
They behaved, however, exceedingly well, and rather trotted him out, much to the disgust of Torkel, who had sense enough to perceive what was going on, and would have infinitely preferred their beating him: after vainly endeavouring to draw his countrymen away, he had walked forward, and was looking moodily over the bows.
“As for the Swedes,” said our judicious friend, “they are nothing better than swindlers. I have, for my sins, to go to Gotheborg every year, to lay in stores for the winter, and I am sure to be cheated. We don’t let Jews land on our shores, and I must go to Gotheborg to find them.”
“Well, but we have no Jews either.” said a bye-stander; “they do not come to us, they go to the Free Towns.”
“You are all Jews; the real Jews don’t go to you, that is very true, but it is because they know that the Gotheborgers are hogs, and their law does not allow them to have anything to do with unclean animals. Yes, you are all swine together. Why, I tell you a Norwegian dog would not touch anything Swedish. Come here, Garm!”—and he pulled out of his pocket a bit of ham, evidently filched from the breakfast table.