“I wish we had nothing worse to fear,” said the Parson; “but this gradual darkening looks a great deal more like a spell of bad weather than a sudden storm. I wish we knew where the Captain’s post is.”
“We cannot be within seven or eight miles of that,” said Torkel; “and I really do think that we are going to have a wet night, and plenty of mist into the bargain. It will be perfectly impossible for us to find the post, knowing so little of the country as we do. We had better hut ourselves at once. If we had been on the hill we might have seen this coming, but down here it was impossible, with no sky visible, except that which is right over our heads.”
“Well,” said the Parson, “if it is to be, we may as well halt at once. So off with your havresac, and turn to. This spreading fir will do as well as any for our canopy.”
Torkel was a man of deeds, and his assent and approbation were demonstrated by his throwing down his havresac and forthwith selecting and cutting down a young fir for his ridge-pole; and,—while the Parson was securing the locks of the guns with handkerchiefs, and such like extemporaneous expedients,—for the gun covers had, of course, been left with the baggage,—he had already cut down two pair of cross timbers to lay it on. The Parson, with his hand-bill, aided him vigorously, and the more so that the rain had now begun to patter sharply from leaf to leaf, and it was very evident that no long time would elapse before it found its way to their localities below. The frame-work of the hut was arranged, and branches of the fir and beech, and coarse grass and juniper,—in fact anything that could be collected on the spur of the moment,—was laid on as thatch, while Torkel hastily drew together and chopped up the driest stuff he could find for the fire.
The rain was now coming on in right earnest, and the night was prematurely setting in. The drops came through thicker and thicker, each one as big as a marble; and the sportsmen, with jackets more than half wet through, crept disconsolately into the unfinished hut, in order, as Torkel said, to make themselves comfortable.
The first piece of comfort which was discovered was that the havresacs, which had been thrown off at the beginning of the hutting operations, had been left where they were thrown, and were by this time wet through and through, together with every morsel of bread that they contained. The supper was not luxurious, and, as neither was greatly disposed for conversation, they laid themselves up in the warmest corner they could find, and courted forgetfulness, as well as rest and refreshment, in sleep.
The Parson, as an old fisherman, had been pretty well accustomed to a minor description of roughing it. The boxes of dried poplar leaves of a Norwegian cottage, or the heaps of hay of a sœter-farm were to him as feather beds. A rainy day, too, he had often hailed as remarkably good fishing weather, but a night’s bivouac, sub-Jove, and that Jove pluviali, was rather a new thing to him; and his cloak, too, miles off, under the charge of the faithful Jacob. One habit, however, he had picked up in his travels, which stood him in good stead now, and that was the habit of “making the best of it.”
Bad was the best; the fuel was wet and scanty, and the fire soon went out; and Torkel’s house, run up hastily and after dark, was as little water-tight as if it had been built by contract. Before midnight the Parson was roused up, first by detached drops and then by little streamlets falling on his face and person, and wet and chilled, he lay counting the hours, and envying Torkel, who snored comfortably through it all.
Morning came at last—it always does come if we wait long enough for it,—and a dull and misty light began to struggle in through the opening of the hut, and through several other openings also, which, during the past night had officiated, though uncalled for, as spouts for the water.
Still the rain fell, not in showers, not violently, for there was not a breath of wind, but evenly, quickly, steadily, as if, conscious of its resources, it meant to rain for ever; while the big drops from the fir branches kept patter, patter, on the soppy ground, and the mist hung so low that you could scarcely see the branches they fell from.