“Off Arendahl!” said Birger.
“Arendahl!” broke in the Parson, “why, that is fifty miles to the westward of your course.”
“Well, I cannot conceive how that can be,” said the Skipper. “Something wrong, I am afraid, with the compasses. We ought not to be so far out; we steered a straight course, and—”
“That did you not,” said Birger, “whatever else you did; the Captain and I have been studying the theory of transcendental curves from your wake.”
“I can tell you how it is,” said the Parson; “you have steered your course as you say, and have not allowed for the easterly set of the current, and you imagine how this must have acted upon us under the influence of these rolling swells which we have had on our port bow ever since daylight, every one of which must have set us down a fathom or two to leeward. Don’t you recollect that we lost three line-of-battle ships coming home from the Baltic by this very blunder. Compasses!” he continued, sotto voce, “a pretty lot of blunders are thrown on those unfortunate compasses, in every court-martial. However,” he continued, aloud, “there is no help for it,—thankful ought we to be it is no worse; there is but one thing to be done now, and what that one thing is, you know as well as I.”
This the Skipper did know. A close survey of the remaining coals took place, and it was decided that notwithstanding the expenditure that took place on the day on the Shipwash, there might, with economy, be enough for six hours’ consumption, Birger inquiring innocently, “whether the Skipper had not anything that would burn in his own private stores?”
The steamer’s course was accordingly altered nine or ten points, for the coast from Arendahl to Christiansand trends southerly, and she had actually overshot her mark, and gone to the northward as well as to the eastward of her port, so that land which had hitherto lain before them, was thus brought abaft the starboard beam.
To those who, like our fishermen, were not exactly making a passage, but exploring the country, and to whom it was a matter of indifference whether they dined at five or supped at eleven, the Skipper’s blunder was anything but an annoyance. It afforded them an opportunity, not often enjoyed, of seeing the outside coast of Norway; for in general, almost all the coasting trade, and all the passenger traffic, is carried on within the fringe of islands that guard the shores. An absolute failure in the article of fuel, and a week or so of calm within a few miles of their port, might have been a trial to their tempers; but there was no such temptation to grumbling on the present occasion; and, besides, the afternoon and evening were bright and warm, the wind had sunk to a calm, and though the ever restless sea was heaving and setting, the swells had become glassy, soft, and regular.
Cape after cape, island after island of that inhospitable coast was passed, and not a sign of habitation, not a town, not a village, not even a fisherman’s cottage, or a solitary wreath of smoke was to be seen. The land seemed utterly uninhabited, and, as they drew out from the stream of trade, the very sea seemed tenantless also.
The fact is, that the whole coast of Norway, and of Sweden also, is fringed with islands, in some places two or three deep, which are separated from the main and from each other by channels more or less broad, but always deep. Of these islands, the outer range is seldom inhabited at all, never on the seaward sides, which, exposed to the first sweep of the southwester, are either bare, bold rocks, or else nourish on their barren crags a scanty clothing of stunted fir or ragged juniper, but afford neither food nor shelter, and where that necessary of life, fresh water, is very rarely to be met with.