At the time the Walrus dropped her anchor, all seemed as still and lonely as if no sound had ever awakened the silence of the harbour. The chain cable, as it rattled through the hawse-hole, had even a startling effect, so solitary, so unusual was the sound. The place seemed as if it had been uninhabited since creation; for though the town lay close before it, the houses, low and lightless, looked like a collection of fantastic rocks; but scarcely had she felt the strain of her cable, when her stern swung into the middle of a group of boats, which seemed as if they had risen from the depths of the sea, so sudden and unexpected was their appearance, and crowds of earnest, business-like, trafficing Norsemen were clambering up her sides at every practical point. Norway has no inns, and Norway is said to be a place of universal hospitality, where every one is delighted to receive the wandering guest—and so every one is, and delighted to receive the wandering guest’s money also, with two or three hundred per cent. profit on the outlay. The real fact is, every house in Norway is an inn, to all intents and purposes, except the license; and in places like Christiansand, every man is his own touter. Whatever is the noise and confusion of a vessel arriving at a French or Flemish port, on this occasion it was doubled, not only from the number and assiduity of hospitable hosts, but also from the unusual quantity and quality of the passengers. It was not every day that a Russian ambassador graced with his august presence, and his distinguished suite, an obscure trading town of Norway; and its citizens, inferior to no nation in the world in the art of turning an honest penny, were in two moments as well aware of the fact, and as fully determined to profit by it, as the Dutch landlady, who, having charged our second George the value of ten pounds sterling English for his two eggs and his bit of toast, informed him that though eggs were plentiful in her country, kings were not.
The confusion which pervaded the Walrus’s decks and cabins, the cries, the calls, the screams that were flying about unheeded; the extraordinary oaths that jostled one another, out of every language of Saxon, Russian, or Scandinavian origin; the obtrusive civilities of the touters; the officiousness of volunteering porters; the mistakes about luggage; the anxieties, the rushings to and fro, in which everybody is seeking for everybody, may easily be imagined; and none the less was the confusion of tongues; that night had thrown her veil over this floating Babel of the North.
But through it all the three friends sat on their carpet bags of patience, smoking the cigar of peace, now and then making a joke among themselves, as the steward’s lantern flashed upon some face of unusual solicitude, but totally unconcerned amid the fluctuating hubbub that surrounded them.
“Well,” said the Captain, “I have had enough of this fun, and am hungry besides; I vote we go on shore. I suppose your man is here?”
The Parson got up, and, putting his head over the side, shouted in a stentorian voice, through his hand, which he used as a speaking trumpet—“Ullitz! Ullitz!”
“Hulloh!” returned a voice from the dark waters, in the unmistakably English man-of-war’s fashion—“Hulloh!” repeated the voice.
“Shove alongside here, under the quarter,” said the Parson. “Who have you got in the boat along with you? Tom Engelsk for one, I am sure.”
“Only Tom and Torkel; I thought that would be enough,” said a voice from the waters below, in remarkably good English, in which the foreign accent was scarcely perceptible.
“Quite enough,” said the Parson; “look out there!” as he hove the slack of the quarter-boat’s after-tackle fall, which he had been making up into coils as he was speaking. “Tell English Tom to shin up that, and come on board: it is nothing for an English man-of-war’s man to do, and one of you hold on by the rope.”
Tom, active as a cat, and delighted at being spoken of as an English man-of-war’s man before so many English people, scrambled up the side and stood before them, with his shallow tarpaulin hat in hand, as perfectly an English sailor, so far as his habiliments were concerned, as if he had dressed after the model of T. P. Cooke.