The man’s real name was Thorsen, and his birthplace the extreme wilds of the Tellemark; but having served for five years on board an English man-of-war, he had dropped his patronymic, and delighted in the name of English Tom; by which, indeed, he was generally known.
“Tom,” said the Parson, “you see to this luggage; count all the parcels; see that you have it all safe; pass it through the custom-house, and let us see you and it to-morrow morning. And now, he who is for a good supper, a smiling hostess, a capital bottle of wine, and clean sheets, follow me.”
As he spoke, he dropped his carpet bag over the side which Ullitz caught, and disappeared down the rope by which Tom had ascended, followed implicitly by his two companions.
“Shove off, Ullitz,” said he, as the Captain sat himself down and poised Tom’s oar in his hands, pointing it man-of-war fashion as Tom himself would have done, and when Ullitz had got clear of the steamer, seconding ably the sturdy strokes of Torkel. In a few moments the boat touched the quay of the fish market, and the party sprang on shore with all the glee that shore-going people feel when released from the thraldom of a crowded vessel.
Ullitz and Torkel remained behind, in order to secure the boat in some dark nook best known to themselves; for there were several idlers on the fish-market quay, who, except for want of conveyance, would have been at that moment unnecessarily adding to the crowd on board, and were not very likely to be over-scrupulous about Torkel’s private property.
The three friends, in the meanwhile, in order to extricate themselves from two or three groups of drunken men (drunkenness, the Parson remarked, was the normal state of Norway, at that time of night), pressed forward, and walked ankle-deep through the sandy desert, which, in Christiansand, is called a street, the Captain stuffing the little black pipe which, as was his wont, he carried in his waistcoat pocket.
“Well,” said Birger, “no one can appreciate a blessing until he has been deprived of it. I declare, it is a luxury in itself to be able to go where one pleases, after having been cribbed and cabined and confined as we have been, and to plant one’s feet on the solid earth once more, instead of balancing our steps on a dancing plank.”
“Pretty well, to call this solid earth,” said the Captain; “I should call it decidedly marine.”
“Something like the Christiansanders themselves,” said Birger, “who, as all the world knows, are neither fish nor flesh, nor good red-herring; but I dare say Purgatory would be Paradise to those who arrived at it from the other way. Well, what is the matter? what are you stopping about?”
These last words were addressed to the Parson, who having been sent forward on the previous summer to spy out this Land of Promise, had volunteered to act as guide.