“Tom, bring the sails with you,” said the Captain, who had leaped ashore to reconnoitre the ground; “we will have our tent under this rock.”
“Capital place!” said Birger; “and bring the axe with you, Tom, as well: that fir will make a first-rate ridge-pole, and it blocks up the place where it stands.”
The Captain, not accustomed yet to the trifling value put upon timber, hesitated to chop up a very promising young tree,—which, indeed, was unnecessarily large for the purpose, and which stood but very little in the way, after all.
“Why,” said Birger, “the very best fir-tree that ever grew is not worth a specie daler here; and as for that stick——” substituting the action for the word, he struck deep into its side, and in a dozen strokes or so it came crashing down among the under-stuff.
There was no lack of fuel: there never is in Norway, where outsides of timber float down the rivers unheeded; and trees, uprooted by the winter storms and land-slips, rot where they fall. Before half the things were out of the boats, three or four fires were throwing round their cheerful light, some for cooking, some for wantonness, for the evening was anything but cold. Birger, however, who, as a Swedish soldier, had had a good deal of experience in bivouacking,—an exercise to which they are all regularly drilled,—set his own two men to gather and pile fuel enough to last through the night; observing that they would all find it cold enough before morning, when those scamps had burned up the fuel at hand.
The Captain and the Parson were occupied in collecting and weighing the fish, and apportioning them and the other provisions among the men, while Jacob, the courier, seated on a stone, apart, was plucking and preparing half-a-dozen teal that Birger had shot during the passage. These, to the Parson’s surprise, he deliberately cut in pieces, and consigned to the great soup-kettle, along with a piece of salt-beef from the harness cask, and various condiments which he made a great secret of.
It may be observed that in Norway fresh meat is seldom eaten, unless it be on grand occasions, or by those who are well to do in the world. October is called in the north the Slaughtering Month, and every family there is occupied in salting, not only for winter, but for the rest of the year. A harness cask, therefore,—that is to say, a small cask with a moveable head, containing salt-beef or pork in pickle,—is a very common thing to meet with, and in fact had formed the pièce de resistance of Madame Ullitz’s stores.
“Look here, Jacob, my man,” said the Captain; “I will show you a trick in cookery that has never reached Gottenborg yet, nor London neither, for that matter; it is worth a hogshead of your teal-soup.”
He called to Tom, who had been preparing under his superintendence certain square sods of turf, and some long white skewers; which, in the absence of arbutus—in Ireland considered indispensable on such occasions,—he had been directed to cut from the juniper.
Birger’s salmon, the flakes of which had actually curled under the cold of the waters, preserving all their curd between them, was cut into what he technically termed fids; each one of these was spread open by the skewers and fixed upon the turfs. These the Captain ranged round a great heap of hot embers, which he had raked from the fire, and set English Tom to turn as they required, basting them pretty freely with salt and water.