The sails were formed into three several tents, not very large ones, certainly, and scarcely admitting of the inmates sitting upright, except in the centre, but quite sufficient to shelter a man lying at full length. At the back of these, where the ground rose a little, a neat trench was cut, in order to carry off the drainings of any unforeseen shower. These were the sleeping tents; and in front of them were spread out a quantity of poplar leaves, which were eventually to form the beds, and which were then pretty rapidly undergoing the process of desiccation in the hot and bright sunshine which had hitherto been so unfriendly. A birch trimmed in its weeping branches, and thickened above with a few supplementary boughs of spruce-fir, was evidently arranged for the dining-room, and several of the stores were gathered round its trunk and thatched with fir-branches, while at some distance below, and not far from the sandy beach, stood three or four neat green huts, built with a framework of fir-poles, and thatched closely, both in roof and walls, with the upper branches of the trees that had been cut down for the frame. Not far from where Jacob was sitting over his långref, there was an elaborate kitchen, built of rough stones against a natural rock, with a cross-beam on the top to swing the kettle from, and beside it rose a goodly pile of fuel, cut into lengths, and stacked into what is called in the country fathoms, that is to say, square piles, six feet long and three high. This had evidently been their last work, for the axes and saws were still lying on the unfinished pile. By the river’s bank at the edge of the peninsula was a curious erection, which Jacob called the smoking-house. It was a pyramid constructed of outsides of deals, hundreds of which, rejected from the saw-mills, were floating about unheeded in the river, and drifting into every corner that was sheltered from the current. This was by no means a place constructed for the luxury of smoking tobacco, an amusement in which every individual of the party indulged in every possible place and in all places alike. It was erected for hanging up superfluous salmon which had previously been slightly salted, in order, with the help of smoke from the green juniper, to convert them into what in London is called “kipper.”
There was little use for it that evening, however, for the grauls brought in by the fishermen would have been but scanty allowance, even for the present supper, had they not been helped out by other provisions. But Jacob had by no means been idle in his vocation. On a shelf of rock not very far from the kitchen, and shaded by a friendly tree, stood gallons of milk and piles of flad bröd, with a few raspberries, which were just then ripening, and an actual little mountain of strawberries, for the woods were carpetted with their bright green leaves and scarlet berries.
Jacob, as was his duty, rolled up his långref as quickly as such a combination of tackle could be stowed away, and commenced preparing the fish for dinner, while the fishermen changed their clothes, and hung them to dry round a supplementary fire which had been lighted for the purpose.
CHAPTER VIII.
MAKING A NIGHT OF IT.
“Ale’s not so good
For the children of men
As people have boasted;
For less and less,
As more he drinketh,