“And do such things ever happen, Grim?” the boy would ask, shuddering at the ghastly picture which his friend’s words suggested.
“Do they ever happen? Wal, I reckon they do. I might jest mention to ye that I ain’t in the habit of tellin’ no lies. My father—God ha’e mercy on his soul—he sent only his legs fur to represent him at his funeral; and my grandfather—wal, the cod turned the tables on him; he had meant to eat them, but—it ain’t no use bein’ squeamish about it—they ate him. It war in the great storm of the 11th of February, 1848, when five hundred fisherman cheated the parson out of his funeral fees.”
“How terrible, Grim! How can you go to the fisheries every winter, when both your father and your grandfather lost their lives there?”
“Wal, now ye are puzzlin’ me, Mester Magnus,” Grim replied, taking his clay pipe from the corner of his mouth, and looking up seriously from his labor; “but I’ll tell ye a yarn I heared when I was young. I reckon it is true, because I have never heared nobody say it warn’t. Some city chap axed a fisherman purty much what ye have axed me, and the fisherman says, says he: ‘Whar did yer father die?’ ‘Why, he expired peacefully in his bed,’ said the city chap. ‘And yer grandfather?’ axed the fisherman. ‘Wal, he had jest the same luck,’ says the city chap. ‘And yer great-grandfather?’ ‘He, too, turned up his toes in the same style.’ ‘Wal, now,’ says the fisherman, ‘if I were you I wouldn’t never go to bed again, sence all yer forbears come to their death in it.’ Now, I reckon that is the way with all of us. Ef the Lord wants us he will know whar to find us, wharsoever we be.”
When the Christmas holidays, with all their old-fashioned hospitality and sports, were over the question was seriously debated whether the boys should be permitted to accompany Grim and the housemen (tenants) to the Lofoten fisheries. It was decided that three boats should be manned, and Grim was as usual elected captain of the whole guild. The “tokens” had been uncommonly good this year, and a profitable fishery was expected. Mr. Birk, who well knew the dangers connected with this enterprise, was very unwilling to let the boys start out in the open boats, and suffer the discomforts which were inseparable from the life on these barren islands, where thousands of people were huddled together in booths and shanties, and quarrels and fights were the order of the day. Harry, however, argued that such an experience would scarcely offer itself to him a second time in his life, and that it was easy to avoid danger while still observing all that was interesting and instructive in the lives of the people. Olaf and Magnus, too, added their powers of persuasion to those of Harry, and in the end Mr. Birk (after enjoining a hundred precautions) had to yield, stipulating only that Edwin should remain at home. Grim promised to keep a careful look-out over the movements of the boys, but he refused to be responsible for their safety, because, as he remarked, “they were too lively a lot to be controlled by a stiff-legged old crab like himself.”
It was a gray morning in January that the long eight oared boats were made ready, the chests containing provisions and clothes were placed in the stern, and the sails with a rattling noise flew up and bulged before the wind. The sky had a peculiar whitish-gray color, which has always an ominous look and promises squalls. Yet it was a glorious sensation to feel the boats shooting away over the crests of the waves, dashing the spray like smoke about them and yielding like living things to the slightest prompting of the rudder. Grim himself sat in the stern of the first boat, which the boys had named “The Cormorant,” holding the tiller in his left hand and the sheet in his right. Magnus had found a rather elevated seat in the prow, from whence he could observe the captain’s manœuvres and take lessons in seamanship. Harry and Olaf sat on the middle bench, watching the horizon and seeing the squalls dash down from the mountains and sweep their trails of smoke across the fiord.
“It must be dangerous sailing here, Grim,” Harry observed, uneasily.
“It ain’t no joke—fer goslings,” answered Grim.