The next morning at daybreak they jumped into their clothes, pulling complete oil-cloth suits on the outside of their ordinary garments. Then fastening their yellow sou’westers under their chins, they surveyed each other with undisguised looks of admiration and began to feel like real fishermen. The breakfast was swallowed in haste, and they scarcely noticed how the hot coffee scalded their mouths, so eager were they to be off. Nevertheless, as they had no nets to draw as yet, they delayed their departure for several hours. It was a raw, cold morning, but the signals at the government station indicated fair but blustery weather. The whole fleet had already started, and the Hasselrud boats were among the last to set sail for the fishing-banks. It was glorious to see the wide ocean studded, as far as the eye could reach, with swelling sails, and the air filled for miles with a screaming host of great, white-winged sea-birds. Round about the whales were spouting, shooting columns of water into the gray light of the morning: and the auks were rocking upon the waves, and vanishing, quick as a flash, as soon as a boat approached them. The fresh sea-breeze blew into the faces of the three boys, and they felt like Norse Vikings of the olden time starting out in search of fame and adventures. It was about twelve o’clock when they arrived at the fishing-banks; the sails were lowered and the nets sunk by means of lead sinkers and stones attached to their lower edge. Wooden floats, similarly attached to their upper edge, held them in position in the water. Grim sat, grave and imperturbable, in the stern, issuing his commands in a voice which rose high above the rushing of the water and the whizzing of the wind, and every man obeyed with a promptness as if his life depended upon it. The sea was so packed with cod that the nets often stopped, gliding slowly over the backs of the fishes, and being again arrested by the myriads of finny creatures below. Often the same net had to be taken up and disentangled several times before it made its way to the bottom. The water was thick with spawn, which clung in long gelatinous ropes to the blades of the oars, and doubled their weight to the rowers. The boys, leaning out over the gunwale, could see the huge male cods winding themselves onward through the dense throngs of females which stood still with their noses against the current, moving their fins, and shedding their spawn. It seemed a positive mercy to haul up a million or so of them, just to make room for the rest.
“I understand now,” exclaimed Harry, “how the Canadians managed to cheat us out of so much money—six millions, more or less, I think—because we had encroached upon their fishing-grounds. I would myself pay a good round sum for sport like this; and the joke of it is that you are making money at it and have all the fun in the bargain.”
“And have ye fisheries in America too, lad?” Grim asked, with visible interest, as he let the last float slip from his hand.
“Have we got fisheries in America? Well, I should say we had, old man,” said Harry, fired with patriotic ardor. “You just tell me what we haven’t got in America. If you’ll come over and see I shall be happy to entertain you.”
“Ye are safe in invitin’ me, lad,” Grim retorted, biting a quid from his roll of tobacco. “A purty figger an old sea-dog like me would make in your ma’s carpeted parlor.”
Harry in his heart admitted the force of this remark, and he laughed to himself at the thought of Grim’s ungainly form seated in one of his mother’s spindle-legged blue satin chairs; but, for all that, he liked Grim too much to wish to offend him, and therefore stuck bravely to his invitation, insisting that it was sincerely meant. As they were amicably squabbling, the sun suddenly burst forth, and flung its dazzling radiance upon the ocean. The noise of the sea-birds grew louder, making the vast vault of the sky alive with countless varieties of screams. The fishes leaped, the whales spouted lustily, the stormy petrel danced over the crests of the billows; thousands of boats lay bobbing up and down on the waves, while the lines were being baited; a thousand voices shouted to each other from boat to boat; oars and rudders rattled, and the wind sang in the mast-tops. It was a scene which once seen could never be forgotten.
II.
Long before the Hasselrud men had their lines set the whole fleet had rowed back toward land. But Grim’s boat-guild, which had just arrived, and had as yet no nets to draw, lingered for a while eating their dinner, which they had brought with them in the boats. They chatted and told stories about Draugen, the sea-bogey, who rows in a half boat, and whose scream sounds terribly through the tempest. Any man who sees him knows that he will never see land again. Draugen is only out in the worst weather; he has a sou’wester on his head, his face is white and ghastly as death itself, and his empty eye-sockets have no eyes in them. The boys shuddered at the horrible picture which was conjured up before them, and it was a relief to them when the time came for pulling up the lines, and the great codfishes were hauled sprawling into the boat; each one had plenty to do now in cutting out the hooks and in winding the lines upon their frames. A smart gale had sprung up while they were thus engaged, and Grim began to look wistfully at the lurid sunset.
“The sun draws water,” he said; “that means lively weather. Hoist the sails, lads, and let us turn our noses shoreward.”