ON THE TOP OF GLOPIT. RETURNING FROM RUS LAKE.
August 21.—
It was cold and windy last night, so we turned into bed early and lay in luxurious comfort while John read out choice bits, all of which we know by heart, from the works of Mark Twain. We all think Mark Twain the best writer for camp life that has yet been discovered, and we have three or four of his books here. Besides these our library of light literature consists of Shakespeare, Longfellow, Dr. Johnson’s Table-talk, and novels by Whyte Melville, Walford, and Thackeray. But Mark and William get more work than all the rest.
It is quite dark now during the night, and we have made a wooden chandelier out of a curiously bent piece of birch wood, which holds two candles and hangs down from the ridge pole by a string. In the daytime it is hoisted up to the roof, but at night we let it down till it swings about two feet above our heads as we lie in bed. This contrivance is capital for reading, and also affords considerable diversion to the last man into bed. The candles are just too high to be reached with a puff easily from a recumbent position, and yet we persistently try to blow them out without moving. Just as sleep is creeping over two of the wearied sportsmen, the last man begins blowing and cussing at these candles every night regularly. The scene is generally this. Skipper and John just dropping off to sleep. Esau lies down, makes himself extremely comfortable, and then—puff, whoo, whew, puff,—gasp for breath, rest a moment. Pouf. Chandelier swings round under the impulse of the strong wind thus created. Esau makes a brilliant flying shot at one candle, as it circles swiftly past. Skipper: ‘Thank goodness.’ Pause. Esau: Poof, whoo, whoof. John: ‘Dash it all, get up and put it out.’ Esau: ‘Get up yourself.’ Skipper: ‘Let me blow it out.’ Pouf, puff, whoosh. Chandelier swings madly round, drops grease on John’s nose. John: ‘Tare an ’ouns.’ Throws tobacco pouch at it, more grease all over the place, tobacco pouch rebounds from tent into Esau’s mouth. Recrimination for five minutes. Chandelier at last stationary. Everybody at once: ‘Puff, boo, pouf, whew, —— it, —— it, pouf, —— it, —— the —— thing — — — pouf. Thank goodness;’ and we all turn over with a sigh of relief, to repeat the performance the following night.
Öla not having turned up, there could be no stalking, so the beautiful morning was wasted. The Skipper got so angry about it that he said he would go in his canoe to find the absentee, and take at the same time a lot of our surplus fish for the people at Gjendesheim.
Leaving the tent on its grassy sunlit lawn he walked down to the edge of the great lake, and turning over the smaller of the two canoes, which were lying bottom uppermost, launched her and got in with rod and fishing bag, and pushed off into the deep. Opposite to the place where the canoes were drawn up, and apparently only a hundred yards distant though really more than a mile away, were the snow-capped mountain steeps that rise almost perpendicularly from two to three thousand feet out of the lake; and for these he made, gradually becoming a mere twinkling speck till he faded out of sight from the tent. The lake was as smooth as glass, only occasionally rippled as some monarch of the deep, excited for once in his life by some specially fascinating fly, condescended to make a rush for it instead of the gentle suck by which he usually took his food, and the Skipper paddled leisurely along within twenty yards of the rocks, with his rod bending over the stern, and trailing behind a couple of flies in the hope of catching a trout without the trouble of angling for him.
It is very pleasant to be alone once in a way in this overcrowded world. Not alone as it is possible to be in England, but absolutely alone, with no living thing near except the trout, the insects, and one’s image in the water. Oh, blessed Norway! when we get back to the turmoils, troubles, and pleasures of a London season how we shall long for you! There is only one word to express this existence, and that is Freedom—freedom from care, freedom from resistance, and from the struggle for life. What a country! where civilised man can relapse as much as seems good to him into his natural state, and retrograde a hundred generations into his primeval condition.
But we forget that the Skipper is coasting up towards Gjendesheim in search of the miscreant Öla.
He proceeded for a couple of hours, catching a few fish now and then, but presently as midday approached, the sun became too hot to be pleasant, the fish would not move, and the Skipper began to get impatient and annoyed at not meeting Öla. After a while a black speck with two flashing arms appeared rounding a promontory; this was Öla in the boat. The Skipper was boiling with rage under the influence of various incentives as he approached. Öla, like most Norwegians, was calm, placid, and utterly unconscious of the flight of time and the shortness of life. The Skipper had been primed to exploding point by his two friends before starting, and as he had now paddled five miles from home without meeting the adversary, he was, to put it mildly, ‘indignant.’ So, when he found Öla smoking serenely, and sculling along as though his brief span were going to stretch through the unending cycles of eternity, he gave way to the most horrible outbreak of temper in English, which must have lasted four or five minutes, and then telling the caitiff in Norwegian to take the fish to Gjendesheim and return to camp by five o’clock whatever the weather might be, he turned and left that hardy Norseman open-mouthed and bewildered, looking as though he had seen the Strömkarl, or had had an interview with his mother-in-law.
Then a great wind arose, and blew against the Skipper all the way home, but he arrived in the most beatific frame of mind in spite of it; the relief of the storm of temper and bad language had been so great to him, that he was filled with a blessed joy. He said it was the most invigorating and refreshing pastime he ever indulged in, for Öla could not understand a word of it, and therefore no remorse could follow the outburst, not a thoughtless expression or hasty word could go home to his heart and there rankle, to recoil on some future occasion, but the whole vial of pent-up wrath could be emptied on its object without fear of retribution.