We walked about Hull and made a few last purchases. In the course of our wanderings we chanced to come to a shop, in the window of which many strawberries, large and luscious, were exposed for sale. We immediately entered that shop without exchanging a word, and the Skipper said to the proprietress, ‘This gentleman wants to buy a quantity of strawberries for a school feast;’ while Esau remarked, as he fastened on to the nearest and largest basket, ‘My friend has been ordered to eat strawberries by his doctor.’ After this a scene ensued over which it were best to draw a veil.

At six o’clock we were safely aboard the good ship ‘Angelo,’ and saw our baggage stowed. It consisted of three huge boxes of provisions, weighing more than 100 lbs. each, two portmanteaus, two smaller bags, a tent, a large waggon-sheet intended to form another tent, a bundle of rugs and blankets, a large can containing all cooking utensils, four gun-cases, seven rods, a bundle of axes, a spade and other necessary tools, and the canoes with small wheels for road transport. Those wheels were the only things in the whole outfit that turned out to be not absolutely necessary. We did use them, but only once, and might have managed without them.

When the aforesaid was all on board, there did not appear to be much room for anything else in the steamship ‘Angelo;’ registering 1,300 tons; yet this vast pile was destined to travel many miles over a desperately rough country in the two little canoes.

We were warped out of dock about eight o’clock, and steamed down the Humber with a west wind and a smooth sea. It was showery up to the moment of our departure, but as Hull faded from our sight it became fine, and with the shores of England we seemed to leave the cloud and rain behind.

July 10.—

The day passed as days at sea do when the weather is all that can be wished, and the treacherous ocean calmly sleeps. The passengers were as sociable as any collection of English people ever are, and we spent the time very pleasantly chatting, smoking, eating enormously, and playing the ordinary sea games of quoits and horse-billiards.

The Skipper was much exercised in spirit because Esau had told him that he believed a certain passenger to be an acquaintance of a former voyage, named, let us say, Jones, and that he was a capital fellow. So the Skipper went and fraternised with Jones, and presently, trusting to the ‘information received,’ remarked, ‘I believe your name is Jones?’ and was a little annoyed when Jones replied, ‘No, it’s not Jones; it’s Blueit, and I never heard the name of Jones as a surname before.’ Then the Skipper arose and remonstrated with his perfidious friend, who with great good temper said, to make it all right, ‘You see that man by the funnel? That is a Yankee going to see the midnight sun; go and talk to him.’ Now the Skipper has been in America a good deal, and likes to talk to the natives of those regions, so he sailed over to the funnel and tackled the Yankee. Presently, with that admirable tact which is his most enviable characteristic, he observed, ‘I understand that you have come all the way from America to see the midnight sun: it is a very extraordinary phenomenon. Imagine a glorious wealth of colour glowing over an eternal sunlit sea, and endowing with a fairy glamour a scene which Sappho might have burned to sing; where night is not, nor sleep, but Odin’s eye looks calmly down, nor ever sinks in rest.’ As he paused for breath the Yankee saw his opportunity, and said, ‘No, I was never in America in my life. I am a Lincolnshire man, and am going over to Arendahl to buy timber. I have seen the midnight sun some dozen times, and I call it an infernal nuisance.’ Here the Skipper hastily left, and came over and abused Esau until he made an enemy of him for life.

[CHAPTER II.]
CHRISTIANIA.

Sunday, July 11.—

We reached Christiansand about six, and set sail again at eight. There was what the mariners called a nice breeze with us. Esau declared it to be a storm, and was prostrate at lunch, owing as he said to attending church service, which was conducted under considerable difficulties, members of the congregation occasionally shooting out of the saloon like Zazel out of her cannon, or assuming recumbent postures when the rubric said, ‘Here all standing up.’ However, we came along at a great pace, and arrived at Christiania about nine at night, after a first-rate passage.