After the pony had gone with the last load we suddenly discovered that the tent had been forgotten: it and its appurtenances make a package weighing about 70 lbs. Now we all hate carrying 70 lbs., but fortunately at this crisis a deus ex machinâ appeared in the person of a stranger. At first we thought it must be one of our own men returning for something after changing his coat, but on his nearer approach we found that he was the rest of the population of the district, whom we had not seen before, coming down in a body. This was Hans Kleven, who has the reputation of being the best hunter in the country. He is a small sturdy man, with amazing shoulders and a pleasant, good-humoured face, and a most gorgeous check shooting-coat, of a pattern so enormous that there are only three squares on the whole of his back, which is a pretty broad one. This coat was given to him years ago, apparently about 1840, by an English sportsman, and he is as proud of it as ever Joseph was of his celebrated garment. To him we committed our tent, which he carried over to Besse Sæter, three miles away, without turning a hair. We rewarded him with a shilling, and from his profuse gratitude we conjecture that he only expected fourpence for the job.
Our first step at Besse Sæter was, as usual, to demand food; and John asked for a dish called ‘Tuk melk,’ which had been recommended to him as very Norwegian and very good. A woman at once went to fetch it from the other sæter, a quarter of a mile away, and presently brought it in a large wooden milk-tub about the size and shape of a sitz bath. How that poor woman carried it we know not; it occupied half the table, and was so scrupulously clean that we feared to touch it with our sordid hands.
John and Esau at last attacked it in the orthodox manner, which is to sit on opposite sides of the table, and to draw a line across the surface of the milk with a spoon before beginning, and then to ‘eat fair’ up to that line. It would have amused some of our friends at home if they could have seen these two young men of fashion at the moment when both of them were engaged with abnormally large wooden spoons, silently ladling down ‘Tuk melk’ out of a tub as big as a drawing-room table.
They reported that it was on the whole good; something like curds, but with a sourer taste, and it was much improved by sugar; but though they ate a large quantity of it, being men of great courage and determination, they could not persuade the Skipper to risk his life in experiments with untried articles of food. He, however, gave utterance to the following refined expression of his sentiments:—‘I wouldn’t touch that beastliness if you gave me fourteen pence a spoonful to swallow it.’ No one offered the reward.
Out shooting on the other side of the lake, we put up a snipe just at evening, which went down again close to us. This species of game is not common up here, although we find his cousin the woodcock fairly often; consequently we were much excited, and advanced upon the foe with insidious step, and bloodthirsty weapons almost at our shoulders in order to slay him as soon as he should rise. All went well, and at the right moment up he got, and promptly did the Skipper fire and miss him; while Esau’s gun for the first time on record missed fire, and left him using language that ought to have ignited any cartridge. So the happy bird zigzagged off into the dim shades of sheltering night, and we went on our way full of thought and sorrow.
Arriving again at the sæter after narrowly escaping shipwreck in the passage, we found that Jens had come to meet us, and as he will enter our service from this date, we shall no longer need Ivar, and paid him off, arranging, however, that he is to come to help us home when we leave Rus Vand.
We like Ivar very much now, though we did not by any means dote upon him at first. Ivar is a good fellow, but an idiot, perfectly willing to do anything in the world, but not understanding how to do anything. His budding reputation was blasted in our eyes the first time that we left camp and entrusted everything to his care: we were away for three days, and in that time he consumed nearly four pounds of our best butter; on our return we decided that he was a knave, but we have since learnt that it was only his natural impulsiveness that led him to commit such an outrage; and now that we have found how eager he is to oblige us in everything, we like his strange nature better than Öla’s awful laziness of character. He came into the room this morning to stand for his portrait, and the easy, graceful attitude that he assumed for the occasion was inimitable. His waistcoat and boots were perhaps his greatest charm, but his open countenance and genial smile (six inches in diameter) played no small part in causing him to become beloved by us as he was.
Ivar always laughed like a nigger on a racecourse, and whenever we took him out ryper-shooting he was exactly like an unbroken retriever: if a bird was killed, he would rush in to gather it, and we had to shout, ‘Back, Ivar, back! Lie down! Down charge!’ to prevent him disturbing any birds that might have chanced to remain during the yells and convulsions of Christy Minstrel mirth into which the death of a ryper always sent him. His behaviour usually made us laugh so much that we attributed any missing to the unsteadiness caused by constant hilarity. We gave him our spade as a parting present, and dismissed him with our blessing.