"We never set out upon this expedition without a steady side wind for going and coming—one that we felt sure would not fail us before our return; and we seldom made a miscalculation upon this point. Twice, during six years, we were forced to stay all night at anchor, on account of a dead calm, which is a rare thing indeed just about here; and once we had to remain on the grounds nearly a week, starving to death, owing to a gale which blew up shortly after our arrival, and made the channel too boisterous to be thought of.
"Upon this occasion we should have been driven out to sea in spite of everything (for the whirlpools threw us round and round so violently that at length we fouled our anchor and dragged it), if it had not been that we drifted into one of the innumerable cross-currents—here to-day and gone to-morrow—which drove us under the lee of Flimen, where by good luck we brought up.
"I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we encountered 'on the ground'—it is a bad spot to be in, even in good weather; but we made shift always to run the gantlet of the Moskoe-ström itself without accident, although at times my heart has been in my mouth when we happened to be a minute or so behind or before the slack.
"It is now within a few days of three years since what I am going to tell you occurred. It was on the 10th of July, 18—; a day which the people of this part of the world will never forget, for it was one in which blew the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the heavens.
"And yet all the morning, and indeed until late in the afternoon, there was a gentle and steady breeze from the southwest, while the sun shone brightly, so that the oldest seaman among us could not have foreseen what was to follow.
"The three of us—my two brothers and myself—had crossed over to the islands about two o'clock p.m., and soon nearly loaded the smack with fine fish; which, we all remarked, were more plenty that day than we had ever known them. It was just seven, by my watch, when we weighed and started for home, so as to make the worst of the Ström at slack water, which we knew would be at eight.
"We set out with a fresh wind at our starboard quarter, and for some time spanked along at a great rate, never dreaming of danger; for indeed we saw not the slightest reason to apprehend it. All at once we were taken aback by a breeze from over Helseggen. This was most unusual; something that had never happened to us, and I began to feel a little uneasy, without exactly knowing why. We put the boat on the wind, but could make no headway at all for the eddies; and I was upon the point of proposing to return to the anchorage, when, looking astern, we saw the whole horizon covered with a singular copper-colored cloud that rose with the most amazing velocity.
"In the meantime, the breeze that had headed us off fell away; and we were dead becalmed, drifting about in every direction. This state of things, however, did not last long enough to give us time to think about it.
"In less than a minute the storm was upon us; in less than two the sky was entirely overcast; and what with this and the driving spray, it became suddenly so dark that we could not see each other in the smack.
"Such a hurricane as then blew it is folly to attempt to describe. The oldest seaman in Norway never experienced anything like it. We had let our sails go by the run before it cleverly took us; but at the first puff both our masts went by the board as if they had been sawed off—the mainmast taking with it my youngest brother, who had lashed himself to it for safety.