I’ve known of a strong man, a Norwegian skipper, who when he saw the ice for the first time, and got his vessel well into it, was so scared that he locked himself into his cabin and was fed through the skylight for a week!
Another old whaler (I mean this time a man of thirty-five) I met in Lerwick. I heard he wanted to see me, for he said he had been a “shipmate” of mine; “shipmate” to one who only plays hide-and-seek with the sea sounded rather pleasant, so we shook hands very heartily for a few seconds, but we had no time for a “gam,” for I had to go about our business with these horrid Custom affairs. He seemed to be doing well; he had some harbour office and was neatly dressed—his name was Tulloch. I must meet him again and have a yarn when there is more leisure.
We have additional worry here besides the registration. We have to have our vessel remeasured to satisfy our Board of Trade. I fear it gave the registrar some trouble to come from Aberdeen in rough weather, and he was very sick; if his eye ever falls on these lines, here are my thanks and sympathy. If we had gone to him at Aberdeen he would have put us into dry dock and kept us for weeks, but here we knew there were no dry docks.
At this point in our proceedings the writer left the St Ebba and took the high road over the island, and left the measurement business to Henriksen, for that is a matter that required tact and patience rather than the English language. I went to see my friend R. C. Haldane, who has the property of Lochend on Colla Firth, also to see our Alexandra whaling station there, of which this writer is a Director. I hardly dare mention this in Lerwick for the herring-fishers are jealous of whalers—whaling, they say, has spoiled their herring-fishing—and yet the herring-fishing is better than it ever was! The fact is, if the Man in the Moon made a half-penny more than they did, at his trade, which I am told is cutting sticks, they would eat their fingers off. Being numerically superior to us whalers they carry the vote—and so our Government has forbidden us to kill whales within forty miles of our Shetland shores during the best of the season, whilst any Dane, Dago or Dutchman may kill them up to the three-mile limit!
CHAPTER VIII
I have just come over the island and on board ship after a week-end trip to the north of this main island to my friend R. C. Haldane, of the distinguished family of that name, associated in historians’ minds with Halfdan the Viking leader, and to newspaper readers with a younger brother—late War Minister and present Lord Chancellor. I came over the island in a single-cylinder motor-car, a splendid new departure for these parts, over the windy, wet moorland track, four hours to do forty miles, but what glorious speed compared with only the other day, when we stiffened for long hours doing the same journey in a slow dog-cart.
The old whaler, Magnus Andersen, took me off to St Ebba in the wind and dark and splashing sea in a leaky cobble.
How jolly and cheery it is to be back in the cosy, lamplit cabin. The first mate is busy at his log, trying to write in English, and soon there is the bump of a boat alongside, and down the companionway comes our burly youth of a captain, and what a hearty handshake he gives, as if we had been away for weeks, or months, instead of only a week-end: and we compare notes. His day has been full to overflowing.
He had prepared the fatted calf—tinned meat and fish balls and beer, and whisky and soda, against the Board of Trade inspector’s visit for measurement and registration; and then he turned out to be a teetotaller and vegetarian! We had telegraphed to Aberdeen for this poor man and he had torn himself from the bosom of his family, faced two days’ gale and arrived white as paper and rather on edge. But he was profoundly clever, all admitted that, and he was impressed with Henriksen’s books in the cabin, three big shelves, all of them scientific sea-books, and directories. And he said: “Where are the novels?” And there were none! At least there were none visible. I have two or three about heroes and heroines of Park Lane and country mansions, into which I sometimes dip a little just to give renewed zest for the wide horizon and the tang of wind and sea out-by. And he measured this and that, and, much to our joy, he practically accepted the Norwegian Lloyd registration, and put us down at sixty-nine tons instead of a larger figure, which we feared; now, registered as under seventy tons we need not have pilots, and we save in many ways on entering port.