"I see, my Lord," answered D——; "that's all fair enough."
And D—— took a piece of yarn, and lashed the cork at the sides and over the top, having previously with a small stick rammed his handkerchief into the body of the bottle, and wiped it perfectly dry.
"Let it go," said R—— to one of the men, who made the bottle fast to the line, and did as he was commanded. D—— challenged the mate with an equal shilling that the bottle would be water tight; and the mate, like a sage, accepted the bet. As balance to the overlapping cork, we gave the champagne bottle the whole length of the eighty fathoms; and then, drawing it up, found the cork had not been moved an iota; but the bottle was full of water.
D—— shook his head, and paid the shilling.
I do not think D—— will ever doubt any phenomena again, as he is ready to admit the hardest truths of Science, however whimsical they may appear, or sound to him. Indeed he believes most things, and only mistrusts shoals and lee shores, to which he never fails to give a wide berth.
"Now we are about it," said R——, "let us try and find the bottom."
When King told the pilot what we were going to undertake, the old man laughed, and said we might try; but the Fiord was as deep as the mountains were high. Another line of a hundred fathoms was joined to the one with which we had been making the experiments to shake the infidelity of the heterodox D——, and lowered. No weigh was on the cutter; and two leads, being fixed to the line, were thrown over the quarter, and leaving a perpendicular track of froth, descended, hissing through the water. The whole hundred and eighty fathoms ran out; and we seemed as far from the bottom of the Fiord as we were before we commenced. Some idea may be conceived of the amazing depth of these Fiords, when I say, that the yacht was not one hundred and twenty yards from the shore, and the entire breadth of the Fiord about two miles. The pilot again came aft, and through his interpreter, King, informed us that the Fiord had never been plumbed, although the endeavour had been made very frequently by scientific men, and Danish naval officers.
Not many miles from the village of Sand, the place to which we were bound, on one of the sloping woodland swards that cheer by their vivid verdure the loneliness of the Bukke Fiord, a small cottage, thatched with the branches of the fir, may attract the traveller's observation, and if he does not look around attentively he will not see it, for it is low, and sheltered by the spreading arms of an old pine. The waters of the Fiord flow not many feet from its humble threshold; and perhaps, fastened to a stake, a fisherman's pram swings to the changing currents of air. Now, however, as the cutter drifted, rather than sailed, nearer to this green point of land, we saw that the pram had been untied from the stake, and was rowed by an old woman round and round, in an unending circuit, in midway of the Fiord. Often she ceased to row, and unfolding a white handkerchief from her head bared her whiter hair to the burning sky, and waved the signal in the air. Shouting with the shrill voice of her sex and age, she beckoned us to hasten to her aid. Then, hobbling from one end of her pram to the other, and moving quickly from side to side she leaned over and looked steadfastly down in the water, as if something valuable had been lost. When she saw we made no haste, she resumed her seat, and singing a native song that had more of liveliness than melancholy in its burden, again she rowed her pram round the same circle, never deserting the spot, but whistling and chanting by turns, she kept her face turned in one direction, that she might always watch the central surface of the water.
"What means that old woman?" asked R—— of several men who were observing her, and, clustering round the pilot, seemed to be gathering all the information he could give.
"She is mad, my Lord," the sailors made reply.