The seal rose, like a cork, up to its fore fins as if it had suffered much torture from long retention of its breath, and, swifter than thought, R——'s gun flashed, and with a sharp report seemed to take a bucket of water from the Fiord, and fling it into the air. When the light gray smoke of the powder had rolled in a revolving cloud from the space intervening between us and the spot where the animal was observed, the water was white with froth, but no sign of the seal could be seen.
"By Jove! that's odd. I thought I had killed him to a certainty," said R——, somewhat surprised.
"Yes, my Lord, you hit him," observed the cockswain, consolingly. "I saw him reel over to port."
"That's all right," said P——, "in that case he is done."
Once more two large bubbles, the spiteful heralds of the seal's advent, rose to the top of the water, and then burst with a slight sound.
The purple dye of blood tinged the water, and immediately afterwards the wounded seal, with lacerated fin, buoyed itself sluggishly to sight. Its heavy breathing, expressive of pain, could be heard by all of us in the boat; and levelling both their pieces, R—— and P—— fired together. The seal rolled over with a moan, not unlike the faint lowing of a calf, and floating in a pool of blood, rather than water, expired without a struggle. Rowing the boat to the spot, the cockswain and his messmate used their whole strength to pull the animal on board, its dimensions not being contemptible. We reached the yacht about midnight, proud of our day's sport.
Although it was the noon of night, it was light as at six o'clock in the afternoon; and, indeed it is not an easy thing to tell the hour of the day without referring to a time-piece; for there is but a very slight difference in this part of the globe, during the summer months, between the darkness of night and the transparency of day. This may sound paradoxical enough; but the fact is no less true for all that. It would be hardly necessary to observe, that the heat during the night in Norway is sometimes more oppressive than during the day; and simply, I should imagine, because, before the setting and rising of the sun, sufficient time is not given to allow the ascending vapours to carry off the fervour retained by the earth; and added to which the sun does not sink at any period during the summer eighteen degrees below the horizon. His rays therefore assist in keeping up the hot temperature until two or three hours have elapsed, and then his great red face again begins to parch every thing that dares come within its range. Norway being also a very rocky country, absorbs the heat with wonderful facility, and as every one may know, is disinclined to part with it. Returning home at half-past twelve, or one, just before sunrise as I sometimes did, by some shadowed path along the mountains, I have placed my hand on the rocks, and found them still warm. The day, on the contrary, though exposed to the direct power of the sun, has the atmosphere always cooled by the wind, which is kept in motion more actively the hotter become the sun's rays, the heat being a circulating medium of itself. Indeed the departure of the sun is the signal for the wind's flight likewise; and the night is generally painfully calm.
There is also another phenomenon that may rivet the observation of an inhabitant of a more Southern latitude, and convey as much sublimity to the mind, as it may be strange to the outward senses. I refer to the appearance of a great Northern city at night. I shall not easily forget Bergen, when for the first time, I walked through its streets at three o'clock in the morning, and saw a bright sun in a blue sky shining over it. Not a sound, beside my own footstep, disturbed the stillness; and when I turned my eyes from the long, deserted avenues of streets and closed windows of the houses, towards the mountains that droop sullenly over the town, and sought there for some living sign to assure me that I was not absolutely alone, not a bird or insect chirped or flitted on the wing. I felt amid this desolation as if wandering in the fabled City of Death; nor do I think that any man, the most elastic of disposition, could bring to his heart any other feelings than those of awe and sadness, when walking, as I did then, in the glare of day through the thoroughfares of a populous city, he witnesses the silence and solemnity that pervade it. I am glad that I have seen Bergen at midnight, for I would see everything in this curious world; but the reflections that troubled my mind were so much more than the sight was worth that I have no desire to look again.