BEAR-HUNT.

Front.

FOREST SCENES
IN
NORWAY AND SWEDEN:
BEING
Extracts from the Journal of a Fisherman.

BY
THE REV. HENRY NEWLAND,
RECTOR AND VICAR OF WESTBOURNE,
AUTHOR OF “THE ERNE: ITS LEGENDS AND ITS FLY-FISHING,” ETC. ETC.

The Second Edition.

LONDON:
G. ROUTLEDGE & CO. FARRINGDON STREET;
NEW YORK: 18, BEEKMAN STREET.
1855.

TO MY MUCH-ESTEEMED FRIEND, THE PUBLIC.

My dear Public,—

I have frequently heard you remark, in that quaint and pithy manner so peculiarly your own, that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” If you should happen to find the book which I here present to your notice to be really of such a character as your friend Jack might have written under these distressing circumstances, I am afraid I cannot plead this very sensible observation of yours as my excuse; for I must confess, which I do with thankfulness, that in my time I have enjoyed quite as much play as is good for me, or for any one, in this working-day world of ours. On this point, therefore, my book must stand on its own merits.

But, as I am extremely solicitous of your good opinion, and should be very sorry to see you err on the opposite extreme, imagining, as indeed you might, that mine has been “all play and no work,” I must request you to look at the Parson at home as well as the Parson abroad,—in short, to read my “Confirmation and First Communion,” as well as my “Forest Life;” a proceeding which, if it does not benefit you, my dear Public (and I sincerely hope it may), will, at all events,—through the medium of his Publisher,—benefit, and that materially,

Your faithful Servant,

THE AUTHOR.

Westbourne Vicarage,
July 7th, 1854.

CONTENTS.

FOREST LIFE:
A
FISHERMAN’S SKETCHES IN NORWAY AND
SWEDEN.

INTRODUCTION.

Sketches in Norway and Sweden! Are they fact or fiction? are they to be instructive or simply entertaining? These are questions which the public has a right to ask, and which the author means to answer as truly as he can. He hopes there will be a little of both. At least, in making this selection from his own and his friends’ journals, he has had both these objects in his eye, and he trusts he has been able to keep his eye upon them both at the same time, and that without any very great amount of squinting. The framework which he has adopted is that of a very popular description of authors—the historical romancers, and, if he might venture to say so, of a certain equally popular historian: that is to say, fiction founded upon fact. He has laid down absolute facts, or what he believes to be facts, for his groundwork, and has dressed them up to suit his fancy.

These Northern Sketches are, in truth, a continuation of a former work, “The Erne, its Legends and its Fly-fishing;” as the expedition which gave rise to them was in every respect the same as the old Belleek fishing-association, with a simple change of scene. They are therefore written upon the same plan, which the author has found extremely convenient and very suitable to his purpose.

That purpose was not only to preserve the recollections of a most enjoyable time, but also to convey as much real information on the subjects treated on as he could compass; and with such an object before him, absolute fiction would have been useless.

His descriptions, therefore, in that book were real descriptions, his anecdotes, real anecdotes—the incidents of the story did actually happen; his instructions in the art of fly-fishing and the hydrography of the river were the results of his own experience, and the fairy legends were his own collections. Unless these things had been true, his book would have been merely a book of entertainment,—and he was ambitious of something beyond that. Everything of this kind, therefore, was recorded accurately; and in the few instances in which the requirements of the story compelled the author to transplant his incidents, their real localities were always given.

All this was important to the public, or, at least, as important as the subject itself; but it was of no consequence to any one, except for the gratification of mere curiosity, to be able to identify the precise Captain A. who broke the weirs of the Laune, while such information would not have raised Captain A.’s character at the Horse-Guards. The Liberal member for B. might enjoy the recollection of the row he got up at Kildoney, but might not find it convenient to be reminded of it on the hustings. Attorneys might look askance at Barrister C., who for a whole summer had directed his studies to the practice of Club-law; while Parson D., who had passed three months of his life waist-high in the Erne, might possibly expect, were he identified, to have cold water thrown upon him by his Bishop for the rest of his life.

With all these matters, interesting enough to the characters themselves, the public had nothing whatever to do: it was sufficient for them that they had their information and their story; and, provided the incidents of that story happened to some one, it signified little to them, which, of all the letters of the alphabet, composed his name. The public should feel grateful to any fisherman who has truly revealed the silks and feathers of his favourite fly; it is what very few fishermen will do: let them be satisfied with that: they shall never know—they have no right to know—which of all the “Squires” that haunted the Erne it was who landed the “Schoolmaster” on the “Bank of Ireland.”

In the present sketches the author has not so much reason to conceal the names of his characters; he can hurt no one. He has no rows or “ructions” to record; more’s the pity, for there is nothing so interesting to read about. Still, there are advantages in carrying out the same plan: first, it makes the continuation obvious—some of the Erne characters are again introduced: and this is not a fiction; for when rail-roads began to multiply, and sporting cockneys began to infest the innocent Erne, frightening its salmon and exacerbating its proprietors, that pleasant coterie of fishermen, who, in earlier and better times, were wont to concoct their punch and tell their stories at Mother Johnstone’s fire-side, and hang their great two-handed rods upon her hospitable brackets, actually did betake themselves to the exile of foreign lands.

But, in the second place, it conveys the same information in a more entertaining manner: the author is able to piece his characters; making them, like Mrs. Malaprop’s Cerberus, “three gentlemen at once,” by combining into one the incidents that happened to many. The author has thus availed himself of other journals and other note-books besides his own, and has been able to appropriate their contents, and to distribute whatever was characteristic of the country, into a series of connected sketches, instead of perpetually changing his locality and introducing new characters. He by no means intends to identify himself with his fictitious Parson, nor will he even undertake to say, that he was himself in all instances personally present whenever the Parson comes upon the scene: he will answer for the truth of nothing beyond the detached incidents and descriptions.

Neither can these Sketches be used as an itinerary. Now and then, though not often, names of places have been even suppressed or altered, and incidents transplanted. They will, indeed, give glimpses—slight, but true as far as they go—of northern scenery, costume, travelling peculiarities, and, above all, sport. They will contain practical hints and available directions, but it is only in a general way. They are not at all intended as a guide-book, nor will they at all supersede the indispensable Murray.

The traveller, following upon the author’s footsteps, will find himself lost at two points of the narrative—the village of Soberud, and the locality of the Skal. In the former of these the reason is evident enough—the author wishes to convey an idea of what sort of men the Norwegian clergy are, not to draw the attention of subsequent travellers to any individual clergyman. In the case of the skal there is another reason. Although Mr. Lloyd, the author of “Northern Wild Sports,” being a great hunter, has always contrived to get a shot at the bear, it is, nevertheless, true, that an ordinary man sees about as much of a skal as a regimental officer does of a battle—that is to say, he sees about a dozen men on each side of him: and, it may well happen, that the share of any given individual in the most successful of skals, will amount to hearing a great deal of firing, and, at the end of three or four days’ hard work, seeing five or six carcasses paraded at the nearest village. In order, therefore, to give his readers a graphic sketch of a skal, without violently outraging probability, it was necessary for the author to make his ground, that is to say, to imagine ground of such a description that it was possible for his characters to see what was going on. It is not altogether fictitious either, for the traveller will find a good deal of it in the Toftdahl Valley, though this was never, so far as the author knows, the scene of a summer skal.

Similarly, also, though there is no such village as Soberud, that being the name of a district near Larvig in which Sir Hyde Parker’s fishing-lodge is situated and where the author caught a good many salmon and trout, yet the traveller will be able to patch together the fictitious country from real and actual elements. The church is Hitterdahl—but as there is no lake at Hitterdahl, one has been borrowed for it from the country between Larvig and Frederiksvärn—the “Lake of the Woods” is, really, about four miles north-east of the village of Boen; the little lake where the diver was shot, together with the forest about it, about as far to the west of the same place; and the dark sombre pine wood is, really, situated in the valley of the Nid. This last has been slightly altered to suit the locality, for it is next to impossible to lose oneself in the Nid forest, the river itself being sufficient guide; but the rest is all drawn as accurately as the author’s recollections, aided by his journals, will enable him to depict it. With respect to the characters, Tom, Torkel, and Jacob were attendants on the author and his companions, and, though “a little rose upon,” to use a nautical expression, are drawn from actual life, and in their own proper names. The Captain and Parson, as has been said before, are not to be considered actual characters; that is to say, characters responsible as having done and said all that they are represented to have done and said, but merely as pegs upon which to hang the author’s personal experiences, or pieces of information which he may have received. The same may be said of Birger. It was necessary to associate with the party an intelligent Swede, and Lieut. Birger was chosen to fill that office. Bjornstjerna is wholly fictitious. Hjelmar is a real character; and his adventure in the Najaden frigate was related by him exactly as they are conveyed to the reader, the steamer following out among the islands the precise track of the chase. The author, however, will not undertake to say that the actual name of Hjelmar will be found on the watch and quarter bills of the frigate, though Hulm was actually her captain, and was actually buried near Lyngör, where his monument may be seen to this day. Moodie is a real character, though his name, also, is fictitious; or, rather, it is derived from a nick-name that the author understands he has acquired either by his courage or his foolhardiness: the appellation Modige, which is pronounced very like our English name, Moodie, is translatable either way. He does not, however, live at Gäddebäck, which is the name of a house formerly occupied by the celebrated Mr. Lloyd, the author of “Wild Sports of the North,” and “Scandinavian Adventures,” to whose kindness the author is indebted for his being able to describe, from experience, the fishing of the Gotha, which is drawn as accurately as the author’s recollection served him. The traveller need not, however, fear the quicksand which engulphed poor Jacob; that scene, and a very ridiculous one it was, occurred on the Torjedahl just below Oxea. The fisherman is cautioned not to be guided in his choice of a river by the author’s success on the Torjedahl. It is too clear, too much overhung, and too steadily and regularly rapid to be a first-rate river under any circumstances. There are few shallows in it, for there are no tributaries below the Falls of Wigeland, and no salmon can get above them; therefore, its breeding-ground is very limited indeed; probably the flats of Strei, Oxea, and Mosse Eurd, form the whole of it. The author’s success must be attributed to the fact of his fly having been the first of his kind that ever floated on those transparent waters.

The songs which are put into the mouths of the different characters, are really Norwegian or Swedish, and are given as specimens. They are translations by Hewitt, Forester, Knightley, and others. Scandinavia has always been remarkable for its lyrical poetry from the earliest times; and the Gammle Norgé of Bjerregaard, which is given in chapter viii., would seem to show that the cup of poetic inspiration which Odin stole from the keeping of Gunlauth, and stored up in Asgard, is not yet empty. By far the best of the modern poets of the North is Grundtvig, but his subjects are, for the most part, of a nature too solemn for a work so light as this; a short specimen from his hymns is given in chapter xviii. The Evening Hymn, in chapter xxiii., though in common use in Norway, is not Norwegian; it belongs to the ancient church, and is said to be as old as the days of Ambrose and Augustine.

The legends are collected from all manner of sources: many of them from Tom and Torkel, some from the Eddas and Sagas, some from Malet and Knightley; they are all, however, legitimate Scandinavian legends, believed implicitly by some one or other.

One word about the voyage out. It signifies little to the public when and where those incidents really happened—whether in the North Sea, or in the Bay of Biscay, or in the Mediterranean; but it signifies to them a great deal, to know that these things actually did happen once, and may happen again at any time.

The main incidents adapted to that fictitious voyage are strictly and literally true. A large steamer was upon one occasion in the precise situation ascribed to the Walrus,—and—in the absence of its skipper, who for the time had mysteriously disappeared—was saved by the promptness of one of the passengers, precisely as is described in the narrative. And it is also true that the same vessel, after a run of not more than five hundred miles, did find herself fifty miles out of her course. The compasses, no doubt, being in fault, as they always are on such occasions—poor things!

These are important matters for the public to be made acquainted with; for the public do very frequently go down to the sea in steamers, and therefore any individual reader may at any time find himself in the very same situation.

The author has enlarged upon this, in the faint hope of drawing attention to these matters. He would suggest that some sort of superintendence would not be altogether superfluous, and that it is not entirely right that the lives of two or three hundred men on the deep sea should be entrusted to a skipper not competent to navigate a river, nor be committed to a vessel so parsimoniously found as to be unable to encounter casualties which might happen any day in a voyage to Ramsgate.

On a subject so important as this, the author thinks it his duty to state that these incidents, extraordinary as they may appear, are in no way fictitious; that they did happen under his own eye; and that the mate, the only real sailor on board, did request of him, after the escape, a certificate that he, at least, had done his duty. If that man should be still alive, he possesses a most unique document, a certificate of seamanship, signed by a clergyman of the United Church of England and Ireland.

The skipper’s name the author does not think it necessary to record. He is not likely to be employed again; for he is one of those who have since immortalised themselves in the public prints, by losing his vessel—a circumstance which, it will readily be believed, did not excite any very great feelings of surprise in the mind of the author.

CHAPTER I.
PREPARATIONS.

“In every corner

Carefully look thou

Ere forth thou goest.”

Hávamál.

There is no saying more true than that “he who would make a tour abroad, must first make the tour of London.” There are miscellaneous articles of appropriate clothing to be got together; there are bags, knapsacks, portmanteaus, to be fitted. Above all, there are passports to be procured; than which no plague more vexatious, more annoying, or more utterly useless for any practicable or comprehensible purpose, has been devised by modern ingenuity.

But if this is a necessary preliminary on ordinary occasions, much more is it necessary when the contemplated expedition has for its object sporting, and the northern wildernesses for its contemplated locality. In addition to the cares of ordinary travel, there are now tents, blankets, cloaks, guns, rifles, to be thought of; rods, reels, gaffs, lines, to be overhauled and repaired; material-books to be replenished, and the commissariat department to be adequately looked to. Deep and anxious, yet not without their pleasures, are the responsibilities which rest on the shoulders of him who undertakes the conduct of such an expedition as this.

Such were the thoughts that crossed the mind of the Parson, as—business in his musing eye, care on his frowning brow, and determination in his compressed lip—he stood under the archway of the Golden Cross; his hands mechanically feeling for the pockets of his fishing-jacket, which had been exchanged for a clerical frock-coat more befitting the locality, and his mouth pursing itself up for his habitual whistle, which, had he indulged in it where he then stood, might have been considered neither appropriate nor decorous.

“Don’t you think this list rather a long one,” said the Captain, who had now joined him from the interior of the hotel, holding in his hand a pretty closely-written sheet of foolscap. “These are all very good things, and very useful things no doubt, but how are we to stow them, and how are we to carry them? Yours is anything but light marching order.”

“Why should it be?”

“My principle is, that no traveller can be too lightly equipped.”

“And a very good principle, too,” said the Parson. “Heavy and useless incumbrances are the invariable attributes of travelling Englishmen. You may know them by their endless train of household goods, as you would know a snail by its shell.”

“I believe,” said the Captain, “that foreign rail-roads are regulated precisely so as to tax us English tourists. Travel on whatever line you please in England, except that grasping Brighton and South Coast, and you may take just exactly what luggage you like; while abroad, the fare is so low and the charge for luggage so high, that an Englishman generally pays double; while the Frenchman, whose three spare collars and bottle of hair-oil are in his pocket; and the German, whose great tobacco-bag and little reticule of necessaries are so constructed as to fit the allowance, are permitted to go free.”

“Upon my word, I do not object to the tax; it is a tax upon folly. What can be so absurd as such a miscellaneous collection as Englishmen generally carry with them? What can a traveller want beyond a dry suit of clothes and half-a-dozen shirts and stockings?”

“There is a slight incongruity between your words and your actions,” said the Captain, holding up the list.

“Tush! put that paper into your pocket, and tell me what we are going to do. When I went on my reconnoitring expedition to Norway last year, my fourteen-foot rod, my fly-book, and a change of clothes constituted all the cares of my life; and I contend, as you do, that no traveller whose object is information has any business with more. But we are going now more in the character of settlers: we are not going to explore, but to enjoy that which has been explored for us. Why should we not, therefore, take whatever may make life enjoyable?”

“Only for fear we may be called upon to choose between leaving them behind or leaving our purpose unaccomplished,” said the Captain.

“Do you think I have calculated my ambulances so badly? But come along. We must consult Fortnum and Mason first. I can explain all that on our road.

“Considering how wild and uninhabited the greater part of the country is, both in Norway and Sweden,” the Parson resumed, as they crossed the pavement under Nelson’s pillar, “it is astonishing how easily you may travel, and how little impediment are your impedimenta. The posting regulations are admirable. On every road there are posting stations at convenient distances, and, by writing to these, the traveller may command, at stated prices, every horse and cart in the district.”

“And at moderate prices?” said the Captain, whose means were not so abundant as to make him indifferent to expense.

“No, not at moderate prices; for I do not call a penny an English mile a moderate price, and this is what you pay in Sweden; and in Norway it is not more than three-halfpence, except in favoured spots in the vicinity of towns, where they are permitted to charge three-fold. My plans, therefore, are these. We are not going to travel, but to visit certain fishing stations, most of which are at no great distance from the coast; let us take, therefore, everything that will make us comfortable at these different settlements. As long as we coast, we have always traders of some sort or other, and generally as nice and comfortable little steamers as you can desire. When our road lies along the fjords or lakes, boats are to be had from the post stations on the same terms as you get the carts, a rower reckoning the same as a horse; and when we want to take to the land, we have but to order as many carts as will hold our traps.”

“And how do we travel ourselves?” said the Captain.

“There is no carriage in the world so pleasant for fine weather as the cariole; and I propose that we each buy one. If we have to get them new, they do not cost above thirty specie-dalers—that is to say, about seven or eight pounds—with all their harness and fittings, in the very first style; and you may always sell them again at the end of your journey. That is the way the natives manage, and they are terrible gadabouts. You always find some jobber or other to take it off your hands. But the chances are that we shall meet with a choice of second-hand carioles to begin with. I gave twenty specie-dalers for mine last year, and sold it for fifteen. Drammen is the place for these things, up in Christiania fjord: it is the Long Acre of Norway.”

“What sort of things are these carioles?—Gigs, I suppose, to carry two.”

“Not they—barely one: and no great room for baggage either. A Scandinavian is of your way of thinking, and does not trouble himself with spare shirts. One horse draws one man, and that is all. If your gig carries two, you are charged a horse and a half for it. In Sweden they have a sort of light spring waggon, drawn by three horses, which will take our followers admirably, with as much luggage as we like to stow; and by having the collars of the harness made open at the top, they will do for all the variety of horses we may meet with on our road. This is better than the Norwegian mode of engaging the farm carts; for in this, so much time is lost at every stage in restowing luggage, that it becomes a serious hindrance. However, in Norway we must do as the Norwegians do. The light waggon would make a very unpleasant conveyance down some of their mountain roads.”

“And how do you manage crossing the fjords and lakes?”

“Easily enough. Every ferry-boat will take a cariole; and as for coasting, a cariole ranks as a deck passenger—that is to say, about ten skillings for a sea mile, you paying for your own passage in the cabin about twenty.”

“You travellers get so confoundedly technical. What the deuce do you mean by a sea mile and a skilling? And how am I to compare two things neither of which I know anything about?”

“A regular traveller’s fault,” said the Parson. “There is not a book written that does not abound with these absurdities. Well, a skilling is a halfpenny in our money, and a sea mile is four of our miles, and a land mile eight, nearly.”

“Pretty liberal in their measures of length,” said the Captain.

“Why, they have plenty of it, and to spare; as you will find when you come to travel from one place to another. But their money is not plentiful, and they dole it out in very small denominations indeed.”

“But here we are at Fortnum and Mason’s; and now for the stores.”

“I observe, you always go to the most expensive places,” said the Captain.

“That is because I cannot afford to go to the cheaper ones,” said the Parson. “On such an expedition as this, you should never take inferior stores. One hamper turning out bad when unpacked at the end of a thousand miles or so of carriage, will make more than the difference between the cheapest and the most expensive shop in London. But, to show you that I do study economy, I will resist the temptation of these preserved meats; and, let me tell you, it is a temptation, for up the country you will get nothing but what you catch, gather, or shoot. This, however, is a necessary,” pointing to some skins of portable soup; “there is not a handier thing for a traveller; it goes in the smallest compass of any sort of provisions; it is always useful on a pinch, and some chips of it carried in the waistcoat pocket on a pedestrian expedition, make a dinner, not exactly luxurious, but quite sufficient to do work upon. This we must lay in a good store of; in fact, if we have this, we need not be very anxious about anything else. Other things are luxuries: this is a necessary of life. Tea we must take: there is nothing more refreshing after a hard day’s work, and you cannot get it anywhere in the country. At least, what you do meet with is altogether maris expers, being a villanous composition of dried strawberry leaves and other home productions. Oil, too—we must take plenty of that; we shall want it for the frying-pan.”

“Have they no butter, then?” said the Captain.

“Yes, they have, and in great plenty too; of all varieties of quality, from very bad, down to indescribably beastly. They call it smör, pronouncing the dotted o like the French eu; and I can assure you their very best butter tastes just as the word sounds.”

“Well, then, I vote for some of these sardines, to take off the taste.”

“With all my heart,” said the Parson; “they flavour anything, when they are not made of salted bleak, as they generally are—so does cayenne pepper. We may as well have some cocoa paste, and a Bologna sausage or two may prove a useful luxury.”

“What do you say to a cask of biscuits?” said the Captain. “What sort of bread have they?”

“Do you recollect that old story told of Charles the Twelfth, when he said of the bread brought to him, that it was not good, but that it might be eaten? No one can tell the heroism of that speech who has not eaten the Swedish black bread, which is generally the only representative of the staff of life procurable. It is gritty, it is heavy, it is puddingy; if you throw it against a wall it will stick there—and as for sourness, O, ye gods! they purposely keep the leaven till it is uneatably sour, and then fancy it becomes wholesome.”

“Well, I suppose it does,” said the Captain. “The Squire used to say, that everything that was good, is unwholesome or wrong; and I suppose the converse is true. But why not take the biscuits?”

“Because we can get that which will answer our purpose perfectly when we arrive at the country, and that without the carriage, and at a much cheaper rate. There is not a seaport town in all the coast where you may not get what they call Kahyt Scorpor, a sort of coarse imitation of what nurses in England feed babies upon, under the name of tops and bottoms. They are made of rye, and are as black as my hat; but they are very good eating, keep for ever, and are cheap enough in all conscience, being from four to six skillings to the pound, that is to say, threepence. In Norway they call them Rö Kovringer.”

“We will take some rice, which very often comes in well by way of vegetables in a kettle of grouse soup; and a good quantity of chocolate, which packs easily, and furnishes a breakfast on the shortest possible notice. And this, I think, will do very well for the commissariat department of our expedition.”

“And now for arms and ammunition,” said the Captain.

“Everything we are likely to want in that department, we must take with us—guns, of course. Shot certainly may be got at Christiansand, and the other large towns; up the country, though, you will get neither that nor anything else: but powder can be got nowhere, at least, powder that does not give you an infinity of trouble in cleaning your gun, on account of the quantity of deposit it leaves. That little magazine of yours, with its block-tin canisters and brass screw-stoppers, will hold enough for us two, unless we meet with very good sport indeed, and in that case we must put up with the manufacture of the country.”

“And for guns?” said the Captain. “I shall certainly take that little pea-rifle I brought from Canada. I want to bring down a bear.”

“We shall be more likely to get a crack at a seal, where we are going,” said the Parson. “Bears are not so plentiful in Norway as is generally supposed. People imagine that they run about in flocks like sheep; however, it is possible that there may be a bear-hunt while we are there. As for rifles, I own I am partial to our own English manufacture. Those little pea affairs are sensible things enough in their own country, where one wanders for weeks on end through interminable forests and desolate prairies on foot, and where a pound of lead more or less in your knapsack is a matter of consequence: but where we have means of transport, I see no great sense in them. A pea, no doubt, will kill, if it hits in the right place; but, like the old Duke, I have myself rather a partiality for the weighty bullet. However, each man to his fancy. The great merit of every gun, rifle, or pistol, lies behind the stock,—a truth that dandy sportsmen are apt to forget; a pea sent straight is better than a two-ounce ball beside the mark.”

“Well,” said the Captain, laughing, “I think I can hold my little Yankee pretty straight; but we shall want shot-guns more than rifles. I may as well take that case I had from Westley Richards, if you do not think it too heavy.”

“Not at all; you can always leave the case behind, and take one gun in a waterproof cover when we go on light-armed expeditions. This will furnish us with a spare gun in case of accidents. I shall take my own old one, and a duck gun—which last will be common property, and I think with this we shall be pretty sufficiently armed. Pointers and setters are of no great use, unless it is a steady old stager, who will retrieve; for you must recollect there is no heath, and very little field shooting. The character of the country is cover, not very thick anywhere, and in many places interspersed with glades and openings. We shall do better with beaters: a water-dog, however, is indispensable. Lakes and rivers abound, and so do ducks, teal, and snipes.”

“Have you thought about tents?” said the Captain.

“Well,” said the Parson, “I am not sure that tents are indispensable, and they certainly are not a little cumbersome. While we are fishing we can do very well without them: by the water-side we can never be without a cottage of some sort to put our heads under if it should come on bad weather, for every house in the whole country stands on the banks of some lake or river. I must say, though, when you get up into the fjeld after the grouse and the ducks, or, it may be, bigger game, it is another affair altogether. You may then go twenty or thirty miles on end without seeing a human habitation, unless you are lucky enough to meet with a säter, and you know what a highland bothy is, for dirt and vermin. But, even in the fjeld, I do not know that we should want tents; you can have no idea of the beauty of a northern summer’s night, and the very little need one has of any cover whatever. I remember, last year, standing on one of their barrows, smoking my pipe at the foot of an old stone cross, coeval, probably, with St. Olaf, and shadowing the tomb of some of his followers that Hakon the Jarl thinned off so savagely. It was deep midnight, and there was not a chill in the air, or dew enough on the whole headland to fill the cup of a Lys Alf. The full round moon was shining down upon me from the south, while a strong glowing twilight was still lighting up the whole northern sky, where the sun was but just hid under the horizon. The whole scene was as light as day, with the deep solemn stillness of midnight all the while. I could distinctly make out the distant fishing-boats; I could almost distinguish what the men were doing in them, through the bright and transparent atmosphere; but at the same time all was so still that I could hear the whistle of the wings, as flight after flight of wild-fowl shot over me in their course to seaward, though they were so high in the air that I could not distinguish the individual birds, only the faint outline of the wedge-like figure in which they were flying. I remember, that night, thinking how perfectly unnecessary a tent was, and determining not to bring one; and, that night at all events, I acted up to my conviction; for, when my pipe was out, I slept at the foot of the old cross till the sun warned me that the salmon were stirring.”

“All very pleasant, no doubt,” said the Captain; “very enjoyable indeed: but does it never rain at night in this favoured land of yours?”

“Upon my word, it does not very often,” said the Parson; “at least, not in the summer-time. Besides, you cannot conceive how well the men tent themselves with pine-branches.”

“I do not quite like the idea,” said the Captain. “It is all very well to sleep out when anything is to be got by it; but, when there is nothing to be got by it but the rheumatism, to tell you the honest truth—unlucky, as the old women say it is—I rather prefer contemplating the moon through glass.”

“Well, I will tell you what we can do,” said the Parson, “and that will be a compromise. We can get some canvas made up into two lug sails. These will help us uncommonly in our passage over lakes and fjords, for their boats are seldom well provided in that respect; and when we get to our destination, lug sails—being square, or, to speak more accurately, parallelogrammatical—will make us very capital gipsy tents, with two pairs of cross-sticks and a ridge-pole, which we shall always be able to cut from the forest. I think we may indulge ourselves so far. As for waterproof jackets, trousers, boots, and so forth, I need not tell you about that: you have been out before, and know the value of these when you want to fish through a rainy day. We shall not have so dripping a climate here as we had in Ireland, certainly, but we shall have one use for our waterproof clothing which we had not there, and that is, when we bivouac, vulcanised India-rubber is as good a defence against the dew and the ground-damp as it is against the rain. A case of knife, fork, and spoon apiece is absolutely necessary, for they do not grow in the fjeld. A light axe or two, and a couple of hand-bills, a hammer and nails, which are just as likely to be wanted to repair our land-carriages as our boats. If you are at all particular in shaving—which, by-the-by, is not at all necessary—you may as well take a portable looking-glass. You will not find it so easy to shave in the reflection of a clear pool—a strait to which I was reduced when I was there last year. And now, I think, we have everything—that is to say, if you have taken care of the fishing-tackle, as you engaged to do.”

“I have not taken care of your material-book.”

“No,” said the Parson; “but I have taken very good care of that myself. Fly-making may be a resource to fall back upon, if we meet with rainy weather, and my book is well replenished.”

“Everything else,—rods, books, reels, gaffs, and so forth,—I have packed in the old black box which we had with us at Belleek, with spare line, and water-cord, and armed wire, and eel hooks, and, in fact, everything that we can possibly want; and a pretty heavy package it makes, I can assure you.”

“Well,” said the Parson, “we may go to sleep now with a clear conscience. But so much depends upon a good start, that a little extra trouble, on the first day, will be found to save, in the end, a multiplicity of inconveniences.”

CHAPTER II.
THE VOYAGE.

“Hurrah! hurrah! up she’s rising,—

Stamp and go, boys! up she’s rising,—

Round with a will! and up she’s rising,

Early in the morning.

What shall us do with a lubberly sailor?—

What shall us do with a lubberly sailor?—

Put him in the long-boat and make him bale her,

Early in the morning.

Hurrah! hurrah! up she’s rising.”—

&c. &c. ad infinitum.

Anchor Song.

Clear and joyous as ever a summer’s day came out of the heavens, was the 12th of June, 18—, when the good ship Walrus, with her steam up, her boats secured, and everything ready for sea, lay lazily at single anchor off Blackwall-stairs. The weather was as still and calm as weather might be. The mid-day sun, brilliant and healthful, imparted life and animation even to the black and unctuous waters, that all that morning had, in the full strength of the spring tide, been rushing past her sides. The breeze, light and fitful, just stirred the air, but was altogether powerless on the glazy surface of the stream, which sent back, as from a polished and unbroken mirror, the exact double of every mast, yard, and line of cordage, that reposed above it. The ships lay calm and still. The outward-bound had tided down with the first of the ebb, and were already out of sight, and the few sails that still hung festooned in their bunt and clew-lines, lay as motionless as the yards that held them. Like light and airy dragon-flies, just flitting on the surface, and apparently without touching it, the river steamers were darting from wharf to wharf; while ever and anon a great heavy sea-going vessel would grind her resistless way, defying wind and tide, and dashing the black wave against the oily-looking banks.

Steamer after steamer passed, each steadily bent on her respective mission; and the day wore on—yet there lay the Walrus, though her sea-signalling blue Peter had hung from her fore-truck ever since day-light, and the struggling and impatient steam would continually burst in startling blasts from her safety-valves. The tide was slackening fast; the chain cable, that all that forenoon had stretched out taut and tense from her bows, like a bar of iron, now hung up and down from her hawsehole, while the straws and shavings and floating refuse of the great capital began to cling round her sides.

“It is a great honour, no doubt, to carry an ambassador, with Heaven knows how many stars of every degree of Russian magnitude in his train,” said the Parson, who, seated on the taffrail, with his legs dangling over the water, had been watching the turning tide, and grumbling, as ship after ship in the lower reaches began to swing at her anchors, while three or four of the more energetic craft were already setting their almost useless sails, and yo-ho-ing at their anchors, preparatory to tiding up; “it is a very great honour, and I hope we are all duly sensible of it; but, like most great honours, it is a very particular nuisance. These Russian representatives of an autocrat majesty must fancy they can rule the waves, when all the world knows it is only Britannia that can do that. They have let the whole of this lovely tide pass by—(the Parson cast his eyes on the greasy water)—and fancy, I suppose, that daddy Neptune is bound to supply them with a new one whenever they please to be ready for it.”

“Why, Mate!” said the Captain, as a smart sailor-like looking fellow fidgeted across the quarter-deck, with an irregular step and an anxious countenance; “is this what you call sailing at ten a.m. precisely? Most of us would have liked another forenoon on shore, but your skipper was so confounded peremptory; and this is what comes of it.”

“What is one to do, sir?” said the Mate, who seemed fully to participate in the Captain’s grievance. “These Russians have taken up all the private cabins for their own particular use, and occupy half the berths in the main and fore-cabins besides—we cannot help waiting for them. They have pretty well chartered the ship themselves—what can we do? But,” continued he, after a pause, during which he had been looking over the side, as the steamer now began evidently to swing in her turn, “I wish we had gone down with the morning’s tide.”

“We should have been at the mouth of the river by this time,” said the Captain, “if we had started when we ought.”

“Yes,” said the Mate, “and we should now be crossing the dangerous shoals, with fair daylight and a rising tide before us.”

“Why, surely you are not afraid,” said the Parson; “that track is as well beaten as the turnpike road.”

The Mate shrugged his shoulders, and stepped forward, giving some unnecessary orders in a tone unnecessarily sharp and angry.

“Well, Birger, what news? Do you see anything of them?”

The individual addressed was a smart, active, little man, with a quick grey eye, and a lively, pleasant, good-humoured countenance, who was coming aft from the bridge of the steamer, on which he had been seated all the forenoon, sketching, right and left of him groups of shipping on the water and groups of idlers on the deck.

“Anything of whom?” said he. “Oh! the Russians. No, I don’t know. I suppose they will come some time or other; it does not signify—it is all in the day’s work. Look here,”—and he opened his portfolio, and displayed, in wild confusion all over his paper, the domes of Woolwich, the houses of Blackwall, the forests of masts and yards in the Pool, two or three picturesque groups of vessels, a foreign steamer or two, landing her weary and travel-soiled passengers at the Custom-house—and, over leaf, and in the background as it were, slight exaggerations of the ungainly attitudes in which his two friends were then sprawling. “If you had found something as pleasant as this grumbling to fill up your time with, you would not be wasting your eyes and spoiling your temper in looking for the Russians. They are going back to their own country, poor devils! no wonder they are slow about it. Did you ever see a boy going to school?”

“Birger is not over-fond of the Russians,” said the Captain.

“Few Swedes are,” said Birger; “remember Finland and Pomerania.”

“Besides, it is not over-pleasant to have a great White Bear sitting perpetually at one’s gate, always ready to snap up any of one’s little belongings that may come in its way. The Russian fleet is getting formidable, and Revel and Kronstadt are not very far from the mouth of the Mälar.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” said Birger, gallantly; “we are the sons of the men who, under Gustaf, taught that fleet a lesson.”

“You are a gallant set of fellows,” said the Parson; “and Sweden would be a precious hard nut to crack. But your long-armed friends over the water know the value of a ring fence, and would dearly like a seaboard. Only fancy that overpowering country, which is now kept in order by the rest of Europe, only because, just at present, it lies at the back of creation, and cannot get out of the Baltic, Black, and White Seas, to do harm to any one,—only fancy that pleasant land, with its present unlimited resources, and Gothenborg for its Portsmouth, and Christiania, and Frederiksvärn and Christiansand for its outports—a pleasant vision, is it not, Mr. Guardsman? Don’t you think it probable that something of this sort has soothed the slumbers of the White Bear we were speaking of, before this?”

“Did you ever hear of Charles the Twelfth? He taught that White Bear to dance.”

“He taught that White Bear to fight,” said the Captain, “and an apt scholar he found him. There was more lost at Pultava than Charles’s gallant army.”

“There are men in Sweden yet,” said Birger, slightly paraphrasing the legend of “Holger.”

“There are,” said the Parson; “and if you could only agree among yourselves, you might have hopes of muzzling the White Bear yet. Another union of Calmar?”

“O, hang the union of Calmar; there is no more honesty in a Dane or a Norseman than there is in a Russ. We are not going to have another Bloodbath at Stockholm. My mother is a Lejonhöved,[1] and I am not likely to forget that day.”

“I should have thought you more nearly connected with the Svinhöved family,” said the Parson; “but depend upon it, unless you men of the north can make up your quarrels, the White Bear will chop you up in detail, and us after you.”

Birger, who, in some incomprehensible way, traced his descent from the founder of Stockholm, the great and terrible Earl Birger, was a smart young subaltern in the Royal Guards, and though his present dress—a modest and unpretending blouse—was anything but military, his well-set-up figure, firm step, and jaunty little forage cap stuck on one side of his head, sufficiently revealed his profession. From his earliest youth he had discovered a decided talent for drawing, and in accordance with a most praiseworthy custom in the Swedish service, he had been travelling for the last twelvemonth at the expense of the Government, and was now returning to the “Kongs Ofver Commandant’s Expedition,” with a portfolio filled with valuable sketches, and a mind no less well stored with military knowledge, which he had collected from every nation in Europe. The Captain had fallen in with him at the Swedish ambassador’s, and, being himself something of an artist, had struck up on the spot a sort of professional friendship with him. The pleasant little subaltern was thus, from that time forward, enrolled among their party; and though their acquaintance was not yet of twenty-four hours’ standing, was at that moment talking and chatting with all the familiarity of old and tried friendship.

“Here come those precious rascals at last,” said he, breaking off the conversation, as a train of at least half-a-dozen carriages rattled down to the landing-place, and counts, countesses, tutors, barons, children, dogs, governesses, portmanteaus, bags, boxes, and trunks were tumbled out indiscriminately on the landing-place. “Heaven and earth! if they have not impedimenta enough for an army! and this is only their light marching baggage either. All their heavy articles came on board yesterday, and are stowed under hatches. I’ll be bound we draw an additional foot of water for them. Hang the fellows! they are as bad as Junot, they are carrying off the plunder of half the country.”

“Like the Swedes under Oxenstjerna,” said the Parson; “but what need you care for that? The plunder—if it is plunder—comes from England, not Sweden.”

“It will lumber up the whole cabin, whether it comes from the one or the other,” said Birger; “we shall not have room to swing a cat.”

“We don’t want to swing a cat,” said the Parson; “that is a Russian amusement rather than an English or a Swedish one, if all tales be true; and you may depend upon it we shall fare all the better for their presence: our skipper could never think of setting anything short of turtle and venison before such very magnificent three-tailed bashaws.”

“Yes,” said Birger, “they are going to Petersburgh, too, where the chances are, the bashaws will find some good opportunity of squaring accounts with the skipper for any ill-treatment, before the steamer is permitted to sail.”

All the while this conversation was going on, the illustrious passengers were rapidly accomplishing the short passage from the shore to the steamer, a whole flotilla of boats being employed in the service, while the hurried click of the pauls, and the quick revolutions of the windlass, as the chain-cable was hove short, showed that in the Captain’s opinion, as well as that of the Mate, quite time enough had been wasted already.

But the golden opportunity had been lost. English tides respect no man, not even Russian ambassadors, and old Father Thames was yet to read them a lesson on the text—

If you will not, when you may,

When you will, you shall have Nay.

While the vessel was riding to the ebb tide, as she had done all the morning, a warp which had been laid out from her port quarter would have canted her head well into the stream; and the tide, acting on her starboard bow while the after-part was in comparatively still water, would have winded her downwards, almost before her paddles were in motion, or her rudder could be brought to act. But the turn of the tide had reversed all this. The vessel had indeed swung to the flood, which by this time was rattling up at the rate of five or six miles an hour, and thus her bowsprit was looking the way she wanted to go; but a strong eddy was now bubbling up under her starboard bow, and pressing it towards the left bank, while a great lumbering Indiaman lay just ahead of her, and a Hamburgh steamer, which had anchored a little higher up on her starboard quarter, forbade all reversing of the engine and thus getting out of the mess stern foremost.

The moment the anchor broke ground the helm was put hard a-port, and the paddles were set in motion; but though from the tide alone the rudder had some effect, the strength of the eddy was too much for her; round came her head to port, as if she were going to take a leap at the embankment.

“Hard a-port!—hard a-starboard!—ease her!—stop her!—turn her a-head!” were the contradictory orders bawled out almost simultaneously. If noise and shouting could have got the steamer out of the scrape, there was no lack of it; but all these cries, energetic as they were, produced no effect whatever, beyond exciting a little suspicion in the mind of our travellers (some of whom having been at sea before, knew the stem of a ship from the stern) that the skipper was not altogether a “deacon in his craft;” and thus giving a point to the Mate’s silent but expressive shrug when the Parson had alluded to the shoals at the river’s mouth. At last, an indescribable sensation of grating, and a simultaneous volley of heterogeneous oaths, such as sailors shot their guns with on grand occasions, announced the fact that she had taken the ground abaft.

This, however, as it turned out, was about the best thing that could have happened, for it gave the skipper time to collect his senses; or, what was more to the purpose, gave the Mate time to whisper in his ear; and the rising tide was sure to float her again in ten minutes. By this time a warp had been got out to a ship anchored upon the Surrey side, an expedient which any sailor would have thought of before tripping his anchor in the first instance. The end of it was passed round the windlass and hove taut, and as the rising water slowly lifted the unlucky vessel from her sludgy bed and a few turns brought a strain upon her, she gradually slewed her head outwards. The steam was turned on, the paddles went round; the black water began to fizz under her counter, as if a million of bottles of stout had been poured into it—she was at last a-weigh and fairly on her course, only about six hours after her proper time.

“I tell you what,” said the Parson, as he dived down the companion to inspect the submarine arrangements of the cabin, “I leave this vessel at Christiansand, and I wish we were fairly out of her. This fellow knows no more of sea-craft than a tailor. Kind Providence shield us, or we shall come to grief yet!”

CHAPTER III.
THE SHIPWASH SAND.

“Our ship,

Which but three glasses since we gave out split,

Is tight and yare and bravely rigged, as when

We first put out to sea.”

Tempest.

One by one the travellers crept down to the cabin. It was as uncomfortable as cabins usually are, perhaps more so, as being more lumbered and more crowded; and the ordinary space for locomotion had been miserably curtailed by a large supplementary table, which the steward was lashing athwart ship for the dinner accommodation of the supernumerary passengers. These were standing about here and there, as helpless and uncomfortable as people always are on first starting, and were regarding one another with looks of suspicion and distrust, as people who start by a public conveyance always do regard one another.

In this the English part of the community was prominently conspicuous. Denizens of a free land, it would seem as if they considered it as their bounden duty to be continually exhibiting their Magna Charta in the eyes of foreigners, and to maintain their just rights to the very death against all comers.

No rights, however, were invaded—there was no opportunity of asserting the Magna Charta; all were equally shy and equally miserable; till, by degrees, as the steamer crept slowly down the river against the tide, they shook into their places, and the ladies began to smile, and the ladies’ maids to look gracious.

The Parson was an old stager. Knowing full well the value of light and air in the present crowded state of the cabin, he had very willingly assented to the apologetic invitation of the steward, and had established himself comfortably enough on the transom itself, upon which was spread for his accommodation a horsehair mattress. There was no great deal to spare in the height of his domicile, for it was as much as he could conveniently manage to sit upright in it; but it was, at all events, retired, airy, and not subject to be suddenly evacuated by its occupant under the overpowering influence of a lee lurch or a weather roll.

Totally disregarding the bustle and confusion in the cabin below him, he was occupied in arranging and beautifying his temporary home. The sill of one window formed his travelling library, the books of which he had been unpacking from his stores, and securing by a piece of spun yarn from the disagreeable consequences of any sudden send of the ship in a rolling sea. The next formed his toilet-table and workshop, exhibiting his reels and fly-books, and the huge and well-known “material book,” the replenishing of which had occupied so much of his attention. The third was left empty, so as to be opened and shut at pleasure.

Stretched on his mattress, with a guide-book in his hand, and the map of Norway and Sweden at his side, he looked from his high abode on the turmoil of the cabin deck, with all the calmness and complacency with which the gods of the Epicureans are said to regard the troubles and distresses of mortals below.

And thus wore on the day. Dinner, tea, had been discussed—some little portion of constraint and shyness had been rubbed off—small knots of men were formed here and there, discussing nothings and making conversation. Night sank down upon the steamer as she ploughed her way across the Nore, and the last of the talkers rolled himself up in his bedclothes, and tried, though for a long while in vain, to accustom himself to public sleeping.

It was still dark—for the time was hardly three in the morning—when the Parson—who, accustomed to all the vicissitudes of travel, had been making the most of the hours of darkness, and had been for some time fast asleep—was suddenly startled from his dreams by a furious concussion on the rudder-case against which his head was pillowed. The vessel became stationary, and the fresh breezey hissing of the water in her wake and the tremulous motion everywhere suddenly ceased.

“By George, she’s hard and fast!” said the Captain; who, taking hint from the comfortable appearance which the Parson had given to his own berth, had occupied the same position on the starboard side, and was now invading the Parson’s territories from abaft the rudder-case.

“What the devil is to be done now?”

“Nothing at all,” said the Parson; “it is no business of ours; and I am sure it is not time to get up yet.”

“Well, but she has certainly struck on a sand.”

“I know that as well as you,” said the Parson; “but you can’t get her off. Besides, there is not a bit of danger yet, at all events, for the sea is as smooth as a mill-pond. There they go, reversing their engine: much good that will do. If there was any truth in that bump I felt, she is much too fast aground for that. And the tide falling too!”—he continued, striking a lucifer and looking at his watch. “Yes, it is falling now, it has turned this hour or more.”

By this time the hurried trampling and stamping on deck had roused up the passengers, few of whom could comprehend what had happened, for there was no appearance of danger, and the ship was as steady and firm as a house. But there is nothing more startling or suggestive of alarm than that rushing to and fro of men, so close to the ear, which sounds to the uninitiated as if the very decks were breaking up.

“Is it houraccan storrm?” shouted Professor Rosenschall, a fat greasy-looking Dane, whom Birger had been hoaxing and tormenting all the day before, partly for fun, and partly because he considered it the bounden duty of a true Swede to plague a Dane—paying off the Bloodbath by instalments.

“Steward!” shouted the Professor, above all the din and confusion of the cabin, “Steward, vinden er stærkere? is it houraccan storrm?”

“Yes, Professor, I am sorry to say it is,” said Birger, who had rolled himself up in a couple of blankets under the table, upon which was reposing the weight of the Professor’s learning. “It is what we call an Irish hurricane—all up and down.”

“All up! O what will become of me—and down! O, my poor wife. Hvilken skrækelig storrm,” he screamed out, as half-a-dozen men clapped on to the tackle falls over his head, with the very innocent purpose of lowering the quarter-boat, and began clattering and dashing down the coils of rope upon the deck. “Troer de at der er fore paa Færde?—do you think there is any danger?”

What with the Professor’s shouting, and what with the real uncertainty of the case, and the natural desire that every one, even the most helpless, has to see their peril and to do something for themselves, every passenger was by this time astir, and the whole cabin was buzzing like a swarm of bees.

The Parson’s idea of sleeping was altogether out of the question; and, the Captain having gone on deck, he very soon followed him; for, notwithstanding his assumed coolness, he was by no means so easy in his mind as he would have his friends to understand. He had been at sea before this, and was, at least, as well aware as they, that grounding out of sight of land, is a very different thing from grounding in the Thames.

The scene on deck was desolate enough. The steamer had struck on the Shipwash, a dangerous shoal on the Essex coast, distant about twenty miles from land; and a single glance was sufficient to tell that there was not a chance of getting her off for the next twelve hours, though the Skipper was persisting in trying a variety of absurd expedients. The crew were looking anxious—the passengers were looking frightened; while the Skipper himself, who ought to have been keeping up every one’s spirits, was looking more wretched and more frightened than any one.

The day was just breaking, but a fog was coming on, and the wind showed every symptom of freshening. The vessel, indeed, had begun to bump, but the tide leaving her, that motion left her also, and she began now to lie over on her bilge. From some unfortunate list she had got in her stowing (Birger declared it was the weight of the ambassador’s despatch boxes), she fell over to windward instead of to leeward, thus leaving her decks perfectly exposed to the run of the sea, if the wind should freshen seriously.

When the Parson came on deck, the boats had just returned from sounding. The Skipper had, indeed, endeavoured to lay out an anchor with them—an object in which he might possibly have succeeded, had he tried it at first and before there was any great rush of tide, for the steamer had struck at the very turn of the flood; but he had wasted his time in reversing his engines and in backing and taking in sails which there was no wind to fill; and thus, before he had got his anchor lashed to the boat, which, like all passage steamers’ boats, was utterly inadequate for the work, the stream was strong enough to swamp boat, anchor, and all, and it was fortunate indeed that no lives were lost.

It appeared from the soundings that the ship had not struck on the main shoal, but on a sort of spit or ridge, the neck of a submarine peninsula projecting from the S.W. corner of it. Almost under her bows was a deep turnhole or bay in the sand about two cables across, communicating with the open water, beyond which, right athwart her hawse, lay the main body of the shoal, so that the beacon which marked its northern extremity, and which was now beginning to show in the increasing light of the morning, lay broad on her port bow, while the other end of the shoal was well on her starboard beam; at half a cable length astern, and on her port quarter and beam was the deep water with which the turnhole communicated,—this being, in fact, the channel she ought to have kept.

It was perfectly evident that nothing could be done till the top of the next tide, and whether anything could be done then was extremely problematical with the wind rising and the sea getting up; experience having already shown that there was not a boat in the steamer fit for laying out an anchor.

However, for the present the water was smooth enough; they were for the time perfectly safe and comfortable, lying, as they did, under the lee of the shoal, patches of which were now beginning to show just awash; while the seas were breaking heavily enough certainly, but a full half-mile to windward of them. The passengers, seeing nothing to alarm them, and feeling their appetites well sharpened by their early rising, began to lose their fears and to be clamorous for breakfast; and the meal was served with a promptness which, under the circumstances, was perfectly astonishing.

Those who know nothing fear nothing, and the jokes which were flying about and the general hilarity which pervaded the whole meeting, conveyed anything rather than the idea of shipwrecked mariners; though, truth to say, this feeling did not seem to be fully participated in by the Skipper, who presided at what might very fairly be called the head of the table, for it was many feet higher than the foot; he looked all the while as if he was seated on a cushion stuffed with bramble bushes.

The Parson, by way, he said, of utilising his moments, was preparing for fishing—calculating, and rightly too, that the whiting would congregate under the lee of the stranded ship.

He had made his preparations with characteristic attention to his own comfort and convenience. The dingy, which was hanging at the stern davits, formed at once his seat and his fishing-basket; and as he had eased off as much of the lee tackle fall as brought the boat to an even keel, the taffrail itself afforded him a shelter from the wind, which was now getting high enough to be unpleasant.

There he sat, hour after hour, busily and very profitably employed, heeding the gradual advance and strengthening of the tide only so far as its increasing current required the use of heavier leads.

The Captain and Birger had been trying to walk the sloping deck, a pursuit of pedestrianism under difficulties, for it was very much as if they had been trying to walk along the roof of a house. Time hangs heavily on the hands of those who have nothing to do, and there was nothing to do by the most active of sailors beyond hoisting the ensign union downwards, and that might just as well have been left undone too, for all the notice that was taken of it. Ship after ship passed by—the foreign traders to windward, the English through the shorter but more dangerous channel that lay between them and the main land. Many of them were quite near enough for anxious passengers to make out the people in them reconnoitring the position of the unfortunate Walrus through their telescopes. But if they did look on her, certainly they passed by on the other side; it never seemed to enter into the heads of one of them to afford assistance.

“Pleasant,” said Birger, “very. Is this the way your sailors help one another in distress?”

“I am afraid so,” said the Captain.

“Gayer insects fluttering by

Ne’er droop the wing o’er those that die;

And English tars have pity shown

For every failure but their own.”

“You do not mean to say that they will not help us if there really is danger?” said the Swede.

“Upon my word, I hope there will not be any real danger; for if you expect any help from them, I can tell you that you will not get it.”

“Not get it!” said Birger, who did not at all seem to relish the prospect before him.

“That you will not. Sink or swim, we sink or swim by our own exertions. Those scoundrels could not help us without losing a whole tide up the river, a whole day’s pay of the men, and so much per cent. on the cargo, besides the chance of being forestalled in the market: do you think they would do that to save the lives of half-a-hundred such as you and me? Why, you have not learned your interest tables; you do not seem to understand how much twenty per cent. in a year comes to for a day. A precious deal more than our lives are worth, I can tell you.”

Birger looked graver still; drowning for a soldier was not a professional death, and he did not relish the idea of it.

The Captain continued his words of comfort. “I was very nearly losing a brother this way myself,” he said. “He was invalided from the coast of Africa, and had taken his passage home in a merchant vessel. They had met with a gale of wind off the Scillies; the ship had sprung a leak, and when the gale had subsided to a gentle easterly breeze dead against them, there were they within twenty miles of the Longships, water-logged, with all their boats stove, and their bulwarks gone. Timber ships do not sink very readily, and incessant pumping had kept them afloat, but it was touch and go with that—their decks awash, and the seas rolling in at one side and out at the other. While they were in this state, the whole outward-bound fleet of English ships passed them, some almost within hailing distance, and all without taking more notice of them than those scoundrels are taking of us. They would, all hands, have gone to the bottom together, in the very midst of their countrymen, if a French brig had not picked them off and carried them into Falmouth. It was so near a thing, that the vessel sank almost before the last boat had shoved off from her side.

“Well,” said Birger, “if there is a selfish brute upon earth, it is an English sailor.”

“Natural enough that you should say so, just at present,” said the Captain; “though, as a Swede, you might have recollected the superstition that prevails in your own country against helping a drowning man. But the fact is, the fault lies not so much with the sailors as with the insurance regulations at Lloyds’. Likely enough, every one of these fellows has a desire to help us; but if they go one cable’s length from their course to do so, or if they stay one half-hour by us when they might have been making their way to their port, they vitiate their insurance. Man is a selfish animal, no doubt—sea-going man as well as shore-going man—and it is very possible that some of them would rather see their neighbours perish than lose the first of the market; but laws such as these render selfishness imperatively necessary to self-preservation, and banish humanity from the maritime code.”

“I wish all Lloyds’ were on the Shipwash,” said Birger, “and had to wait there till I picked them off.”

“Yes,” said the Captain; “or that the House of Commons were compelled to take a winter’s voyage every year in some of these company’s vessels. I think, then, they might possibly find out the advantage of certain laws and certain officers to see them put in force, in order to prevent their going to sea so wretchedly found. There is nothing like personal experience for these legislators. This vessel has not a boat bigger than a cockle-shell belonging to her. Did you not hear how nearly the Mate was lost last night,—and he is the only real sailor in the ship—when they were trying to lay out an anchor—a manœuvre which, I see, they have not accomplished yet?”

“Hallo! this is serious,” said Birger, as a heavy sea struck the weather paddle-box, and broke over them in spray: for the tide had been gradually rising, without, as yet, raising the ship; and, as she lay over to windward, the seas that now began to break upon her starboard bow and side, deluged her from stem to stern.

“Upon my soul,” said the Captain, “I don’t like this, myself; and there sits the Parson, fishing away, as quietly as if he were on the pier at Boveysand. By Jove, Nero fiddling while Rome was burning, is a fool to him! Why, Parson, don’t you think there is some danger in all this?”

“‘Er det noget Færde?’ as your friend the professor would say,” said the Parson, laughing. “I do not think it improbable that the Walrus will leave her bones here, if you mean that.—Stop, I’ve got another bite!”

“Confound your bite! If she leaves her bones here, we shall leave ours too; for she has not boats for the fourth of us, the devil take them! and as for expecting help from these rascally colliers——”

“You may just as well fiddle to the dolphins,” said the Parson. “I know that; but do you see that little cutter,—that fellow, I mean, on our quarter, that has just tacked? and there beyond her is another, that is now letting fly her jib-sheet. I have been watching those fellows all the morning, beating out from Harwich. They are having a race, and a beautiful race they make of it: you cannot tell yet which has the best of it. If those cutters were going over to the Dutch coast, you may depend upon it they would not make such short boards. There—look—the leading one is in stays again. Those fellows are racing for us, and with our ensign Union down, as we have it, we shall make a pretty good prize for the one that gets first to us. Those two are pilot-boats. You may depend upon it, we are not going to lay our bones here, whatever comes of the Walrus.”

The Parson’s anticipations were realised sooner than he expected, for a long low life-boat, that nobody had seen till she was close alongside, came up, carrying off the prize from both competitors—and preparations were begun, which ought to have been completed hours before, for laying out an anchor.

Before long, the cutters also had worked up and anchored on the lee edge of the shoal, to the great relief of every one on board; for the seas were by this time making such a breach over her, that no one could be ignorant of the danger.

Suddenly, and without preparation, she righted, throwing half the passengers off their legs, and very nearly precipitating the Parson into the sea; who took that as a hint to leave his seat in the dingy. Soon afterwards she began to bump, first lightly, and then more heavily, and the paddles were set in motion. The windlass was manned and worked; but the shifting sand afforded no good holding-ground for the anchor, which had not been backed—nor, indeed, had any precautions been taken whatever—and as soon as there was any strain upon it, it came home and was perfectly useless.

The ship now was hanging a little abaft the chess-tree, on the very top of the spit; but the stern was free, and the bows were actually in the deep water of the turnhole, while at every bump she gained an inch or two: just then, the anchor coming home, and the tide taking her under the port bow, she ran up in the wind, and pointed for the very centre of the shoal.

“Why the devil don’t you set your jib?” bellowed out the Captain, who had begun to get excited. “Where the deuce is that know-nothing Skipper of yours?”

“Upon my soul, sir, I do not know,” said the Mate, who was standing at the wheel, and was looking very anxiously forward.

“Then why don’t you go forward and set it yourself? We shall be on the main shoal in two minutes, if she floats.”

“I know it, sir,” said the Mate; “but I dare not leave my post. We shall all have to answer for this; and if I am not where the Skipper has placed me, he will throw the blame upon me.”

“Then, by George, I don’t care that for your Skipper. Come along, boys, we’ll run up the jib ourselves.”

And away he rushed, pushing and shouldering his way along the crowded decks, among idlers, and horses, and carriages, followed by his own party, and a good many of the foreigners also; till he emerged on the forecastle, when, throwing down the jib and fore-staysail hallyards from the bitts and clattering them on the deck, while the Parson went forward to see all clear, he called out to the Russian servants, who, wet and frightened, were cowering under the carriages—

“Here, you slaveys, come out of that—clappez-vous sur ceci—clap on here, you rascals—rousez-vous dehors de ces bulwarks. What the devil is Greek for ‘skulking?’”

Whether the Russians understood one word of the Captain’s French, or whether they would have understood one word of it had they been Frenchmen, may be doubted; but his actions were significant enough; and the men, who only wanted to be told what to do, clapped on to the jib and fore-staysail hallyards as well and as eagerly as if they had known what was to be done with them; here and there, too, was seen a blue-jacket, for the seamen had no wish to skulk, if there had been any one to command them.

“Gib mig ropes enden!” shouted Professor Rosenschall, who had caught the enthusiasm, and was panting after them, though a long way astern.

“Birger will do that for you,” said the Parson, laughing, but without pausing for one moment from his work—“Birger! the Professor wants a rope’s-end.”

“Vær saa artig!” said Birger, tendering him the signal hallyards, the bight of which he had hitched round a spare capstan-bar on which he was standing. For Birger, like most Swedish soldiers, had passed a twelvemonth in a midshipman’s berth, where, whatever seamanship he had picked up, he had, at all events, learned plenty of mischief.

“Away with you!” roared the Captain. “Up with the sails—both of them.”

“Skynda! Professor, Skynda!” echoed Birger, leaping off the capstan-bar as he spoke, and thus causing the Professor to pitch headlong among the trampling men.

“Up with it! up with it, cheerily! look there, she pays off already!” as the two sails flew out; the jib, which was not confined by any stay, bagging away to leeward and hanging there, but still drawing and doing good service. “Up with it, boys—round she comes, like a top! Hurrah, that’s elegant!” as a sea struck her full on the quarter, which, by her paying off, had now become exposed to it. On it came, breaking over the taffrail and deluging the idlers on the poop, but at the same time giving her the final shove off the ridge. “Off she goes! Shout, boys, shout! and wake up that Skipper, wherever he is!”

And amid the most discordant yells that ever proceeded from heterogeneous voices—Danish, Dutch, Swedish, German, and Russ, above which, distinct and ringing, rose the heart-stirring English cheer—the steamer, once more under command of her rudder, buzzed, and dashed her way into the open sea.

CHAPTER IV.
THE LANDFALL.

“Bewilderedly gazes

On the wild sea, the eagle

When he reaches the strand:

So is it with the man;

In the crowd he standeth

And hath but few friends there.”

Hávamál.

“Nothing gives one so lively an idea of eternal, irresistible progress—of steady, inexorable, unalterable fate, as the ceaseless grinding of these enormous engines.” Thus moralised Birger, as, two days after the events recorded in the last chapter, he stood with his brother officer, the Captain, on the grating that gave air into the engine-room. “In joy or in sorrow, in hope or in fear, on they go—grinding—grinding, never stopping, never varying, never hurrying themselves:—the same quiet, irresistible round over and over again: we go to bed—we leave them grinding; we get up—there they are, grinding still; we are full of hope, and joy, and expectancy, looking out for land and its pleasures—they go no faster; they would go no faster if we went to grief and misery. If you or I were to fall dead at this moment, the whole ship would be in an uproar, every man of them all showing his interest, or his curiosity, one way or other—but still would go on, through it all, that eternal, everlasting grinding.”

“Everlasting it is,” said the Captain, who was not at all poetical, and who was anxious to be at his journey’s end. “This steamer is the very slowest top I have ever had the misfortune to sail in. By every calculation we should have made the coast of Norway ages ago; I have been on the look out for it ever since daylight; but six, seven, eight, nine, and no coast yet. Breakfast over, and here are your everlasting wheels of fate grinding away, and not one bit nearer land, as far as I can see, than they were before. I’ll be hanged if the wind is not getting northerly too,” he said, looking up, as the fore and aft foresail over their head gave a flap, as if it would shake the canvas out of the bolt-ropes. “I thought so. Look at them brailing up the mainsail! wind and steam together, we never got seven knots out of this tub; I wonder what we shall get now—and the sea getting up too?”

Several consecutive pitches, which set the horses kicking, and prostrated one-half of the miserable, worn-out, dirty-looking deck passengers, seemed fully to warrant the Captain’s grumbling assertion, and they scrambled back to the poop; upon which most of the passengers were by this time congregated, for the sun was shining out brightly, and the wind, though there was plenty of it, was fresh and bracing.

They had evidently by this time opened the north of Scotland, for the slow, heaving swell of the Northern Ocean was rolling in upon them; and this, meeting the windwash knocked up by the last night’s south-easterly breeze, was making a terrible commotion in the ship, and everything and everybody belonging to it.

“Land! land!” shouted the Parson, who had climbed upon the weather bulwarks, and was holding on by the vang to steady his footing. “Land, I see it now; where could our eyes have been? There it is, like blue clouds rising out of the water.”

There was a general move and a general crowding towards the spot to which he was pointing, but just then the ship pitched bowsprit and bows under, jerking the Parson off his legs; upsetting every passenger who had nothing to hold on by, and submerging half-a-dozen men on the jib-boom, who were occupied in stowing the now useless jib. They rose from their involuntary bath puffing and blowing, and shaking the water from their jackets, but continuing their work as if nothing had happened.

There, however, was the land, beyond a doubt. No Cape Flyaway, but land—bold, decided, and substantial. Whether it was that people had not looked for it in the right direction, or had not known what to look for; or whether, as was most likely, a haze had hung over the morning sea, which the sun had now risen high enough to dispel; whatever was the cause, there stood the hitherto invisible land, speaking of hope and joy, and quiet dinners, and clean beds, and creating a soul under the ribs of sea-sickness.

Long, however, it was before they neared it,—hour after hour; and Birger’s everlasting wheels went grinding on, and the mountains seemed no higher and no plainer than they were when the Parson had first descried them. But the day had become much more enjoyable, the wind had moderated, and the swell was less felt, as the land began to afford some protection.

The Captain and his friend Birger had by this time established themselves on the break of the poop, with their sketch-books in their hands, nominally to sketch the outline of the land, really to caricature the Russian magnates during their hours of marine weakness. While Monsieur Simonet, one of the numerous tutors, a venturesome Frenchman, climbed warily up the main shrouds to get a better view, creeping up step by step, ascertaining the strength of each rattlin before he ventured his weight upon it, and holding on to the shrouds like grim Death. Quietly and warily stole after him the Mate, with a couple of stout foxes hitched round his left arm.

“Faith,” said Birger, “they are going to make a spread-eagle of him. Well, that is kind; it will prepare him for his new country; it is in compliment to Russia, I suppose, that they turn him into the national device.”

But the Mate had reckoned without his host. The Frenchman made a capital fight for it, and in the energy of his resistance, entirely forgot his precarious position; he kicked, he cuffed, he fought gallantly, and finally succeeded in seizing his adversary’s cap, a particularly jaunty affair with gold lace round it, in imitation of her Majesty’s navy, of which the Mate was especially proud. This, the Frenchman swore by every saint the Revolution had left in his calendar, he would heave overboard; and before the Captain had completed the little sketch he was taking of the transaction, a capitulation was entered into by the belligerents upon the principle of the statu quo, and the discomfited Mate descended, leaving his adversary to enjoy at once his position and his victory.

By this time sails, unseen before, had begun to dot the space which still intervened between the steamer and the iron-bound coast before it, which now rose stern and rugged, and desolately beautiful, clothed everywhere with a sort of rifle-green, from the dark hues of the fir and juniper, for none but the hardy evergreens could bear the severe blasts of even its southern aspect; few and far between were these sails at first, and insignificant did they seem under the abrupt and lofty mountains which rose immediately out of the sea, without any beach or coast-line, or low-land whatever; but, as they neared the land, the moving objects assumed a more conspicuous place in the landscape.

There was the great heavy galliasse with pigs from Bremen or colonial produce from Hamburg—a sort of parallelogram with the corners rounded, such as one sees in the pictures of the old Dutch school two hundred years ago—not an atom of alteration or improvement in its build since the days of old Van Tromp; the same flat floor and light draft of water—the same lumbering lee-boards—the same great, stiff, substantial, square-rigged foremast, with a little fore and aft mizen, which looked like an after-thought; she might be said to be harrowing the main instead of ploughing it, according to our more familiar metaphor, with a great white ridge of foam heaped up under her bows, and a broad, ragged wake like that of a steamer.

And there was the Norwegian brig returning from Copenhagen with a cargo of corn for Christiansand; rough and ill-found, nine times in ten not boasting so much as a foretop-gallant sail, yet tight and seaworthy, and far better than she looked; built after the model of a whale’s body, full forward and lean aft, with a stern so narrow that she looked as if she had been sailing through the Symplegades, and had got pinched in the transit.

Then came a fleet of a dozen jagts from the north, the tainted breezes advertising their fishy cargo, as they came along. These were the originals of the English yacht, which unspellable word is merely the Norwegian jagt, written as it is pronounced in the country, for Norway is the only nation besides England that takes its pleasure on the deep sea. With their single great unwieldy sails, their tea-tray-shaped hulls, and towering sterns, they looked like a boy’s first essays in the art of ship-building.

But Bergen furnishes a far more ship-shape description of craft—sharp fore and aft vessels are the Bergeners, looking as if they had all been built on the same lines, with little, low bulwarks, and knife-like cutwaters, as if they were intended to cut through the seas rather than to ride over them, sailing almost in the wind’s eye, and, when very close hauled indeed, a point on the other side of it—at least, so their skippers unanimously assert, and they ought to know best,—at all events, ensuring a wet jacket to every one on board, be the weather as fine as it may, from the time they leave the port to the time they return to it.

Then came, crowding all sail and looking as if they were rigged for a regatta, with their butterfly summer gear and tapering spars, the lobster smacks from Lyngör, and Osterisö, and Arendahl, and Hellesund: and a regatta it was on a large scale, with the wide North Sea for a race-course, omnivorous London for the goal, and its ever-fluctuating markets for a prize. These were sharp, trim-looking vessels, admirably handled, and not unworthy of a place in the lists of any Royal Yacht Club for beauty or for speed; somewhat less sharp, perhaps, than the Bergeners, but scarcely less weatherly or sitting less lightly on the seas.

The near approach to the land, which had been for so many hours looked for in vain, seemed to bring no great comfort to the unfortunate Skipper, who kept fidgetting about the decks with a perplexed and anxious countenance. Glasses were brought on deck, and rubbed and polished over and over again, and directed in succession to every mountain peak that showed itself, and every inlet that opened before them. Then, little mysterious consultations were held between the Skipper and his First Mate; then, one man was sent for, then another; then more whispering, and more mystery, more shaking of the heads and examination of charts; then an adjournment to the bridge, on which the Parson was then standing, taking his survey of the craft in sight, and enjoying the sunshine. At last, the whispering took a more objurgatory tone; more in the way of a growl, with now and then a short, emphatic sentence of eternal condemnation on somebody’s eyes, or blood, or other personalities,—as is the custom of those who “go down to the sea in ships.”

The first distinct words which met the Parson’s ear, came from the lips of the Skipper, pronounced in a sharp, acid, querulous sort of tone; such as superiors sometimes indulge in, when they are fixing on the shoulders of an inferior the blame they shrewdly suspect all the while, ought, if justice had its due, to rest on their own.

“You are not worth your salt, sir,” he said; “you are not worth your salt—you ought to be ashamed of wearing a blue jacket, you know-nothing, lubberly ...” and so forth; expressions by no means unusual at sea, certainly, but sounding somewhat misplaced in the present instance, inasmuch as if there was any one in the whole ship not worth his salt, the speaker certainly was the man, in his own proper person.

“Upon my soul, sir,” said the man addressed, “if I tried to tell you anything about it, I should be only deceiving you. I know the coast about Christiansand as well as any man. I have traded to that port for years, and taken the old brig in and out twenty times; but the land before us is all strange to me. I never saw those three hummocky hills before in my life. This is not Christiansand.”

“Well, but if it is not, does Christiansand lie east or west of us—which way am I to steer?”

The man raised his glass again, and took a long and anxious survey, but apparently with no better result.

“Really, sir, I cannot say. I cannot make it out at all; there is not one single sea-mark that I know.”

“Then what the devil did you ship for as a pilot, if you knew nothing of your business?” Here followed another strong detachment of marine expletives.

“I shipped as a pilot for Christiansand, sir; and, for the Sound, and for Copenhagen; and can take the steamer into any one of them, if she drew as much as a first-rate; but this place is neither one nor the other of them, and I never called myself a coasting pilot.”

“Well,” said the Parson, “this seems to me sad waste of breath and temper; if you are a couple of lost babes, why do you not ask your way? There lies a pilot-boat, as you may see with your own eyes,” pointing to a little cutter exhibiting in the bright sunshine a single dark cloth in a very white mainsail, which, with her foresheet to windward, lay bobbing about in the swell right ahead of them. “That is a pilot-boat, and I suppose she knows the way, if you do not—why do you not hail her?”

The Skipper looked askance at the Parson, as if he meditated some not very complimentary reply about minding one’s own business; for, conscious of the estimation in which he was himself held by the fishing party, who were in no way chary of their remarks, he regarded them with anything but friendly feelings. But the advice was too obviously sound to be neglected, and the Skipper was not by any means anxious that the magnates on the poop should become acquainted with the fact that he was at sea in more senses than one.

In a few minutes the steamer was alongside the little shrimp of a cutter, taking the wind out of her sails by her huge unwieldy hull.

A short conversation passed between them, which as one-half was sworn down the wind in very loud English, and the other half came struggling up in broad Norske, was not attended with any very satisfactory results.

Birger offered his services.

“You may as well ask them what they will take us into Christiansand for,” said the Skipper; “that will soon make them find their English.”

A few more unintelligible words were exchanged, and Birger burst out laughing.

“They cannot do it,” he said: “they cannot take us into Christiansand: not only they are not able, but they are not licensed to ply so far.”

“Why! where are we, then?” said the astonished Skipper.

“Off Arendahl!” said Birger.

“Arendahl!” broke in the Parson, “why, that is fifty miles to the westward of your course.”

“Well, I cannot conceive how that can be,” said the Skipper. “Something wrong, I am afraid, with the compasses. We ought not to be so far out; we steered a straight course, and—”

“That did you not,” said Birger, “whatever else you did; the Captain and I have been studying the theory of transcendental curves from your wake.”

“I can tell you how it is,” said the Parson; “you have steered your course as you say, and have not allowed for the easterly set of the current, and you imagine how this must have acted upon us under the influence of these rolling swells which we have had on our port bow ever since daylight, every one of which must have set us down a fathom or two to leeward. Don’t you recollect that we lost three line-of-battle ships coming home from the Baltic by this very blunder. Compasses!” he continued, sotto voce, “a pretty lot of blunders are thrown on those unfortunate compasses, in every court-martial. However,” he continued, aloud, “there is no help for it,—thankful ought we to be it is no worse; there is but one thing to be done now, and what that one thing is, you know as well as I.”

This the Skipper did know. A close survey of the remaining coals took place, and it was decided that notwithstanding the expenditure that took place on the day on the Shipwash, there might, with economy, be enough for six hours’ consumption, Birger inquiring innocently, “whether the Skipper had not anything that would burn in his own private stores?”

The steamer’s course was accordingly altered nine or ten points, for the coast from Arendahl to Christiansand trends southerly, and she had actually overshot her mark, and gone to the northward as well as to the eastward of her port, so that land which had hitherto lain before them, was thus brought abaft the starboard beam.

To those who, like our fishermen, were not exactly making a passage, but exploring the country, and to whom it was a matter of indifference whether they dined at five or supped at eleven, the Skipper’s blunder was anything but an annoyance. It afforded them an opportunity, not often enjoyed, of seeing the outside coast of Norway; for in general, almost all the coasting trade, and all the passenger traffic, is carried on within the fringe of islands that guard the shores. An absolute failure in the article of fuel, and a week or so of calm within a few miles of their port, might have been a trial to their tempers; but there was no such temptation to grumbling on the present occasion; and, besides, the afternoon and evening were bright and warm, the wind had sunk to a calm, and though the ever restless sea was heaving and setting, the swells had become glassy, soft, and regular.

Cape after cape, island after island of that inhospitable coast was passed, and not a sign of habitation, not a town, not a village, not even a fisherman’s cottage, or a solitary wreath of smoke was to be seen. The land seemed utterly uninhabited, and, as they drew out from the stream of trade, the very sea seemed tenantless also.

The fact is, that the whole coast of Norway, and of Sweden also, is fringed with islands, in some places two or three deep, which are separated from the main and from each other by channels more or less broad, but always deep. Of these islands, the outer range is seldom inhabited at all, never on the seaward sides, which, exposed to the first sweep of the southwester, are either bare, bold rocks, or else nourish on their barren crags a scanty clothing of stunted fir or ragged juniper, but afford neither food nor shelter, and where that necessary of life, fresh water, is very rarely to be met with.

The whole of the coasting trade passes within this barrier, and the houses and villages, of which there are many, lie hidden on the sheltered shores of the numerous channels; so that, however well peopled the coast may be—and in some places population is by no means scanty—neither house, nor boat, nor ship, except the foreign trade as it approaches or leaves the coast, is ever seen by the outside coaster.

The shades of evening were already falling, and that at midsummer in Norway indicates a very late hour indeed, when the glimmer of a light was seen through the scrubby firs of a cape-land island, occasioning a general rush of expectant passengers to the bridge, for some had begun to doubt the very possibility of discovering this continually retreating port, and to class it with the fairy territories of Cloudland and Cape Flyaway; while others, with more practical views and less poetical imaginations, had been contemplating with anxiety the rapidly decreasing coals in the bunkers. Both parties, poets and utilitarians alike, had their fears set at rest when, on rounding the point, the long-lost lighthouse of Christiansand hove in sight—tall, white, pillar-like, looking shadowy and ghost-like, against the dark background behind it. The poets might have thought of the guardian spirit of some ancient sea king, permitted to watch over the safety of his former dwelling-place, for Christiansand is renowned in story. To the utilitarians it might, and probably did, suggest visions of fresh vegetables, and salmon, and cod, and lobsters, for all of which that town is famous.

A bare, low, treeless slab of rock forms its site, a mere ledge, about a quarter-of-a-mile long, and sufficiently low, and sufficiently in advance of the higher islands, to form in itself a danger of no small magnitude during the long winter nights. It maintains on its withered wiry grass half-a-dozen sheep and a pig or two, the property of the lighthouse-keeper, which being the first signs of life and vestiges of habitation which had greeted the travellers during the afternoon’s steaming, were regarded with an interest of which they were not intrinsically deserving.

In a very few minutes, the heaving of the outside sea was exchanged for the perfect calm and deep stillness of the harbour, with its overhanging woods, its long dusky reaches, its quiet inlets, and mysterious labyrinthine passages, among its dark, shadowy islands. These became higher and more wooded as the steamer wound her way among them, deepening the gloom, and bringing on more rapidly the evening darkness. All, however, looked deserted and uninhabited, till suddenly, on opening a point of land, high and wooded like all the rest, the town of Christiansand lay close before them, dark and indistinct in the midnight twilight, without the twinkle of a solitary lamp to enliven it, or to indicate the low houses from the rocks which surrounded and were confused with them.

“Hurrah!” said the Parson, as the plunge of the anchor and the rattle of the chain cable broke the stillness of the night. “Some of us are not born to be drowned, that is certain.”

CHAPTER V.
CHRISTIANSAND.

“Dark it is without,

And time for our going.”

Skirnis Fär.