TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
More detail can be found at the end of the book.
THE MODERN VIKINGS
THE SCRIBNER SERIES
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
EACH WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR
BOOKS FOR BOYS
THE MODERN VIKINGS By H. H. Boyesen
WILL SHAKESPEARE’S LITTLE LAD By Imogen Clark
THE BOY SCOUT and Other Stories for Boys
STORIES FOR BOYS By Richard Harding Davis
HANS BRINKER, or, The Silver Skates By Mary Mapes Dodge
THE HOOSIER SCHOOL-BOY By Edward Eggleston
THE COURT OF KING ARTHUR By William Henry Frost
WITH LEE IN VIRGINIA
WITH WOLFE IN CANADA
REDSKIN AND COWBOY By G. A. Henty
AT WAR WITH PONTIAC By Kirk Munroe
TOMMY TROT’S VISIT TO SANTA CLAUS and
A CAPTURED SANTA CLAUS By Thomas Nelson Page
BOYS OF ST. TIMOTHY’S By Arthur Stanwood Pier
KIDNAPPED
TREASURE ISLAND
BLACK ARROW By Robert Louis Stevenson
AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS
A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH
FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON
TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA By Jules Verne
ON THE OLD KEARSAGE
IN THE WASP’S NEST By Cyrus Townsend Brady
THE BOY SETTLERS
THE BOYS OF FAIRPORT By Noah Brooks
THE CONSCRIPT OF 1813 By Erckmann-Chatrian
THE STEAM-SHOVEL MAN By Ralph D. Paine
THE MOUNTAIN DIVIDE By Frank H. Spearman
THE STRANGE GRAY CANOE By Paul G. Tomlinson
THE ADVENTURES OF A FRESHMAN By J. L. Williams
JACK HALL, or, The School Days of an American Boy
By Robert Grant
BOOKS FOR GIRLS
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES By Josephine Daskam
THE HALLOWELL PARTNERSHIP By Katharine Holland Brown
MY WONDERFUL VISIT By Elizabeth Hill
SARAH CREWE, or, What Happened at Miss Minchin’s
By Frances Hodgson Burnett
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
[Illustration: BETWEEN SEA AND SKY.]
THE MODERN VIKINGS
STORIES OF LIFE AND SPORT IN THE NORSELAND
BY
HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1921
COPYRIGHT, 1887, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY
HJALMAR H. BOYESEN
ALGERNON BOYESEN
BAYARD H. BOYESEN
[Illustration]
TO THE THREE VIKINGS:
_HJALMAR, ALGERNON, AND BAYARD_.
_Three little lovely Vikings
Came sailing over the sea,
From a fair and distant country,
And put into port with me._
_The first--how well I remember--
Sir Hjalmar was he hight.
With a lusty Norseland war-whoop,
He came in the dead of night._
_He met my respectful greeting
With a kick and a threatening frown;
He pressed all the house in his service,
And turned it upside-down._
_He thrust, when I meekly objected,
A clinched little fist in my face;
I had no choice but surrender,
And give him charge of the place._
_He heeded no creature’s pleasure;
But oft, with a conqueror’s right,
He sang in the small hours of morning,
And dined in the middle of night._
_And oft, to amuse his Highness--
For naught we feared as his frowns--
We bleated and barked and bellowed,
And danced like circus-clowns._
_Then crowed with delight our despot;
So well he liked his home,
He summoned his brother, Algie,
From the realm beyond the foam._
_And he is a laughing tyrant,
With dimples and golden curls;
He stole a march on our heart-gates,
And made us his subjects and churls._
_He rules us gayly and lightly,
With smiles and cajoling arts;
He went into winter-quarters
In the innermost nooks of our hearts._
_And Bayard, the last of my Vikings,
As chivalrous as your name!
With your sturdy and quaint little figure,
What havoc you wrought when you came!_
_There’s a chieftain in you--a leader
Of men in some glorious path--
For dauntless you are, and imperious,
And dignified in your wrath._
_You vain and stubborn and tender
Fair son of the valiant North,
With a voice like the storm and the north-wind,
When it sweeps from the glaciers forth._
_With the tawny sheen in your ringlets,
And the Norseland light in your eyes,
Where oft, when my tale is mournful,
The tears unbidden arise._
_For my Vikings love song and saga,
Like their conquering fathers of old;
And these are some of the stories
To the three little tyrants I told._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THARALD’S OTTER, 1
BETWEEN SEA AND SKY, 17
MIKKEL, 41
THE FAMINE AMONG THE GNOMES, 71
HOW BERNT WENT WHALING, 79
THE COOPER AND THE WOLVES, 91
MAGNIE’S DANGEROUS RIDE, 102
THORWALD AND THE STAR-CHILDREN, 128
BIG HANS AND LITTLE HANS, 147
A NEW WINTER SPORT, 165
THE SKERRY OF SHRIEKS, 182
FIDDLE-JOHN’S FAMILY, 211
ILLUSTRATIONS
BETWEEN SEA AND SKY _Frontispiece_
PAGE
THE BARON SPRANG UP WITH AN EXCLAMATION OF FRIGHT 76
NORWEGIAN SKEE-RUNNERS 178
IN BATTERY PARK 260
THARALD’S OTTER.
Tharald and his brother Anders were bathing one day in the lake.
The water was deliciously warm, and the two boys lay quietly
floating on their backs, paddling gently with their hands. All of
a sudden Tharald gave a scream. A big trout leaped into the air,
and almost in the same instant a black, shiny head rose out of the
water right between his knees. The trout, in its descent, gave him
a slap of its slimy tail across his face. The black head stared
out at him, for a moment, with an air of surprise, then dived
noiselessly into the deep.
Anders hurried to shore as rapidly as arms and legs would propel
him.
“It was the sea-serpent,” said he.
He was so frightened that he grew almost numb; his breath stuck in
his throat, and the blood throbbed in his ears.
“Oh, you sillibub!” shouted his brother after him, “it was an otter
chasing a salmon-trout. The trout will always leap, when chased.”
He had scarcely spoken when, but a few rods from Anders, appeared
the black, shiny head again, this time with the trout in its mouth.
“He has his lair somewhere around here,” said Tharald; “let us
watch him, and see where he is going.”
The otter was nearing the shore. He swam rapidly, with a slightly
undulating motion of the body, so that, at a distance, he might
well have been mistaken for a large water-snake. When he had
reached the shore, he dragged the fish up on the sand, spied
cautiously about him, to see if he was watched, and again seizing
the trout, slid into the underbrush. There was something so
delightfully wild and wary about it that the boys felt the hunter’s
passion aroused in them, and they could scarcely take the time to
fling on their clothes before starting in pursuit. Like Indians,
they crept on hands and feet over the mossy ground, bent aside the
bushes, and peered cautiously between the leaves.
“Sh--sh--sh! we are on the track,” whispered Tharald, stooping to
smell the moss. “He has been here within a minute.”
“Here is a drop of fish-blood,” answered Anders, pointing to a
twig, over which the fish had evidently been dragged.
“Serves him right, the rascal,” murmured his elder brother.
“If we haven’t got him now, my name is not Anders,” whispered the
younger.
They had advanced about fifty rods from the water, when their
attention was arrested by two faint tracks among the stones--so
faint, indeed, that no eyes but those of a hunter would have
discovered them. A strange pungent odor, as of something wild,
pervaded the air; the whirring of the crickets in the tree-tops
seemed hushed and timid, and little silent birds hopped about in
the elder-bushes as if afraid to make a noise.
The boys lay down flat on the ground, and following the two tracks,
discovered that they converged toward a frowsy-looking juniper-bush
which grew among the roots of a big old pine. Very cautiously they
bent the bush aside.
What was that? There stood the old otter, tearing away at his
trout, and three of the prettiest little black things your eyes
ever fell upon were gambolling about him, picking up bits of the
fish, and slinging them about in their efforts to swallow.
The boys gave a cry of delight. But the otter--what do you think
he did? He showed a set of very ugly teeth, and spat like an angry
cat. It was evidently not advisable to molest him with bare hands.
In hot haste Tharald and Anders by their united weight broke off
a young elder-tree and stripped off the leaves. Now they could
venture a battle. Eagerly they pulled aside the juniper. But alas,
Mr. Otter was gone, and had taken his family with him.
To track him through the tangled underbrush, where he probably knew
a hundred hiding-places, would be a hopeless task. The boys were
about to return, baffled and disappointed, to the lake, when it
occurred to Tharald to explore the den.
There was a hole under the tree-root, just big enough to put a fist
through, and, without thought of harm, the boy flung himself down
and thrust his arm in to the very elbow. He fumbled about for a
moment--ah, what was that?--something soft and hairy, that slipped
through his fingers. Tharald made a bold grab for it--then with a
yell of pain pulled out his hand. The soft thing followed, but its
teeth were not soft. As Tharald rose to his feet, there hung a tiny
otter with its teeth locked through the fleshy part of his hand, at
the base of the thumb.
“Look here, now,” cried his brother; “sit down quietly, and I will
soon rid you of the little beast.”
Tharald, clinching his teeth, sat down on a bowlder. Anders drew
his knife.
“No, I thank you,” shouted Tharald, as he saw the knife, “I can do
that myself. I don’t want you to harm him.”
“I don’t intend to harm him,” said Anders. “I only want to force
his mouth open.”
To this Tharald submitted. The knife was carefully inserted at the
corner of the little monster’s mouth, when lo! he let the hand go,
and snapped after the knife-blade. Anders quickly threw his hat
over him, and held it down with his knees, while he tore a piece
off the lining of his coat to bandage his brother’s wound. Then
they trudged home together with the otter imprisoned in the hat.
* * * * *
You would scarcely have thought that “Mons”--for that became the
otter’s name--would have made a pleasant companion; but strange as
it may seem, he improved much, as soon as he got into civilized
society. He soon learned that it was not good-manners to snarl and
show his teeth when politely addressed, and if occasionally he
forgot himself, he got a little tap on the nose which quickened his
memory. He was scarcely six inches long when he was caught, not
reckoning the tail; and so sleek and nimble and glossy, that it
was a delight to handle him His fur was of a very dark brown, and
when it was wet looked black. It was so dense that you could not,
by pulling the hair apart, get the slightest glimpse of the skin.
But the most remarkable things about Mons were the webs he had
between his toes, and his long glossy whiskers. Of the latter he
was particularly proud; he would allow no one to touch them.
Tharald taught him a number of tricks, which Mons learned
with astonishing ease. He was so intelligent that Sultan, the
bull-terrier, grew quite jealous of him.
Inquisitiveness seemed to be the strongest trait in Mons’s
character. His curiosity amounted to an overmastering passion.
There was no crevice that he did not feel called upon to
investigate, no hole which he did not suspect of hiding some
interesting secret. Again and again he made explorations in the
flour-barrel, and came out as white as a miller. Once, for the sake
of variety, he put his nose into the inkstand, and in attempting to
withdraw it, poured the contents over his head.
In the part of Norway where Tharald’s father lived, the people
added largely to their income by salmon-fishing. Nay, those who had
no land made their living entirely by fishing and shooting. Every
spring the salmon migrated from the sea into the rivers, to deposit
their spawn; you could see their young darting in large schools
over the pebbles in the shallows of the streams, pursued by the big
fishes that preyed upon them. Then the perch and the trout grew
fat, and the pike and the pickerel made royal meals out of the
perch and trout. All along the coast lay English schooners, ready
to buy up the salmon and carry it on ice to London. Everywhere
there was life and traffic; everybody felt prosperous and in
good-humor.
It was during this season that Tharald one day walked down to
the lake to try his luck with a fly. It had been raining during
the night; and the trees along the shore shivered and shook down
showers of raindrops. The only trouble was that the water was so
clear that you could see the bottom, which sloped gently outward
for fifty or a hundred feet. Mons, who was now a year old, was
sitting in his usual place on Tharald’s shoulder, and was gazing
contentedly upon the smiling world which surrounded him. He was so
fond of his master, now, that he followed him like a dog, and could
not bear to be long away from him.
“Mons,” said Tharald, after having vainly thrown the alluring fly a
dozen times into the river, “I think this is a bad day for fishing;
or what do you think?”
At that very instant a big salmon-trout--a six-pounder at the very
least--leaped for the fly, and with a splash of its tail sent a
shower of spray shoreward. The line flew with a hum from the reel,
and Tharald braced himself to “play” the fish, until he should tire
him sufficiently to land him.
But the trout was evidently of a different mind. He sprang out of
the water, and his beautiful spotted sides gleamed in the sun.
That was a sight for Mons! Before his master could prevent him,
he plunged from his shoulder into the lake, and shot through the
clear tide like a black arrow. The trout saw him coming, and made a
desperate leap!
The line snapped; the trout was free!
Free! It was delightful to see Mons’s supple body as it glided
through the water, bending upward, downward, sideward, with amazing
swiftness and ease. His two big eyes (which were conveniently
situated so near the tip of his nose that he could see in every
direction with scarcely a turn of the head) peered watchfully
through the transparent tide, keeping ever in the wake of the
fleeing fish. If the latter had had the sense to keep straight
ahead, he might have made good his escape. But he relied upon
strategy, and in this he was no match for Mons. He leaped out
of the water, darted to the right and to the left, and made all
sorts of foolish and flurried manœuvres. But with the calmness of
a Von Moltke, Mons outgeneralled him. He headed him off whenever
he turned, and finally by a brisk turn plunged his teeth into the
trout’s neck, and brought him to land.
I need not tell you that Tharald made a hero of him. He hugged him
and patted him and called him pet names, until Mons grew quite
bashful. But this exploit of Mons’s gave Tharald an idea. He
determined to train him as a salmon-fisher.
It was in the spring of 1880, when Mons was two years old and fully
grown, that he landed his first salmon. And when he had landed the
first, it cost him little trouble to secure the second and the
third. Tharald felt like a rich man that day, as he carried home
in his basket three silvery beauties, worth, at the very least, a
dollar and a half apiece. He made haste to dispose of them to an
English yachtsman at that figure, and went home in a radiant humor,
dreaming of “gold and forests green,” as the Norwegians say.
“Now, Mons,” he said to his friend, whom he was leading after him
by a chain, “if we do as well every day as we have done to-day, we
shall soon be rich enough to go to school. What do you think of
that, Mons?”
One day a big fish-tail splashed out of an eddy, and a black furry
head and back rose for an instant and were whirled out of sight.
“Oh, dear, dear,” cried Tharald, “he will die! He will drown! How
often have I told you, Mons,” he shouted, “that you shouldn’t
attack fishes that are bigger than yourself.”
“Whom are you talking to?” asked a fisherman named John Bamle, who
had come to look after his traps.
“To Mons,” answered the boy, anxiously.
“You don’t mean to say your brother is out there in the water!”
shouted John Bamle, in amazement.
“Yes, Mons, my otter,” cried Tharald, piteously.
“Mons, your brother!” yelled the man, and seizing a boat-hook,
he ran out on the beams from which the traps were suspended. The
roar of the waters was so loud that it was next to impossible to
distinguish words, and “Mons, my otter,” and “Mons, my brother,”
sounded so much alike that it was not wonderful that John mistook
the former for the latter. For awhile he balanced himself by means
of the boat-hook on the slippery beams, peering all the while
anxiously into the rapids.
Suddenly he saw something struggling in the water; showers of spray
whirled upward. Could it be possible that a fish had attacked
the drowning child? Full of pity, he stretched himself forward,
extending the boat-hook before him, when lo! he lost his balance,
and tumbled headlong into the cataract.
Half a dozen other fishermen who were sauntering down the
hill-sides saw their comrade fall, and rushed into the water to
rescue him.
One man, bolder than the rest, sat astride a floating log and
rode out into the seething current. Now he was thrown off; now he
scrambled up again; at last, as his drowning comrade appeared for
the third time, with an arm extended out of a whirling eddy, he
caught him deftly with his boat-hook, and pulled him up toward the
log.
As John Bamle lay there, more dead than alive, upon the bank,
emitting streams of water through mouth and nostrils, the question
was asked how he came to endanger his life in such a reckless
manner. At that very instant the head of a black otter was seen
emerging from the water, dragging a huge salmon up among the stones.
“Look, the otter, the otter!” cried the men; and a shower of
stones hailed down upon the bowlder upon which Mons had sought
refuge.
“Let him alone, I tell you!” screamed Tharald; “he is mine.”
And with three leaps he was at Mons’s side, wringing wet from top
to toe, but happy to have his friend once more in safety. He seized
him in his arms, and would have borne him ashore, if the enormous
salmon had not demanded all his strength.
As they again reached the bank, the fishermen gathered about them;
but Mons slunk cautiously at his master’s heels. He understood
the growling comments, as one man after the other lifted the big
salmon and estimated its weight. John Bamle had now so far regained
consciousness that he could speak, and he stared with no friendly
eye at the boy who had come near causing his death.
“Come, now, Mons,” said Tharald, “come, and let us hurry home to
breakfast.”
“Mons!” repeated John Bamle; “is _that_ your Mons?”
“Yes, that is my Mons,” answered Tharald, innocently.
“Then you just wait till I am strong enough to stand on my legs,
and I’ll promise to give you a thrashing that you’ll remember to
your dying day,” said John, and shook his big fist.
Tharald was not anxious to wait under such circumstances, but
betook himself homeward as rapidly as his legs would carry him.
During the next week Tharald did his best to avoid the fishermen.
And yet, try as he might, he could not help meeting them on the
road, or on the river-bank, as he carried home his heavy load of
salmon.
“Hallo! How is your brother Mons?” they jeered, when they saw him.
Occasionally they stopped and glanced into his basket; and Tharald
noticed that they glowered unpleasantly at him, whenever he had
caught a fine fish. The fact was, he had had extraordinary luck
this week; for Mons was getting to be such an expert, that he
scarcely ever dived without bringing something or other ashore.
He had almost money enough now to pay for a year’s schooling, and
he could scarcely sleep for joy when he thought of the bright
future that stretched out before him. He saw himself in all manner
of delightful situations. Mons, in the meanwhile, who was not
troubled with this kind of ambition, snoozed peacefully in his
box, at the foot of his master’s bed. He did not dream what a rude
awakening was in store for him.
* * * * *
It had been a very bad week for John Bamle and his comrades.
Morning after morning their traps were empty, or one solitary fish
lay sprawling at the bottom of the box.
“I tell you, boys,” said John, spitting into his fist, and shaking
it threateningly against the sky, “I am bewitched; that’s what I
am. And so are you, boys--every mother’s son of you. It is that
Gimlehaug boy that has bewitched us. Are you fools enough to
suppose that it is a natural beast--that black thing--that trots
at his heels, and empties the river of its fish for his benefit?
Not by a jugful, lads--not by a big jugful! The devil it is--the
black Satan himself--or my name is not John Bamle. You never saw a
beast act like that before, plunging into the yellow whirlpools,
and coming back unscathed every time, and with a fish as big as
himself dangling after him. Now, shall we stand that any longer,
boys? We have wives and babies at home, crying for food! And here
we come daily, and find empty traps. Now wake up, lads, and be men!
There has come a day of reckoning for him who has sold himself
to the devil. I, for my part, am just mad enough to venture on a
tussle with old Nick himself.”
Every word that John uttered fell like a firebrand into the men’s
hearts. They shouted wildly, shook their fists, and swung their
long boat-hooks.
“We’ll kill him, the thief,” they cried, “the scoundrel! He has
sold himself to the devil.”
Up they rushed from the river-bank, up the green hillsides, up the
rocky slope, until they reached the gate at Gimlehaug. It was but
a small turf-thatched cottage, with tiny lead-framed window-panes
and a rude stone chimney. The father was out working by the day,
and the two boys were at home alone. Tharald, who was sitting at
the window reading, felt suddenly a paw tapping him on the cheek.
It was Mons. In the same instant an angry murmur of many voices
reached his ear, and he saw a crowd of excited fishermen, with
boat-hooks in their hands, thronging through the gate. There were
twenty or thirty of them at the very least. Tharald sprang forward
and bolted the door. He knew why they had come. Then he snatched
Mons up in his arms, and hugged him tightly.
“Let them do their worst, Mons,” he said; “whatever happens, you
and I will stand by each other.”
Anders, Tharald’s brother, came rushing in by the back door. He,
too, had seen the men coming.
“Hide yourself, hide yourself, Tharald!” he cried in alarm; “it is
you they are after.”
Hide yourself! That was more easily said than done. The hut was now
surrounded, and there was no escape.
“Climb up the chimney,” begged Anders; “hurry, hurry! you have no
time to lose.”
Happily there was no fire on the hearth, and Tharald, still hugging
Mons tightly, allowed himself to be pushed by his brother up the
sooty tunnel. Scarcely was Anders again out on the floor, when
there was a tremendous thump at the door, so that the hut trembled.
“Open the door, I say!” shouted John Bamle without.
Anders, knowing how easily he could force the door, if he wished,
drew the bolt and opened.
“I want the salmon-fisher,” said John, fiercely.
“Yes, we want the salmon-fisher,” echoed the crowd, wildly.
“What salmon-fisher?” asked Anders, with feigned surprise.
“Don’t you try your tricks on me, you rascal,” yelled John,
furiously; and seizing the boy by the collar, flung him out through
the door. The crowd stormed in after him. They tore up the beds,
and scattered the straw over the floor; upset the furniture,
ransacked drawers and boxes. But no trace did they find of him whom
they sought. Then finally it occurred to someone to look up the
chimney, and a long boat-hook was thrust up to bring down whatever
there might be hidden there. Tharald felt the sharp point in his
thigh, and he knew that he was discovered. With the strength of
despair he tore himself loose, leaving part of his trousers on the
hook, and, climbing upward, sprang out upon the roof. His thigh was
bleeding, but he scarcely noticed it. His eyes and hair were full
of soot, and his face was as black as a chimney-sweep’s. The men,
when they saw him, jeered and yelled with derisive laughter.
“Hand us down your devilish beast there, and we won’t hurt you!”
cried John Bamle.
“No, I won’t,” answered Tharald.
“By the heavens, lad, if you don’t mind, it will go hard with you.”
“I am not afraid,” said Tharald.
“Then we’ll make you, you beastly brat,” yelled a furious voice in
the crowd; and instantly a stone whistled past the boy’s ear, and
fell with a thump on the turf below.
“Now, will you give up your beast?”
Tharald hesitated a moment. Should he give up Mons, who had been
his friend and playmate for two years, and see him stoned to death
by the cruel men? Mons fixed his black, liquid eyes upon him as if
he would ask him that very question. No, no, he could not forsake
Mons. A second stone, bigger than the first, flew past him, and he
had to dodge quickly behind the chimney, as the third and fourth
followed.
“Tharald, Tharald!” cried Anders, imploringly; “do let the otter
go, or they will kill both you and him.”
Before Tharald could answer, a shower of stones fell about him. One
hit him in the forehead; the sparks danced before his eyes. A warm
current rushed down his face; dizziness seized him; he fell, he
did not know where or how. John Bamle with a yell sprang forward,
climbed up the low wall to the roof, and saw the boy lying, as if
dead, behind the chimney. He turned to call for his boat-hook, when
suddenly something black shot toward him from the chimney-top,
and a set of terrible teeth buried themselves in his throat. The
mere force of the leap made him lose his balance, and he tumbled
backward into the yard.
In the same instant Mons bounded forward, lighted on somebody’s
shoulder, and made for the woods. Before anybody had time to think,
he was out of sight.
Thus ended the famous battle of Gimlehaug, of which the
salmon-fishers yet speak in the valley. Or rather, I should say, it
did not end there, for John Bamle lay ill for several weeks, and
had to have his wound sewed up by the doctor.
As for Tharald, he got well within a few days. But a strange
uneasiness came over him, and he roamed through the woods early
and late, seeking his lost friend. At the end of a week, as he was
sitting, one night, on the rocks at the river, he suddenly felt
something hairy rubbing against his nose. He looked up, and with a
scream of joy clasped Mons in his arms. Then he hurried home, and
had a long talk with his father. And the end of it was, that with
the money which Mons had earned by his salmon-fishing, tickets were
bought for New York for the entire family. About a month later they
landed at Castle Garden.
Tharald and Mons are now doing a large fish-business, without fear
of harm, in one of the great lakes of Wisconsin. Some day, he hopes
yet, it may lead to a parsonage. Since he learned that some of the
apostles were fishermen, he feels that he is on the right road to
the goal of his ambition.
BETWEEN SEA AND SKY.
I.
“Iceland is the most beautiful land the sun doth shine upon,” said
Sigurd Sigurdson to his two sons.
“How can you know that, father,” asked Thoralf, the elder of the
two boys, “when you have never been anywhere else?”
“I know it in my heart,” said Sigurd, devoutly.
“It is, after all, a matter of taste,” observed the son. “I think
if I were hard pressed, I might be induced to put up with some
other country.”
“You ought to blush with shame,” his father rejoined warmly. “You
do not deserve the name of an Icelander, when you fail to see
how you have been blessed in having been born in so beautiful a
country.”
“I wish it were less beautiful and had more things to eat in it,”
muttered Thoralf. “Salted codfish, I have no doubt, is good for the
soul, but it rests very heavily on the stomach, especially when you
eat it three times a day.”
“You ought to thank God that you have codfish, and are not a naked
savage on some South Sea isle, who feeds, like an animal, on the
herbs of the earth.”
“But I like codfish much better than smoked puffin,” remarked Jens,
the younger brother, who was carving a pipe-bowl. “Smoked puffin
always makes me sea-sick. It tastes like cod-liver oil.”
Sigurd smiled, and, patting the younger boy on the head, entered
the cottage.
“You shouldn’t talk so to father, Thoralf,” said Jens, with
superior dignity; for his father’s caress made him proud and
happy. “Father works so hard, and he does not like to see anyone
discontented.”
“That is just it,” replied the elder brother; “he works so hard,
and yet barely manages to keep the wolf from the door. That is what
makes me impatient with the country. If he worked so hard in any
other country he would live in abundance, and in America he would
become a rich man.”
This conversation took place one day, late in the autumn, outside
of a fisherman’s cottage on the north-western coast of Iceland.
The wind was blowing a gale down from the ice-engirdled pole, and
it required a very genial temper to keep one from getting blue.
The ocean, which was but a few hundred feet distant, roared like
an angry beast, and shook its white mane of spray, flinging it
up against the black clouds. With every fresh gust of wind, a
shower of salt water would fly hissing through the air and whirl
about the chimney-top, which was white on the windward side from
dried deposits of brine. On the turf-thatched roof big pieces of
drift-wood, weighted down with stones, were laid lengthwise and
crosswise, and along the walls fishing-nets hung in festoons from
wooden pegs. Even the low door was draped, as with decorative
intent, with the folds of a great drag-net, the clumsy cork-floats
of which often dashed into the faces of those who attempted to
enter. Under a driftwood shed which projected from the northern
wall was seen a pile of peat, cut into square blocks, and a
quantity of the same useful material might be observed down at the
beach, in a boat which the boys had been unloading when the storm
blew up. Trees no longer grow in the island, except the crippled
and twisted dwarf-birch, which creeps along the ground like a
snake, and, if it ever dares lift its head, rarely grows more
than four or six feet high. In the olden time, which is described
in the so-called sagas of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
Iceland had very considerable forests of birch and probably also of
pine. But they were cut down; and the climate has gradually been
growing colder, until now even the hardiest tree, if it be induced
to strike root in a sheltered place, never reaches maturity. The
Icelanders therefore burn peat, and use for building their houses
driftwood which is carried to them by the Gulf Stream from Cuba and
the other well-wooded isles along the Mexican Gulf.
“If it keeps blowing like this,” said Thoralf, fixing his weather
eye on the black horizon, “we shan’t be able to go a-fishing; and
mother says the larder is very nearly empty.”
“I wish it would blow down an Englishman or something on us,”
remarked the younger brother; “Englishmen always have such lots of
money, and they are willing to pay for everything they look at.”
“While you are a-wishing, why don’t you wish for an American?
Americans have mountains and mountains of money, and they don’t
mind a bit what they do with it. That’s the reason I should like to
be an American.”
“Yes, let us wish for an American or two to make us comfortable for
the winter. But I am afraid it is too late in the season to expect
foreigners.”
The two boys chatted together in this strain, each working at some
piece of wood-carving which he expected to sell to some foreign
traveller. Thoralf was sixteen years old, tall of growth, but
round-shouldered, from being obliged to work when he was too young.
He was rather a handsome lad, though his features were square and
weather-beaten, and he looked prematurely old. Jens, the younger
boy, was fourteen years old, and was his mother’s darling. For
even up under the North Pole mothers love their children tenderly,
and sometimes they love one a little more than another; that is,
of course, the merest wee bit of a fraction of a trifle more.
Icelandic mothers are so constituted that when one child is a
little weaker and sicklier than the rest, and thus seems to be more
in need of petting, they are apt to love their little weakling
above all their other children, and to lavish the tenderest care
upon that one. It was because little Jens had so narrow a chest,
and looked so small and slender by the side of his robust brother,
that his mother always singled him out for favors and caresses.
II.
All night long the storm danced wildly about the cottage, rattling
the windows, shaking the walls, and making fierce assaults upon
the door, as if it meant to burst in. Sometimes it bellowed
hoarsely down the chimney, and whirled the ashes on the hearth,
like a gray snowdrift, through the room. The fire had been put
out, of course; but the dancing ashes kept up a fitful patter,
like that of a pelting rainstorm, against the walls; they even
penetrated into the sleeping alcoves and powdered the heads of
their occupants. For in Iceland it is only well-to-do people who
can afford to have separate sleeping-rooms; ordinary folk sleep
in little closed alcoves, along the walls of the sitting-room;
masters and servants, parents and children, guests and wayfarers,
all retiring at night into square little holes in the walls, where
they undress behind sliding trapdoors which may be opened again,
when the lights have been put out, and the supply of air threatens
to become exhausted. It was in a little closet of this sort that
Thoralf and Jens were lying, listening to the roar of the storm.
Thoralf dozed off occasionally, and tried gently to extricate
himself from his frightened brother’s embrace; but Jens lay with
wide-open eyes, staring into the dark, and now and then sliding
the trapdoor aside and peeping out, until a blinding shower of
ashes would again compel him to slip his head under the sheepskin
coverlet. When at last he summoned courage to peep out, he could
not help shuddering. It was terribly cheerless and desolate. And
all the time his father’s words kept ringing ironically in his
ears: “Iceland is the most beautiful land the sun doth shine upon.”
For the first time in his life he began to question whether his
father might not possibly be mistaken, or, perhaps, blinded by his
love for his country. But the boy immediately repented of this
doubt, and, as if to convince himself in spite of everything, kept
repeating the patriotic motto to himself until he fell asleep.
It was yet pitch dark in the room, when he was awakened by his
father, who stood stooping over him.
“Sleep on, child,” said Sigurd; “it was your brother I wanted to
wake up, not you.”
“What is the matter, father? What has happened?” cried Jens, rising
up in bed, and rubbing the ashes from the corners of his eyes.
“We are snowed up,” said the father, quietly. “It is already nine
o’clock, I should judge, or thereabouts, but not a ray of light
comes through the windows. I want Thoralf to help me open the door.”
Thoralf was by this time awake, and finished his primitive toilet
with much despatch. The darkness, the damp cold, and the unopened
window-shutters impressed him ominously. He felt as if some
calamity had happened or were about to happen. Sigurd lighted a
piece of driftwood and stuck it into a crevice in the wall. The
storm seemed to have ceased; a strange, tomb-like silence prevailed
without and within. On the hearth lay a small snowdrift which
sparkled with a starlike glitter in the light.
“Bring the snow-shovels, Thoralf,” said Sigurd. “Be quick; lose no
time.”
“They are in the shed outside,” answered Thoralf.
“That is very unlucky,” said the father; “now we shall have to use
our fists.”
The door opened outward and it was only with the greatest
difficulty that father and son succeeded in pushing it ajar. The
storm had driven the snow with such force against it that their
efforts seemed scarcely to make any impression upon the dense white
wall which rose up before them.
“This is of no earthly use, father,” said the boy; “it is a day’s
job at the very least. Let me rather try the chimney.”
“But you might stick in the snow and perish,” objected the father,
anxiously.
“Weeds don’t perish so easily,” said Thoralf. “Stand up on the
hearth, father, and I will climb up on your shoulders.”
Sigurd half reluctantly complied with his request. Thoralf crawled
up his back, and soon planted his feet on the parental shoulders.
He pulled his knitted woollen cap over his eyes and ears so
as to protect them from the drizzling soot which descended in
intermittent showers. Then groping with his toes for a little
projection of the wall, he gained a securer foothold, and pushing
boldly on, soon thrust his sooty head through the snow-crust. A
chorus as of a thousand howling wolves burst upon his bewildered
sense; the storm raged, shrieked, roared, and nearly swept him off
his feet. Its biting breath smote his face like a sharp whip-lash.
“Give me my sheepskin coat,” he cried down into the cottage; “the
wind chills me to the bone.”
The sheepskin coat was handed to him on the end of a pole, and
seated upon the edge of the chimney, he pulled it on and buttoned
it securely. Then he rolled up the edges of his cap in front and
cautiously exposed his eyes and the tip of his nose. It was not a
pleasant experiment, but one dictated by necessity. As far as he
could see, the world was white with snow, which the storm whirled
madly around, and swept now earthward, now heavenward. Great
funnel-shaped columns of snow danced up the hillsides and vanished
against the black horizon. The prospect before the boy was by no
means inviting, but he had been accustomed to battle with dangers
since his earliest childhood, and he was not easily dismayed. With
much deliberation, he climbed over the edge of the chimney, and
rolled down the slope of the roof in the direction of the shed. He
might have rolled a great deal farther, if he had not taken the
precaution to roll against the wind. When he had made sure that
he was in the right locality, he checked himself by spreading his
legs and arms; then judging by the outline of the snow where the
door of the shed was, he crept along the edge of the roof on the
leeward side. He looked more like a small polar bear than a boy,
covered, as he was, with snow from head to foot. He was prepared
for a laborious descent, and raising himself up he jumped with all
his might, hoping that his weight would carry him a couple of feet
down. To his utmost astonishment he accomplished considerably more.
The snow yielded under his feet as if it had been eiderdown, and
he tumbled headlong into a white cave right at the entrance to the
shed. The storm, while it had packed the snow on the windward side,
had naturally scattered it very loosely on the leeward, which left
a considerable space unfilled under the projecting eaves.
Thoralf picked himself up and entered the shed without difficulty.
He made up a large bundle of peat, which he put into a basket
which could be carried, by means of straps, upon his back. With
a snow-shovel he then proceeded to dig a tunnel to the nearest
window. This was not a very hard task, as the distance was not
great. The window was opened and the basket of peat, a couple
of shovels, and two pairs of skees[1] (to be used in case of
emergency) were handed in. Thoralf himself, who was hungry as
a wolf, made haste to avail himself of the same entrance. And
it occurred to him as a happy afterthought that he might have
saved himself much trouble, if he had selected the window instead
of the chimney when he sallied forth on his expedition. He had
erroneously taken it for granted that the snow would be packed as
hard everywhere as it was at the front door. The mother, who had
been spending this exciting half-hour in keeping little Jens warm,
now lighted a fire and made coffee; and Thoralf needed no coaxing
to do justice to his breakfast, even though it had, like everything
else in Iceland, a flavor of salted fish.
III.
Five days had passed, and still the storm raged with unabated
fury. The access to the ocean was cut off, and, with that, access
to food. Already the last handful of flour had been made into
bread, and of the dried cod which hung in rows under the ceiling
only one small and skinny specimen remained. The father and the
mother sat with mournful faces at the hearth, the former reading
in his hymn-book, the latter stroking the hair of her youngest
boy. Thoralf, who was carving at his everlasting pipe-bowl (a
corpulent and short-legged Turk with an enormous mustache), looked
up suddenly from his work and glanced questioningly at his father.
“Father,” he said, abruptly, “how would you like to starve to
death?”
“God will preserve us from that, my son,” answered the father,
devoutly.
“Not unless we try to preserve ourselves,” retorted the boy,
earnestly. “We can’t tell how long this storm is going to last, and
it is better for us to start out in search of food now, while we
are yet strong, than to wait until later, when, as likely as not,
we shall be weakened by hunger.”
“But what would you have me do, Thoralf?” asked the father, sadly.
“To venture out on the ocean in this weather would be certain
death.”
“True; but we can reach the Pope’s Nose on our skees, and there we
might snare or shoot some auks and gulls. Though I am not partial
to that kind of diet myself, it is always preferable to starvation.”
“Wait, my son, wait,” said Sigurd, earnestly. “We have food enough
for to-day, and by to-morrow the storm will have ceased, and we may
go fishing without endangering our lives.”
“As you wish, father,” the son replied, a trifle hurt at his
father’s unresponsive manner; “but if you will take a look out of
the chimney, you will find that it looks black enough to storm for
another week.”
The father, instead of accepting this suggestion, went quietly to
his book-case, took out a copy of Livy, in Latin, and sat down
to read. Occasionally he looked up a word in the lexicon (which
he had borrowed from the public library at Reykjavik), but read
nevertheless with apparent fluency and pleasure. Though he was
a fisherman, he was also a scholar, and during the long winter
evenings he had taught himself Latin and even a smattering of
Greek.[2] In Iceland the people have to spend their evenings
at home; and especially since their millennial celebration in
1876, when American scholars[3] presented them with a large
library, books are their unfailing resource. In the case of Sigurd
Sigurdson, however, books had become a kind of dissipation, and he
had to be weaned gradually of his predilection for Homer and Livy.
His oldest son especially looked upon Latin and Greek as a vicious
indulgence, which no man with a family could afford to foster. Many
a day when Sigurd ought to have been out in his boat casting his
nets, he stayed at home reading. And this, in Thoralf’s opinion,
was the chief reason why they would always remain poor, and run the
risk of starvation, whenever a stretch of bad weather prevented
them from going to sea.
The next morning--the sixth since the beginning of the
storm--Thoralf climbed up to his post of observation on the chimney
top, and saw, to his dismay, that his prediction was correct. It
had ceased snowing, but the wind was blowing as fiercely as ever,
and the cold was intense.
“Will you follow me, father, or will you not?” he asked, when he
had accomplished his descent into the room. “Our last fish is now
eaten, and our last loaf of bread will soon follow suit.”
“I will go with you, my son,” answered Sigurd, putting down his
Livy reluctantly. He had just been reading for the hundredth time
about the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome, and his blood was
aglow with sympathy and enthusiasm.
“Here is your coat, Sigurd,” said his wife, holding up the great
sheepskin garment, and assisting him in putting it on.
“And here are your skees and your mittens and your cap,” cried
Thoralf, eager to seize the moment, when his father was in the mood
for action.
Muffled up like Esquimaux to their very eyes, armed with bows and
arrows and long poles with nooses of horse-hair at the ends, they
sallied forth on their skees. The wind blew straight into their
faces, forcing their breath down their throats and compelling
them to tack in zigzag lines like ships in a gale. The promontory
called “The Pope’s Nose” was about a mile distant; but in spite of
their knowledge of the land, they went twice astray, and had to
lie down in the snow, every now and then, so as to draw breath and
warm the exposed portions of their faces. At the end of nearly two
hours they found themselves at their destination, but, to their
unutterable astonishment, the ocean seemed to have vanished, and as
far as their eyes could reach, a vast field of packed ice loomed
up against the sky in fantastic bastions, turrets, and spires. The
storm had driven down this enormous arctic wilderness from the
frozen precincts of the pole; and now they were blockaded on all
sides, and cut off from all intercourse with humanity.
“We are lost, Thoralf,” muttered his father, after having gazed for
some time in speechless despair at the towering icebergs; “we might
just as well have remained at home.”
“The wind, which has blown the ice down upon us can blow it away
again, too,” replied the son, with forced cheerfulness.
“I see no living thing here,” said Sigurd, spying anxiously seaward.
“Nor do I,” rejoined Thoralf; “but if we hunt, we shall. I have
brought a rope, and I am going to pay a little visit to those auks
and gulls that must be hiding in the sheltered nooks of the rocks.”
“Are you mad, boy?” cried the father in alarm. “I will never permit
it!”
“There is no help for it, father,” said the boy resolutely. “Here,
you take hold of one end of the rope; the other I will secure about
my waist. Now, get a good strong hold, and brace your feet against
the rock there.”
Sigurd, after some remonstrance, yielded, as was his wont, to his
son’s resolution and courage. Stepping off his skees, which he
stuck endwise into the snow, and burrowing his feet down until
they reached the solid rock, he tied the rope around his waist and
twisted it about his hands, and at last, with quaking heart, gave
the signal for the perilous enterprise. The promontory, which rose
abruptly to a height of two or three hundred feet from the sea,
presented a jagged wall full of nooks and crevices glazed with
frozen snow on the windward side, but black and partly bare to
leeward.
“Now let go!” shouted Thoralf; “and stop when I give a slight pull
at the rope.”
“All right,” replied his father.