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.”