EIDER DUCK HUNTING.
“For now in our trim boats of Norroway deal
We must dance on the waves with the porpoise and seal;—
The breeze it shall pipe, so it pipe not too high,
And the gull be our songstress whene’er she flits by;—
We’ll sing while we bait, and we’ll sing while we haul,
For the deeps of the Haaf have enough for us all.”
_Norway Fishing Song._
The dawn was yet grey upon the mountains, and the light steaming mist
was still resting on the glassy surface of the harbour, when the three
boats slipped off noiselessly from the dockyard point. The fishing rods,
now useless, had been landed, and the guns and rifles had taken their
places, while the after-lockers were stored with cod lines and their
gear, to say nothing of the långref that had done such good service at
Mosse Eurd, and which was now converted into a spillet. The boats were
well provisioned—that is almost an invariable rule in Norway, so far as
quantity goes, but on this occasion, they were provisioned with all the
delicacies the fair Marie could lay her hands upon; nay, so interested
was she in the subject, that she came down with the party, in the grey
of the morning, to superintend the packing herself; and, after carrying
on a lively conversation with Birger, on the road, endeavoured, in vain,
to make the Captain understand something or other; her anxiety to convey
her meaning brought her cheek very much closer to his lips than perhaps
she intended—how close it was impossible to say, for the morning light
was still very faint,—in all probability, Birger might have come in for a
share of the secret, whatever it was, but he was rude enough to burst out
laughing, and to add something in Swedish, about bribery and corruption,
which put the young lady to immediate flight.
“You need not look so conceited,” said he, (possibly the grapes were
sour); “it was not you, it was the eider down she was thinking of.”
No one knows what silence is, who has not been in the North—what we
call silence, is a perpetual recurrence of a thousand familiar sounds,
so familiar that the ear does not notice them; the chirp of hundreds of
birds, and millions of insects go to make up English silence;—perhaps
within the Arctic circle it may be deeper than that which, at that early
hour, brooded over the harbour of Christiansand; but even that was a
silence which made itself to be felt; and the regular and steady roll of
the oars in the rowlocks, as the boats shot out into the fjord, fairly
echoed among the cliffs like grumbling thunder. Nothing could be more
calm and unbroken than the water, which seemed to be hot, for a slight
steam kept slowly rising from the whole surface, and hung upon it like a
veil which now began to whiten in the increasing light; every here and
there a seal would put up his head, like a black oily bead, take a steady
view of the boats, and then dip under, without a ripple to show where the
surface had been broken.
“Oars!” said the Captain, in a whisper, as one of these sheep of Proteus
evinced a little more indiscreet curiosity than his neighbours, and as
his boat, which had been leading, lost her way, he rose quietly, and his
rifle thundered through the still air of the morning, as if it had been
a six-pounder, while its echoes were caught and repeated, crack after
crack, by a dozen sharp cliffs and wooded islands.
The surface was sufficiently disturbed this time—for the Captain’s rifle
seldom spoke in vain,—and the seal was struggling in the agonies of
death; the men stretched out on their oars as if they were racing, but
before the boat could reach the spot, all was quiet again, and a slight
red stain in the water was all that remained to tell of the Captain’s
accuracy of aim. The Captain gazed on the deep blue below.
“It is of no use,” said the Parson, “they always sink, and it is a great
shame to be firing at that which you cannot get when you have killed it.”
“You used to shoot them, yourself, in Sligo Bay.”
“Yes, I did, but there was a tide there, and we shot them at high water,
and picked them up when the sands were bare—even then, though, we lost
a good many, but here there is not a chance; that fellow is food for
lobsters.”
“Well, I hope the cockneys will profit by it when the next batch goes to
the London market,” said the Captain, loading his rifle, “but have we no
tide here?”
“We have no sands that we can make available; but a tide there is, though
a faint one. Did you ever hear how there came to be a tide in Norway—for
originally there certainly was nothing of the kind? Thor was on a visit
to Loki Uttgard, who, in all love, challenged him to drink his great horn
out, and to turn it over to show there were no heeltaps, as is the custom
in Norway. Thor had never been conquered yet in drinking, or in anything
else; in fact, he had the hardest head, inside and out, of any god in
Norway. He drank, and he drank, but there was no bottom to be found to
the horn, and Thor put it down with shame, and acknowledged himself
at last vanquished; but the Uttgarders, who were all giants of a very
ferocious stamp, stood round, in speechless admiration. Loki had made a
communication between the bottom of the horn and the sea itself, and what
Thor had drunk was the ebb.”
“H’m! Hence the fine of a glass of salt and water,” said the Captain, “I
have often inflicted it, but I never knew the high authority I had for so
doing. Come, boys, give way for the Haaf.”
But before so doing they had to stop at a shoal, well known to Tom,
who now began to take the command, while Torkel sank into comparative
insignificance. It was necessary to lay in a supply of cod-bait, which
was not to be had in deep water. This was a species of large limpet, that
clung to the rocks by thousands, and was dislodged by the boat-hooks,
and stowed away in the balers. At length the swell of the open sea made
itself to be felt, for ever heaving and setting and rolling along in vast
mountains, and flashing in spray against the black rocks, though the
surface was as glassy and unbroken as that of the harbour. The whole
swell of the North Sea, and of the Atlantic beyond it heaves against
these coasts, and is never quiet in the calmest weather. The sun, which
had now risen, gleamed against the white tower of the light-house, and
flashed back in blinding rays from its lantern, as the boats pulled past
it into the Haaf.
They had now formed line abreast, at five or six hundred yards distance,
and were pulling leisurely along, keeping a bright look out on every
side. Calm as it was, the swells were quite heavy enough to conceal the
boats entirely from each other as, from time to time, the huge mountains
rolled between them.
They had proceeded in this manner for about half an hour, without seeing
anything, except gulls and cormorants—which latter, sitting in the
water, and rising and falling on the swells, had more than once deceived
them,—when, suddenly, Birger, who was on the extreme right, pointed with
his hand to the westward of their course: all eyes were turned in that
direction, and the line wheeled on Birger, as a pivot, when a dozen
or so, of black spots were seen on the side of the swell, in the rare
intervals when the boats and they were both rising.
The centre boat, which was the Parson’s, pulled right on the objects,
while the flankers having increased their distance to half a mile, pulled
on some hundred yards in advance of her.
Onward as they came, the black spots grew larger and larger, and the
distinct outlines of the ducks began to be distinguishable; still they
sat on the water, rising and falling to the swell as unconcernedly as
ever.
The flanking boats were already ahead of them, and the Parson, with his
long gun in his hand, had begun to calculate his distance—which, out
at sea, is particularly deceptive,—when, with one accord, the dozen
tails began to wriggle, and at once the whole flock were under water,
disappearing simultaneously, and as if by signal.
[Illustration: EIDER DUCK SHOOTING.]
The men, who, much to the Parson’s impatience, had been pulling very
leisurely indeed, now stretched out with all their might, and as they
shot across the spot lately occupied by the ducks, marked the chain
of air-bubbles, which tended out to seaward. A signal conveyed this
information to the Captain’s boat, which pulled into the line to
intercept them; Birger, who was thus thrown out, closing in with all his
might, and the Parson following up the track—each stood up as well as
he could in the roll of the sea, and looked out with all his eyes. Six,
eight, ten minutes elapsed, and nothing to be seen: it was impossible
that the birds could be under so long. At last, far to the rear of even
Birger’s boat, twelve black spots were seen rising and falling on the
swell as unconcernedly as they were at first. The ducks had headed back
under water, and the boats had pulled over them.
The same manœuvre was repeated, and with the same result; the centre boat
approached almost within firing distance, when the twelve tails again
wriggled simultaneously, and the twelve bodies went under at once. This
time, however, they rose within shot of Birger’s boat, but before he
could get his gun to bear on them, they were under again.
This was precisely what was wanted; the only chance of getting a shot,
at this season of the year, is to make the birds dive till they are
exhausted: they are said not to duck the flash like the divers—perhaps
they do not, but, at all events, they are generally under water long
before the quickest gunner can get a shot at them, and that, practically,
comes to the same thing.
The dive this time was a short one, though it carried them out of shot,
for the Captain, catching the line of their chain, had pulled on their
track, and headed them back to his friends. This time they rose among
the boats, and one or two attempted a heavy lumbering flight, which was
speedily put a stop to by the fowling-pieces. The rest dispersed, diving
each his own way, and pursued by the boats independently.
The object of approaching in a crescent, is to prevent the birds from
doing this before they are too much exhausted to dive far. A separated
flock can seldom be marked, inasmuch as it is more difficult to
catch sight of one black spot than a dozen; and besides, under such
circumstances, the boats can no longer act in concert. If a flock
disperses early in the chase, the chances are that not above one or two
birds will be secured; if kept pretty well together, not above as many
will escape.
It is a singular thing that eider ducks should be so unwilling to take
the wing in summer, for, though they rise heavily, they are by no means
bad flyers; but so long as they have breath to dive, nothing will get
them into the air; and this peculiarity, which in ordinary weather is
their preservation, during the calms is their destruction.
The chase was now an ordinary affair, very like rat hunting: the
birds, confused and dispersed, kept poking their heads up in all sorts
of unexpected directions, and, as their dives were now short, one or
other of the quick and experienced eyes was sure to detect them. As for
missing, when they were once within shot, it was impossible to miss a
bird nearly as big as a goose, and almost as heavy on the wing. Ten
out of the twelve were bagged, and two only were unaccounted for, they
having slipped away during the heat of the chase. The boats then formed
line-of-battle again, and cruised on in search of other adventures.
Various little episodes occurred, in which one or two rare sea-gulls and
other birds were brought down, as they hovered round the boats or crossed
their course. Most gulls, indeed, evince a great deal of curiosity in
their disposition, and a very dangerous quality this sometimes proves;
but in this case the murders were committed exclusively for the sake
of Science (who, by the way, must be a very cruel goddess), for the
fishermen were a great deal too much of sportsmen to indulge in the
vulgar gull-murder without object, which is called sport by maritime
cockneys. Three or four other flocks of eider duck were sighted, and
chased with various success; some, taking the alarm in time, contrived
to dive and swim ahead of the boats, so as to elude them altogether;
some, startled by too rapid approach, dived before they had time to draw
together, and, breaking their order, appeared so many scattered black
spots in different directions, most of which were necessarily lost while
pursuing the others. But these mishaps were not of frequent occurrence,
and a good heap of great ugly birds had already been collected, when,
about noon, a light cat’s-paw ruffled the surface, frosting it over with
little wavelets. At the time when this occurred it was quite unexpected;
the boats were following a chain of bubbles, and all available eyes being
fixed on them, no one was looking out into the offing.
In a moment the trace was lost; the birds might have risen, but the eye
could no longer mark the clear, well-defined, black dot. Ten minutes
afterwards all was calm again, but the flock were already safe.
“It is all over for to-day,” said Tom, looking anxiously into the offing,
where a narrow line of darker blue had already begun to mark the hitherto
undistinguishable boundary of sea and sky; “here comes the breeze
already.”
And slowly but surely the line crept down, first widening, then throwing
out ramifications before it; and then the sleepy surface of the sea
seemed to shudder, as if touched by a cold breath; little wavelets
began to ripple on the backs of the long swells,—then light airs fanned
the boats uncertainly, and, at last, a steady breeze set in from the
southward and westward.
“Up stick, for the cod ground!” said Tom; “we are only wasting time
here.” And in a couple of minutes the three boats were running away to
the eastward, under their English lugs, which, having hitherto served as
tents, were now for the first time applied to their legitimate use.
The end of the chase had left them five or six miles to westward of
the fjord’s mouth, and as far to seaward, while the fishing-ground was
a sunken island or shoal, a couple of miles or so from the lighthouse
near the outer range of islands;—it is called a shoal, and possibly, for
Norway, it is a shoal; but there is not less than twenty fathoms on any
part of it.
The boats were slipping along through the smooth water, as if they were
going up and down the hills of an undulating road; the breeze, though
very light, was steady, and already the features of the outer islands
were growing distinct; and Tom was looking out for the bearings of the
shoal.
“This is all very well,” said the Captain, steering his boat close to
that of the Parson, “but I have had no breakfast.”
“Then why don’t you set about it; I am sure Marie has not forgotten you.”
“Oh! I will not stand that; why should we make a toil of pleasure? I mean
to have a regular breakfast, and a pot of hot coffee—why not? we have the
whole day before us.”
“Well, I do not mind; hail Birger—there is a dissolute island, as Jacob
calls it, before us; we will boil your pot there.”
Birger was always ready for his grub, or, indeed, for anything else that
was proposed; and the boats were made fast to some rocky prominences on
the lea of the island, with a boat-keeper in each, to prevent them from
grinding one another to pieces.
Strange to say, many of these islets, which are mere rocks, contain fresh
water, some of them in pools in the rocks, but many in regular springs,
and in this particular case a very respectable little streamlet trickled
down a crevice of the rock.
Every beach, rock, and islet on the Norwegian coast is fringed with
a layer of drift-wood, in pieces of every size, from the great baulk
which in England would be worth five or six pounds down to the smallest
splinters. The reason of this is, that each river is continually
floating down its yearly freight of pines to the sea; these are caught
by a boom at the mouth,—that is to say, by a floating chain of squared
pine-stems,—but many dip under this and escape, many escape when it is
opened to let boats pass, and occasionally a freshet breaks a link or
draws a staple, in which case the whole boom-full of timber floats out to
sea at once. All this is irrecoverably lost, for it is illegal to pick
up timber floating; and a very necessary law this is, or the booms would
find themselves broken much oftener than they are. Nevertheless, the
quantity of timber lost annually in that way would pretty nearly supply
all the wants of all the English dockyards put together. But “it is an
ill wind that blows nobody any good;”—the wanderer on the sea coast need
never be without a fire to warm himself by.
“I like this,” said the Captain, as he lay on his back looking up to
the sky, watching the blue smoke as it came in wreaths above his head.
“I should like to be a Robinson Crusoe now, with a desolate island of my
own, like this, where the foot of man has never trod, and—Holloa! What
the devil have we got now?” he said, jumping up;—“how came these little
animals here?”
The little animals referred to were half a dozen children, with rakes and
hay-forks in their hands, who, attracted by the smoke and possibly by the
smell of the fried ham, were peering over the edge of the cliff like so
many sea-gulls.
“These are the savages, Mr. Crusoe,” said the Parson, quietly; “but it
really is a curious thing, so let us climb up the cliff and see what they
are about.”
The cliff was not difficult to scale, for the edges of the rocks were
like steps; and at the top a very unexpected scene met their eye: a
regular hay-field, with the hay in cocks, and five or six men and women
at work at it; they were carrying their cocks on a sort of handbier down
to their boats,—great, broad, heavy affairs these were, borrowed from the
horse-ferry,—and upon these they were building hay-stacks, intending to
take them in tow of their whale-boats, during the calm, and to bring them
to the main land.
The form of the island was a sort of cup, of which the cliffs round the
edge were the highest parts, and the centre, from having no drain, had
formed a fresh-water lake with a spongy, mossy border,—and this it was
which supplied the streamlet. The outer rim was bare rock, but between
these two extremes there was a boggy, black ring of vegetable mould,
which produced in great abundance a coarse, rank, wiry grass, which the
people were storing up for the winter, in order to deceive the poor
beasts into the idea that they were eating hay. Poor as it was, they had
come out a dozen miles to sea to get it: their boats, four in number,
including the floating hay-stack, lay snugly in a little bay or inlet,
on the shoreward side, where the water was comparatively quiet. They
had evidently taken up their quarters on the island, and established a
regular bivouac till the work should be finished, for there was a cooking
place built up with stones, and two or three of the girls were spreading
out to dry, in the hot sun, the clothes they had been washing in the lake.
“Who would have expected such a marine pastoral,” said Birger.
“Här Necken sin harssa in glasborgen slaar,
Och Haafsfruar kamma sitt grönskende haar,
Och bleka den skinande drägten.”[34]
“Heaven forefend,” said the Parson, hastily, “we are mad enough, some of
us already; and Torkel is in love, which is worse; we do not want to see
Haafsfruer. Remember Duke Magnus.”
“It was not the Haafsfru that took away the senses of Duke Magnus,” said
Torkel, “it was the curse of good Bishop Brask, that rested on the family
of Gustavus from the day when he killed the two bishops and deceived our
Bishop of Trondhjem, who had given them sanctuary; the whole royal family
of Sweden have been crazy, more or less ever since, till they turned them
all out and put our good father Karl Johann in their place.”
Birger shook his head sadly; he was too highly born himself, and too
aristocratic, not to feel a little shame at the idea of a French common
soldier superseding the old family of Vasa, sprung, like himself, from
Jarl Birger; but, for all that, he could not help admiring the worthy old
king who, by his downright honesty and sincerity and his strict sense of
duty, had painfully worked his way against all prejudices of rank and
nationality, and had wound himself into the affections of the people who
had chosen him. Still he had a kindly feeling for the old and glorious
race, and though he could neither deny the fact of the sacrilege and
breach of faith of Gustavus Vasa,—to which all the Norwegians, and many
of the Swedes also, attribute the hereditary madness of his family,—nor
indeed, the fact of the insanity itself, which was notorious in Eric his
successor, in Charles XII., and Gustavus IV., as well as the present
exiled representative of the family, yet he did not above half like
Torkel’s allusion to it. The Duke Magnus, whom they were speaking of, was
the youngest son of Gustavus Vasa, and was the first in whom the symptoms
of that disease about to be hereditary, had manifested themselves.
The Parson, rather sympathising in his discomfiture, gave a turn to the
subject by quoting the Swedish version of the Duke’s madness, to which he
had himself alluded; for the Swedes ascribe it to the love of a mermaid,
the sight of whom is invariably unlucky and is generally supposed to
produce insanity.
“Duke Magnus! Duke Magnus! bethink thee well,—
Answer me not so haughtily;
For if thou wilt not plight thee to me,
Thou shalt ever crazy be.
Duke Magnus! Duke Magnus! plight thee to me,
I pray you still so freely,—
Say me not nay, but yes, yes!”
“There is no harm in _these_ mermaids,” said Tom, “for they are as good
and hard-working a set of girls as any in Christiansand, but I trust we
shall never meet with the real ones; at least, not just before a voyage.”
“Why not,” said the Captain, “my principal reason for coming here was the
chance of seeing a mermaid in the only country in which they are still to
be met with. Have you never seen one yourself, Tom?”
“No, and God grant I never may; they are not seen so often now-a-days as
they used to be, that is truth. If they are to be seen at all,” he said,
after a pause, “I must say this is just the time and the weather for
them; a calm, still, sunny day, with a mist on the water; through this
they used often and often to be seen in old times, combing their hair,
or driving their milk-white cattle to feed on the rock weed; sometimes,
though not so often, they are seen at night, coming and shivering round
the fishermen’s fires, and trying to entice away the young men and to get
them to go with them to their deep sea-caves; and those that they carry
off are never seen again in the upper world.[35] But mermaids are never
seen except in a still that comes before a storm, and no one ever catches
a fish for the first voyage after they have seen them.”
“It is just the same with the Skogsfrue,” (the Lady of the Forest,) said
Torkel; “she is just as unlucky for us hunters, and when she can get any
young men to go with her, she never lets them come back again. I have
fancied more than once that I have seen her through the smoke of my fire
in the wild fjeld, but she was not likely to catch me.”[36]
“Ah! there spoke the bridegroom elect,” said Tom, “but I am not so sure
of that either: I think, Torkel, I could tell Fröken Lota more than you
would like her to hear.”
“If you do, Tom, you deserve to be ducked,” said the Captain, “and I will
help to duck you with my own hands.”
“He may tell what he likes, and what he can,” said Torkel; “but it is
quite true about the ill-luck in hunting and fishing, which follow the
sight of the Skogsfruer and Haafsfruer both.”
“Well, we will prove that, after Middagsmad, and there, in good time,
goes Jacob’s shot, to let us know that all is ready.”
The afternoon was spent in a lazy, lounging way; the shoal, if shoal it
can be called, where the bottom was evidently jagged rock and the depth
never less than twenty fathoms, lay just off the island where they were,
and the boats had but to pull out a cable’s length to be in the very best
of the ground; but it is not a very exciting amusement to be continually
hauling in little fish about the size of whiting, as fast as the lines
could run down. It did not take long to half fill the boats with that
staple of Norwegian life, rock cod: the hands of the fishermen, hardened
with forest work as they were, and tanned with the sun, were scarcely
calculated to stand the salt water and the constant friction; the
pleasure soon became a toil, and one by one the boats sought the shore of
the island.
The mermaids were soon characteristically employed in splitting and
laying out in the hot sun the baby cod, which proved a very acceptable
present; for this little fish, which swarms in every Norwegian fjord, is
among the poorer families, the principal winter store, and in nine cases
out of ten the only sea stock besides rö kovringer (or rye biscuits)
which a vessel carries. A present, in the strict sense of the word,
it could hardly be called, for Tom fairly sold his fish, and gravely
bargained for them with the young ladies, at so many kisses the hundred,
excluding Torkel from all competition, much to his disgust, by explaining
to them that as an engaged man he was entirely shut out from the market.
The Parson and Birger were in the meanwhile seated in a niche of the
rock which formed a natural chaise-longue, sedately smoking their pipes
and watching the picturesque-looking galliasses, which had endeavoured
to work out against the mid-day’s spurt of breeze that had by this time
entirely died away, and which now, with their great sails hanging idly,
like so many curtains from their yards and gaffs, seemed, as well as the
fishermen, to be basking and enjoying themselves in the evening sun.
There was no sort of hurry to return. Christiansand had few attractions,
and excepting Marie (and no one besides Birger could profit by that),
Ullitz’s house had still fewer. The luggage was all packed, and probably
by this time on board, their places taken, and their passage paid. Their
intention was, not to land again but to go along side at once. In the
meanwhile, a little tired with their morning’s work, they watched with
half-closed eyes the beautiful and peaceful sunset and the glorious
rising of the round full moon that threw a path of light across the
glassy waters.
“How beautiful!” said the Parson, who had just opened his eyes.
“Yes, that is the work of the Ljus Alfar—Lys Alfir they call them
here,—the Elves of Light. All elves work in metals, and these make a
silver filagree so fine that it can only be seen by moonlight on a
background of water. It is the floor of their ball-room, and if we were
either of us good enough, which it seems we are not, we should see
the little fairy beings dancing on it. When they are tired, they will
go to sleep under the leaves of the limes, which tree belongs to them
especially; the little spots of light which you see in its foliage on a
moonshiny night are their bright eyes, which they have not yet closed in
sleep.”
“Really,” said the Parson, “Prospero’s Isle ought to have been placed
on the coasts of Norway; it would seem that the more scarce the visible
inhabitants, the more numerous the invisible.”
“O, yes, nature, nature abhors a vacuum, and these Alfar are by far the
most numerous of all the supernatural beings. The White Elves, or Elves
of Light, are seldom found out of Norway and Sweden, but the Brown Elf
you have in Scotland as well. He works in metals of all sorts, though he
delights most in silver and gold. It is the Brown Elf that is the fitful
capricious being, which gives their meaning to the words elf and elvish:
these are the creatures which pinch untidy maids, and drink up the milk,
and light up their evening candles as Wills’-o’-the-Wisp, and lead men
into bogs and marshes. When seen, they are dressed in brown jackets with
crimson binding, and wear brown caps on their heads, whereas the Ljus
Alfar wear always the helmet of the foxglove, and are dressed in white.
It is the Black Elves that are malicious, though they often do good
service to men; they, too, work in metals, but it is generally in iron
and copper; they make arms and armour too, and sometimes filagree work,
like the Ljus Alfar, but theirs is always black.”
“Berlin iron?” suggested the Parson.
“Perhaps so; at all events the chain armour that they make is a most
valuable present, for, though no heavier than filagree-work, or, as you
say, Berlin iron, it will turn a sword or a shot.”
“The disposition of the elf, then, varies with its colour.”
“Yes, but one characteristic runs through all—all are capricious. All
may benefit you, some may hurt you, but none can be reckoned upon, and
that peculiarity, together with their universal horror of daylight,
gives a key to their allegorical origin.[37] These elves, or dwarfs, are
the incarnation of mining speculations, a very general form of gambling
both in Norway and Sweden. Mines are proverbially capricious; it is
impossible to tell how they may turn out. Occasionally these spirits are
beneficent in the highest degree, and their _protégés_ become suddenly
rich, but this is never to be relied on; the best are capricious, and the
greater number are tricksy; while some—though even these are now and then
capricious benefactors—are positively wicked and malicious. There, now
you have my theory of the alfs and alfheim.
“And there is another allegory about them, with a good Christian moral
to it,” continued Birger, after a pause spent in cherishing the fading
embers of his pipe; “these alfs are not baptised and have no part in
salvation, but they are capable of baptism under certain circumstances;
they are always anxious for it for themselves in their good moments,
but invariably so for their children, though those instances in which
they succeed are rare. The Icelandic family of Gudmund are cursed
with a disease peculiar to their race, which originated—so the family
tradition goes—in the curse of an alf frue, whom one of their ancestors
had deceived in this particular. Andreas Gudmund had a child by an alf
frue: at her earnest request, he promised that it should be taken in the
church; and when the child was old enough, she duly brought it to the
churchyard wall, which was as far as she might go herself, for no alf
may enter consecrated ground. The sound of the bells was torture to her,
but she bore it, and laid her child on the wall, with a golden cup as
an offering. But Gudmund, fearing the censures of the Church and the
reproaches of his friends, would not fulfil his promise. The alf frue
waited and waited, but the service was over, and the parting bells began
to ring again. So she snatched up the child and vanished into her hill,
and neither she nor it were ever seen again under the light of day. But
from that time forward, the right hand of every Gudmund is leprous, in
token that their ancestor was forsworn.
“Now all this must be allegory; what should you say was the meaning
of the spirits of the mine being capable of salvation, and being
occasionally, though rarely, seen admitted into the Church?”
“I suppose,” said the Parson, “it must be that wealth, though a
temptation to evil, may be used in God’s service, and that it
occasionally, though rarely, is so used. ‘Make to yourselves friends of
the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail they may receive you
into everlasting habitations.’”
“I think we may as well top our booms,” said the Captain, whose cigar
was finished; “the people will be all asleep on board the steamer, and,
besides—”
“Besides what?”
“Why we promised to let Marie have the eider down, and Ullitz’s people
will be in bed, too. You know we sail at daybreak?”
“O-ho, that’s the business is it? Well, then, call the men together, and
see that they leave nothing behind them.”
That was soon done, for nothing had been landed beyond the cooking and
dining apparatus, and the boats dashed along the still fjord, leaving
behind them three rippling lines of sparkling light, as if the Ljus Alfar
were dancing in their wakes.
In little more than an hour they were alongside the steamer, where their
whole travelling paraphernalia had been stowed in their respective
berths. Of these, the Parson and Birger, tired with their long day’s
work, were very shortly the occupants; the Captain, more energetic,
collected the ducks, and, accompanied by Tom and Torkel, landed at the
wharf; but what Marie said, on receiving so large an accession to her
stores, and what the Captain said to her, and how he contrived to say
it, are points upon which history is silent. Certain it is, that when the
Parson awoke from his first sleep, which was not till the steamer began
to tumble about on the swell outside, the Captain was snoring loudly in
the next berth, while the three attendants were equally fast asleep on
the cabin deck.
While this book was in the press, the author met with “Lloyd’s
Scandinavian Adventures,” in which there is not only a
description, but a print of eider duck shooting _under sail_.
It would be presumptuous in him to go against the experience of
a sportsman who has resided in these countries for more years
than the author has months. Possibly in the north, where the
birds are less hunted, they may be less cautious, and may allow
a boat to approach them in a breeze. The author can, however,
write only from personal experience. The foregoing chapter, so
far as the facts are concerned, is merely a transcript from
his journal; and as far as his own experience goes, he would
say, that the setting in of a breeze sufficient to enable the
lightest boat to carry sail, would utterly preclude all chance
of success in eider duck hunting.