THE COASTING VOYAGE.
“Now launched once more, the inland sea
They furrow with fair augury.
“So brilliant was the landward view,
The ocean so serene;
Each puny wave in diamonds rolled
O’er the calm deep, where hues of gold
With azure strove, and green.
The hill, the vale, the tree, the tower,
Glowed with the tints of evening hour,
The beach was silver sheen.
“The wind breathed soft as lover’s sigh,
And, oft renewed, seemed oft to die,
With breathless pause between.
“O, who with speech of war and woes
Would wish to break the soft repose
Of such enchanting scene.”
_Lord of the Isles._
If an Englishman can ever enter into the feelings of a Neapolitan, and
in any way connect the ideas of the _dolce far niente_ with those of
enjoyment, if he can ever bend that active, energetic mind of his, and
that restless and industrious Anglo-Saxon body, to realize the faintest
conception of the “paradise of rest,” in which the Buddhist places the
sum of his felicity, it will be on board ship, after breakfast, on a
calm, warm forenoon, and beyond the influence of the Post Office.
[Illustration: SCENE ON THE SOUTH COAST OF NORWAY.
p. 220.]
That these words actually passed through the lips of the Captain, and
escaped, what Homer calls, the protection of his teeth, we will not take
upon ourselves to affirm—as indolently he reclined on the paddle-box of
the _Gefjon_ steamer, with his eyes shut, his muscles relaxed, his arms
and legs sprawling about in all directions, while the indolent smoke of
his cigar, that from time to time floated out lazily from between his
lips, afforded the only sign of life about him; he seemed as if he was
totally incapable of making any such exertion—but certainly, these ideas
passed through his mind, and pictured themselves on the light grey clouds
that proceeded from his mouth.
Breakfast, so far as the English portion of the guests was concerned, had
long been over, and though some hardy Norseman or persevering Swede was
still lingering over the scenes of his departed joys, and dallying with
tempting morsels of raw smoked salmon, or appetizing _caviare_, the first
great act of Northern daily life might be looked upon as completed.
“You an artist,” said Birger, whose sketching tablet was already slung
round his neck, and who was looking round him from the bridge, unable to
choose, in such a panorama of beauty, which of all the lovely views he
should attempt to transfer to his paper—“You an artist, and asleep among
scenes like these? you are not worthy of them; as if you could not smoke
your cigar while the rain was falling, and sleep in the night-time.”
“I was not asleep,” said the Captain, lazily, “I was thinking.”
“Thinking,” said Birger, “look round you, and you may think that you are
in fairy land, if fairy land, itself, has anything half so lovely. Look
at that beautiful lake, which we are just opening, on the north—see how
those wooded capes partly intercept the view, with their soft outline of
birch, and that long reach of blue water dancing in the sunlight, and
that little island, a single spot of shade, with its three picturesque
fir trees, and that dark red rock that overhangs it, with its iron stains
of brown and yellow starting up from among the bright green foliage; and
look how the ash fringes the edge of that precipice: get up, and if you
are too lazy to work, at least admire.”
Really, the scene was a scene of fairy land, such as, in our most
poetical of moments, we picture fairy land to be. The steamer’s course
lay among the groups of islands that fringe the southern shore of Norway,
and these, in that portion of the chain, at least, which lies between
Hellesund and Lyngör, are, for the most part, bold rocks, clothed with
every variety of foliage which Norway produces, and, being sheltered
from the sweep of the sea breezes by the outer chain exhibit that
foliage in its fullest perfection. The idea usually connected in our
minds with Norwegian scenery, is that of wild and desolate grandeur; and
fully is that idea realized in the mountains of the Hardanger and the
Alpine deserts of the Fille Fjeld—wild, rugged, treeless scenes of utter
desolation, almost beyond the limits of vegetable life. But it is far
otherwise with the coasts—nowhere is seen a colouring half so vivid as
among the sheltered islets of the southern shores; the turf with which
their glades are clothed is more brilliantly green than anything that we
have in England, where the grass is invariably interspersed with weeds.
Take a square yard of any English turf whatever, and you will find in it,
from ten to twenty different sorts of plants, all of which are, more or
less, glaucous in their colouring, and these, though at a little distance
undistinguishable in their forms, yet, blend their hues with the emerald
green of the grass, and present what, side by side with Norwegian turf,
would be but a soiled and faded picture. The foliage, too, is far more
bright and luxuriant than anything in England, even in the interior of
the country, but as different from our wind-worn and frost-nipt sea-side
greenery as can well be conceived.
There is no such thing as early spring in those latitudes, or those warm,
sunny, deceitful days, which tempt forth the young bud and leaflet, only
to be pinched and shrivelled by the April frosts. Week after week does
stern winter bind up all nature in its iron fetters; all is still, and
cold, and dead; and though the sun rises higher and higher, he seems to
shine without power; and though the days lengthen, and the empire of
night be invaded, winter still holds on, and the snows look even whiter
in the stronger light—the Norway of April, is but the Norway of December:
more bright and more chilly—When all at once, and without preparation,
the scene is changed—the snows are gone, the ice is broken, the leaves
are already green, and the country is in the garb of full-blown summer.
Spring is a season unknown in Norway.
The consequence of this is, that the leaf, which has not begun to spring
at all till the frost is thoroughly out of the ground and the air free
from chill, is never blackened, or nipped, or dwarfed in its proportions,
as it is in England, and therefore preserves, through the short summer, a
greenness and depth of colouring which with us is unknown.
“There is a beautiful legend about this,” said Birger, as he pointed out
this peculiarity, “I do not believe in it myself, altogether,” added he,
smiling, as the recollection of the Tellemarken legends and the sacrifice
to Nyssen came across his mind; “I will not vouch, myself, for more than
the allegory, but if we may trust to the fires of Walpurgis Night, my
countrymen believe it implicitly: ‘Iduna, the goddess of youth, is among
the Æsir, the guardian of the apples of immortality—gods, like men,
are subject to decay; but whenever they feel any symptoms of it, they
renovate their existence by the apples of Iduna. The possession of these
apples was, as might be supposed, earnestly coveted by the Hrimthursar,
or Frost Giants, whose territories, called Uttgard, surrounded on every
side the sea that encompasses the earth. Time was when the earth enjoyed
a perpetual spring, but Loki, who had not then forfeited his place
among the gods, attacking, one day, the giant Thjassi, the chief of the
Hrimthursar, whom he had taken for an eagle, found his hands frozen to
his plumage.
“‘Thjassi demanded as the price of his liberty that Iduna should be
betrayed into his hands: this Loki agreed to do, and notwithstanding some
secret misgivings, contrived to perform his promise; and thus it was that
the goddess of youth, seduced beyond the influence of Asgard, was seized
upon by the eagle giant and imprisoned in his castle among the rocks of
eternal frost.
“‘The gods, who had lost their renovating principle, were growing grey
and wrinkled; the might of the Thunderer was paralysed, and the wisdom of
Odin himself, the father of gods and men, was waning; the whole world was
pining for want of that principle of life which continually restored the
inevitable decay of nature; Loki himself felt the universal loss which
the world had sustained, and being as yet not entirely lost to shame or
callous to rebuke, set himself in earnest to effect the deliverance of
Iduna.
“‘This—having borrowed from Freya her falcon plumage—he managed to
effect, and was bringing back the goddess to Asgard, under the guise
of a swallow, the bird of spring, when the eagle wings of Thjassi, who
was rushing in pursuit, darkened the air and blotted out half the sky.
The gods lighted fires round all the walls of Asgard to scare away the
pursuer, who fell exhausted in the flames and perished under their
vengeance.
“‘But Skadi, his daughter, determined to revenge her father’s death,
declared war on Asgard, and carried it on with such success that the gods
were fain to come to a compromise with her, and she consented to peace on
condition that she should take for her husband any one of the gods she
should choose, and should be admitted into Asgard as an equal. From that
time forward the earth has felt the influence of the Hrimthursar for a
portion of the year; but their power is at an end[38] on the anniversary
of that day, when Iduna is delivered from her captivity; and men kindle
their fires on Walpurgis Night, the 30th of April, in memory of those
which, kindled on the walls of Asgard, had baffled and destroyed the
chief of the Hrimthursar.’”[39]
“Ah! by the way, I saw them building up a great bonfire as we rounded
that point of land, coming out of Hellesund,” said the Captain; “there
was a heap a dozen feet high, and they had put a whole boat upon the top
of it.”
“Well, but this is not Walpurgis Night,” said the Parson; “this is St.
John’s Eve.”
“We do not know much about St. John’s Eve in these parts,” said
Birger, laughing. “I am afraid our legends are a good deal more Pagan
than Christian. That which you saw was the ‘Bale-Fire,’ by which our
people commemorate the death of Baldur, and the boat was his ship, the
_Hringhorn_. You will see plenty more of them when the night draws
on;—every town and every village, and almost every hut will have its
bale-fire, and many of them its boat too. It is a singular thing that
Pagan legends should have so much more hold on the minds of the people
than anything derived from their Christian history, but so it is.”
“Not at all singular,” said the Parson; “properly speaking, Norway was
never converted; it was conquered by a Christian faction, and again
it was conquered by a court party. The people succumbed to force; but
in their thoughts and feelings—and therefore in their manners and
customs—they were what they had been in the days of the sea-kings; and
now their minds naturally revert to the time when their country was most
powerful.”
“I will give you a Christian legend, then,” said Captain Hjelmar, the
Swedish commander of the steamer, who had been for some time talking with
Birger on the bridge, and now came forward with his hat in his hand,
after the manner of his country, and told his tale, very fluently, in
a queer sort of French. This was also after the manner of his country,
for, though that language is abominated in Norway, in Sweden it is
much affected by those who would wish it to be supposed that they are
_habitués_ of the court; and thus it was that though—as it afterwards
turned out—Captain Hjelmar could speak remarkably good English, he
preferred addressing Englishmen in remarkably bad French, in order to
show his court breeding.
“You see that tall rock,” said he, “that looks so black and distant, in
front of that green island?—that rock really is one of the Hrimthursar of
whom Lieutenant Birger has been telling you; and when St. Olaf came to
convert the Norwegians, the giant, who had been bribed by Hakon the Jarl,
at the price of his young son Erling, whom he sacrificed to him, waded
into the sea, and put forth his hand to stay the ship, that the saint
should not approach the shore: but the saint served a higher Power than
the gods of Asgard, and even as he stood, the giant froze into stone; and
there he stands to this day, as you see him, with one arm advanced,—and
there he will stand till the day of Ragnarök, except that once in a
hundred years, on Christmas Eve, he is restored to life, in order to
declare to the Hrimthursar that on that day their power was broken for
ever.”
“Well done, St. Olaf,” said the Captain; “I thought that all his
conversions were effected by the weight of his battle-axe.”
“Why, you Englishmen acknowledge him as a saint as well as we,” said
Captain Hjelmar. “Have you not, in your great City of London, a church
dedicated to him? and is there not also a place called Cripplegate?”
“There certainly are such places,” said the Parson, “but what they have
to do with one another, or with Norway, is more than I can see.”
“There was a man in Walland, so great a cripple that he was obliged to
go on his hands and knees, and it was revealed to him that if he should
go to St. Olaf’s Church, in London, he should be healed. How he got
there, I cannot tell you; but he did, and he was crawling along, and the
boys were laughing at him, as he asked them which was St. Olaf’s Church,
when a man, dressed in blue and carrying an axe on his shoulder, said,
‘Come with me, for I have become a countryman of yours.’ So he took up
the cripple and carried him through the streets, and placed him on the
steps of the church. Much difficulty had the poor man to crawl up the
steps; but when he arrived at the top he rose up straight and whole, and
walked to the altar to give thanks; but the man with the battle-axe had
vanished, and was never seen more; and the people thought it was the
blessed St. Olaf himself, and they called the place where the cripple was
found ‘Cripplegate,’ and so they tell me it is called to this day.”[40]
“Faith! I can answer for that part of the story myself,” said the
Captain; “the place is called Cripplegate, sure enough, but I am afraid
St. Olaf has long since ceased to frequent it, for we have not heard of
any miracles done lately in those parts. But what is your story about the
‘bale-fires,’ Birger, for I see another in process of erection on that
cape?—that looks like a remarkably good boat they are going to burn in
it.”
“That legend, like most of those from the Eddas, is purely allegorical,
and, unlike most of them, is very intelligible. Baldur, among the Æsir,
is the Principle of Good, and everything that is bright, or beautiful,
or innocent, is dedicated to him, and among other things, that part of
the year which begins at Walpurgis Night, when the reign of the frost
ceases, and ends at this day, the summer’s solstice—that is to say, the
whole of that time in which light and warmth are getting the mastery over
cold and darkness. These commemorate the happy days of Asgard, before
the Principle of Evil had crept in; and had they only continued, the
whole world would have been by this time glowing in perpetual light, and
spring, and happiness.
“But Loki himself, one of the twelve of the principal Æsir, became
envious of this, and was jealous that all the good in the world should be
ascribed to Baldur; so he resolved to kill him. This the Nornir revealed
to Baldur in a vision, and the goddess Freya took an oath of everything
that walked on the earth, or swam the waters, or flew in the air, or
grew from the ground, or was under it, that they would not hurt Baldur;
and then the gods would laugh at the revelation of the Nornir, and would
shoot at Baldur with stones, and masses of iron, and thrust at him with
their spears, and cut at him with their swords and axes; but they all
passed him by for the oath’s sake, which all nature had given.
“So Loki said to the mistletoe, ‘Thou dost neither run, nor fly, nor
swim, nor grow from the ground, nor lie under it; there is no oath for
thee.’ So he gathered the stem of the mistletoe, and placed it in the
hand of Hodur, the god of Blindness, and said, ‘shoot, like the other
gods, and I will direct thy hand:’ and he shot, and Baldur fell dead in
the midst of the gods, and innocence departed from the earth; and then
the days which had hitherto been getting brighter and brighter, so that
darkness had began to fly from the face of the earth, now began to close
in again, and darkness began to increase.
“In vain did Hermod, the brother of Baldur,[41] undertake the journey
to the realms of Hela. So much was accorded, that if all nature would
agree to mourn for the death of Baldur, he should be restored to earth;
but though everything did so, as the Edda has it, ‘Men and animals, and
earth, and stones, and trees, and all metals, even as thou hast seen
everything weep when it comes forth from the frost into the warm air, yet
the giantess, Thaukt, who it is said was but Loki in disguise, refused to
weep.’
“‘Neither in life, nor yet in death,
Gave he me gladness.
Let Hell keep her prey!’
and Hell will keep her prey, as the Norna revealed to Odin, till the day
of restitution of all things; and then, when the new sun shall enlighten
the new earth, Baldur, restored from Hell, and Hodur, no longer blind,
shall reign for ever and ever.[42]
“But in the mean time it was necessary to prepare the funeral pyre of
the god: his body was placed in his ship, the _Hringhorn_, and the pile
was built round it, and his wife, Nanna, and his dwarf, Litur, and his
father’s magic ring, Dropsnir, and his horse, and all his accoutrements,
were placed on it, and amid a weeping concourse of gods and men, and
Hrimthursar, and dwarfs, and witches, the fire was placed to it, and all
nature mourned the departure of innocence.
“And in memory of this, so soon as the days cease to lengthen, and nature
feels the loss of its original innocence, and darkness begins to threaten
the earth, men kindle their fires in memory of the death of Baldur.”[43]
“Hallo! the Thousand take you! look where you are steering,” shouted out
Hjelmar, in Swedish, to the helmsman, “are you going to run down the
island?” And in truth it did seem something like it, for the branches of
the overhanging trees rattled against the fore-topsail-yard, bringing
down a shower of leaves and twigs; and a projecting ash so nearly brushed
the paddle-box on which they were sitting, that the Parson broke off a
branch as they passed.
“Confound those fellows! they know the water is deep here, and think they
cannot shave the point too closely, I suspect they wanted to astonish
the passengers, and did not see me among them.”
The point which they had rounded was just to the east, from off Osterisö,
at which place they had just touched; and immediately afterwards they
plunged into a deep, dark chasm of a passage between the two islands,
which looked as if they had been split asunder by some sudden convulsion
of nature, so evidently the projections and indentations of the opposite
walls of rock seemed to fit into each other; while far overhead the trees
looked as if they were overarching the chasm, and shutting out the light
of day from its recesses. The churning sound of the paddles, and the
hissing of the sea beneath their stroke sounded unnaturally loud, and
the two little pop-guns which the _Gefjon_ carried on her forecastle and
took that opportunity for discharging, rolled and echoed like a peal of
thunder.
“There!” said Captain Hjelmar, as the steamer pushed her way into
daylight, and opened out a wide expanse no less beautiful than those
they had been passing through all the morning; “there lies the strength
of our coast; the Norwegian navy consists principally of gun-boats, and
these dodge in and out among these islets, just as difficult to catch as
rabbits in a warren; the great lumbering cruiser of the enemy watches
in vain on the outside, like a terrier at the rabbit’s hole, while the
rabbit, meanwhile, has passed out by a back door, and is taking his
pleasure elsewhere.[44]
“In the days of the last war, I was a cadet on board the _Najaden_
frigate, the commodore on these coasts: I used to be lent to the
gun-boats, and capital fun we had with your merchantmen; pretty
profitable fun too, for we brought them in by dozens. There were your big
cruisers, every now and then getting a crack at us, and picking off here
and there a clumsy fellow who let himself get caught outside, but never
doing us much harm. It was glorious fun, certainly,—at first, I must say,
I did not like firing at the old English flag, that so many of our people
had sailed under, but after exchanging a few shots, and seeing a few of
one’s people knocked over, one soon learns to forget all that; and I
blazed away at the old red rag after a bit, just as readily as I would at
a rascally Russ.
“Your Captain Stuart put an end to all that, though, for one while; and
before we had recovered from the drubbing he gave us, there was peace
again, and no revenge to be had for it. I was not sorry for the peace,
though; it is not natural to be fighting the English.”
“Aye,” said the Parson, “I have heard something about Captain Stuart, of
the _Dictator_; he got some credit for his services in these waters.”
“And well he deserved it,” said Hjelmar; “he was a thorough sailor, he
knew what his ship could do, and he made her do it. As for fighting,
anybody will fight; but to run such a chase as he did, requiring skill,
and science, and nerve, and firmness, as well as brute courage, which
every man has, and most beasts besides, is what very few men would have
moral courage to attempt, or seamanship enough to bring to a successful
termination.
“We used to laugh at the old _Dictator_; if a corvette could not catch
our gun-boats, it was not very likely a line-of-battle ship would do
the trick; for this water, for all it is so deep and looks so open, is
studded all over with pointed rocks at a fathom or so under the surface;
and some of these, not a yard square at the top, any one of which would
bring up a gun brig, let alone a liner. Well, there was the _Dictator_
cruising about and doing nothing, as we thought; we did not know that
he was improving his charts, and getting bearings and soundings; still
less did we suspect that one of his quartermasters had been the mate of
a coasting jagt, and knew the coast as well as we did. I have met the
fellow since; he got a boatswain’s rating for his services, and I think
he should have got something better.
“At that time I was on board the frigate. Old Hulm, our commodore,
said I was too wild to be trusted with a separate command, and one
morning we were dodging about where we are now, with a steady breeze
from the westward that looked as if it would stand. There were the old
_Dictator’s_ mast-heads, just where we had seen them twenty times before,
over the trees of Laxö,—that is, the island we are just opening, where
those salmon nets are hanging up to dry.
“‘By the keel of _Skidbladner_, that sailed over dry land,’ says Hulm,
‘what is the fellow at now?’ as we opened the point of the island, and
the line-of-battle ship, that had been lying with her main-topsail
aback, squared away her yards and dashed in after us. ‘O, by Thor and by
Mjölner! if that is your fun I will see what Norwegian rocks are made of.
Keep her away a couple of points, quartermaster; and Mr. Sinklar (to the
first lieutenant), turn the hands up.’ By this time we were running away
dead before it; the enemy, who was all ready, had her studding-sails set
on both sides,—it was beautiful to see how smartly they went up, it was
like a bird unfolding her wings. ‘That’s a fine fellow,’ said Hulm; ‘it’s
a pity, too, to sink him, but we must, so here goes.’
“Old Hulm, who was full of fight, all this time dodged along under plain
sail, just as if he did not care for _that_ the big fellow, and it is my
opinion he would not have set his studding-sails had the distance been
less. You see that green point just on the port bow, that one with the
black stone lying off it:—by the way, I do not see why we should not run
the very course ourselves. I have a passenger to Lyngör, and we may just
as well go that course as any other. Starboard your helm, my man! that
will do! meet her! keep her as she goes.
“There, now, you begin to see that there is an opening to the eastward
and northward of that point. As soon as we brought it abeam, down went
our helm, and everything was braced as sharp up as it would draw; for the
channel winds, as you see, to the southward of east. We thought to bother
her, but those fifties on two decks are so short, they come round like
tops. We were running free again to the eastward, outside the channel.
When she came abreast of the opening, in came her studding-sails all at
once, and there were her sails standing like boards, and her yards braced
up as sharp as ours had been, and so much had he gained upon us, that
as her port broadside came to bear, three or four shots, just to try
the distance, came across the end of the island after us, skipping and
dancing over the seas.
“‘We must get Mjölner to speak to them,’ said old Hulm, rubbing his
hands and looking delighted. ‘I think she will pitch her shot home now.’
Mjölner was a long French eighteen, a very handsome brass gun, ornamented
with _fleurs-de-lis_, and all sorts of jigmarees; the private property
of the captain. Where he had picked it up, no one knew;—people said it
had been the Long Tom of a French pirate. Old Hulm had called it Mjölner,
which I suppose you know is the name of Thor’s hammer; he was as fond of
it as he was of his wife, and always kept it on the quarter-deck, under a
tarpaulin, which he never took off except on Sundays.
“It took some time to train the gun aft, and by this time the
line-of-battle ship had cleared the channel, and was putting up her helm
to follow us. The old skipper laid his pet gun himself, and squinted, and
squinted over her breech, and elevated, and depressed, and trained to the
right, and trained to the left, till we thought he never meant to twitch
the lanyard at all. Crack went Mjölner. By this time we had pretty nearly
got the line-of-battle ship’s three masts in one, and the shot striking
just under the fore top-mast cross-trees, cut the topsail tie and the jib
halyards at once; down rattled the yard, snapping the fore top gallant
sheets, out flew the top gallant sail, and away went the jib dragging
under her fore-foot; and up flew the ship herself into the wind again,
letting drive her broadside at us, as if she had done it on purpose.
“The old skipper sent his steward for some bottles of true Cognac, and
gave the men a tot all round, to drink Mjölner’s health.
“The enemy had brailed up her driver, and braced by her after-sails, and
got before the wind again in no time; and was not much longer in bending
on a new tie and splicing her halyards; but we had got pretty well out of
range now, and were bobbing in and out among a cluster of rocks as thick
as porpoises. We had a man at the flying jib-boom as a look-out, and a
couple more on the spritsail yardarms (for our ships had not whiskers in
those days), and it was nothing but ‘Breakers ahead!’ ‘Rock on the port
bow!’ ‘A reef to starboard!’ for the next quarter of an hour or twenty
minutes, enough to make one’s hair stand on end. A-ha! thought I, when
the last of them showed clear on the quarter, this is the skipper’s trap;
here’s where the old _Dictator_ is going to lay her bones! But she did
not. She dodged through every one of them every bit as well as we had
done, and there certainly was no doubt but that the distance between us
was a good deal decreased. These tubs of fifties sail like a haystack on
a wind, but before it they go like _Skidbladner_ herself.
“Old Hulm began to look grave; he had never dreamt of her following him
within the islands like that, and he began to ‘smell a rat.’ The frigate
had been caught on her very worst point of sailing. We might easily have
worked to windward at first, but now she had got us fairly under her lee,
and if we tried to tack under her guns, she would have stripped us of
every rag of canvas we could show. Mjölner came into play again, as well
as the stern chasers on the main deck, and to good purpose, too; but, on
the other hand, the English shot were flying like peas about us—and they
did not always fall short, either. Now and then there was a rope shot
away, or a man knocked over, or a gun capsized,—for, at that distance,
every shot that hit us pitched in upon the deck and trundled forwards,
hopping here and there off the bulwarks without going through them, like
so many billiard balls.
“‘I will tell you what,’ says Hulm, ‘I will shove her through the Lyngör
Channel, there is a rock in the middle that it will be as much as we can
do to shave ourselves, and if we do get past it, the chances are, that it
will bring up the liner; it is a desperate chance, but we must try it,
and if the Englishman does get through after us (which she will not), we
will reach out into the offing as close to the wind as we can lie. Port
your helm at once, Mr. Sinklar—drop your main course, and haul out the
driver.’
“Up she came to the wind again, but the main-sail, which had been clewed
up while we were running, had got a shot through it, exactly where the
bunt-line gathered it into a bundle. The shot had gone through fold after
fold of the canvas, cutting the foot-rope also, and before the tack
was well hauled down, the sail had split from top to bottom; and then,
just as she drew in under cover of the land, the mizen top-mast came
clattering about our ears.
“It was all up for beating to windward, unless we could shift our
top-mast in time, and this the enemy was too close upon us to allow us
do; everything lay on the rock bringing her up, and as I looked over the
side as we passed, the rugged points looked so close to our own bends,
that I thought they must have gone through; and the liner drew more water
than we did.
“All eyes were turned on the English ship, at least, on her sails, for a
point of land concealed her hull, and prevented our firing; every moment
we expected to see her sheets let fly;—not a bit of it,—on she came as
steadily as ever.
“Just at the village of Lyngör the channel turns at right angles, and
the islands that form it, being high, took the wind out of our courses;
while we had been running it had drawn a little to the southward of
west,—which, as we had been off the wind all day, we had not taken notice
of—as we turned the angle it headed us. Whether, under any circumstances,
we could have fetched clear of the northern cape is doubtful; without
our mizen top-sail it was impossible, for as the courses were becalmed,
we really carried nothing but head sail that would draw; and in fact, we
could scarcely look up for the cape, much less weather it.
“Down with the anchor! out boats, to lay out a warp to spring her! we
will fight it out here!’ said old Hulm. But the Englishman had seen us
over the land from his mast-heads, and anchored by the stern, clewing up
or letting fly everything, and passing out his cable from his stern-port,
so as to check her way by degrees; when she came into sight round the
point, at not a cable’s length from us, she had a cluster of men on her
bowsprit with a hawser. On she came, as if she was going to leap over
the town, and dropped her men on the houses, who, sliding down by the
dolphin-striker, leaped on shore and made fast with her hawser forward,
while her anchor brought her up abaft. And there she lay, as steady as
a land battery, and opened her fire. The first broadside, loaded with
grape, came rattling among the boats that were laying out the warp; what
became of them I never heard; but the warp lay slack, and the current
drifted us end-on to the line-of-battle ship’s broadside, and I felt our
decks crumbling and splintering under me as her shot tore them up.
“The next thing after that that I recollect, is a great rough hand
pulling me out of the water by my collar, and a kindly English voice
asking me if I was hurt. The smoke was still lying on the water, and
hanging in little clouds upon the trees; but all that was to be seen of
the old _Najaden_, was the main and fore-top gallant and royal masts,
which, with their sails set, were still above water, and the blue and
yellow pennant over all. We had gone down with our colours flying,
and Captain Stuart would not have the pennant struck,—‘we had fought
gallantly for it,’ he said, ‘and we should keep it still.’
“Poor old Hulm, he was a fine fellow: there now! that is the very spot of
the action,” for by this time they had opened the point of Lyngör, and
had come in sight of the beautiful little village. “Do you see that iron
pillar on the point? that is Captain Hulm’s monument.”
“He went down with his ship, then?”
“No, he did not; how he was saved I do not remember, but he was saved,
and rewarded too for his standing up to the line-of-battle ship; for
Father Karl is an old soldier, and knows that a man often deserves as
much praise for being beat as for beating. The old fellow lived to a
good old age; that was his house, that white fronted one on the hill, for
Lyngör was his native place. It is not two years ago that he was capsized
in his little schooner and drowned. There’s his monument, any how; and
I always salute it, whenever I pass this way:” and as they came abreast
of the point, the _Gefjon’s_ swallow-tailed ensign dipped from her peak,
and her little pop-guns again testified their respect to the old sailor’s
memory.