pleasure on TERRA FIRMA, our crow's-nest barrel had been
landed with her. At this moment it was standing unoccupied
by the side of the tent. By creeping into it, and turning
its mouth downward on the ground, Wilson perceived that
he should convert it into a tower of strength for himself
against the enemy, while its legitimate occupant, becoming
at once a victim to the bear's voracity, would probably
prevent the monster from investigating too curiously its
contents. It was quite a pity that the interposition of
the boats prevented his putting this ingenious plan into
execution. He had been regularly done out of a situation,
in which the most poignant agony of mind and dreary
anticipations would have been absolutely required of him.
He pictured the scene to himself; he lying fermenting in
the barrel, like a curious vintage; the bear sniffing
querulously round it, perhaps cracking it like a cocoa-nut,
or extracting him like a periwinkle! Of these chances he
had been deprived by the interference of the crew. Friends
are often injudiciously meddling.
Although I felt a little vexation that one of us should
not have had the honour of slaying the bear in single
combat, which would certainly have been for the benefit
of his skin, the unexpected luck of having got one at
all, made us quite forget our personal disappointment.
As for my people, they were beside themselves with delight.
To have killed a polar bear was a great thing, but to
eat him would be a greater. If artistically dealt with,
his carcase would probably cut up into a supply of fresh
meat for many days. One of the hands appened to be a
butcher. Whenever I wanted anything a little out of the
way to be done on board, I was sure to find that it
happened to be the specialite of some one of the ship's
company. In the course of a few hours, the late bear was
converted into a row of the most tempting morsels of
beef, hung about the rigging. Instead of in flags, the
ship was dressed in joints. In the meantime it so happened
that the fox, having stolen a piece of offal, was in a
few minutes afterwards seized with convulsions. I had
already given orders that the bear's liver should be
thrown overboard, as being, if not poisonous, at all
events very unwholesome. The seizure of the fox, coupled
with this injunction, brought about a complete revolution
in the men's minds, with regard to the delicacies they
had been so daintily preparing for themselves. Silently,
one by one, the pieces were untied and thrown into the
sea: I do not think a mouthful of bear was eaten on board
the "Foam." I never heard whether it was in consequence
of any prognostics of Wilson's that this act of self-denial
was put into practice. I observed, however, that for some
days after the slaughter and dismemberment of the bear,
my ship's company presented an unaccountably sleek
appearance. As for the steward, his head and whiskers
seemed carved out of black marble: a varnished boot would
not have looked half so bright: I could have seen to
shave myself in his black hair. I conclude, therefore,
that the ingenious cook must, at all events, have succeeded
in manufacturing a supply of genuine bear's grease, of
which they had largely availed themselves.
The bagging of the bear had so gloriously crowned our
visit to Spitzbergen, that our disappointment about the
deer was no longer thought of; it was therefore with
light hearts, and most complete satisfaction, that we
prepared for departure.
Maid Marian had already carved on a flat stone an
inscription, in Roman letters, recording the visit of
the "Foam" to English Bay, and a cairn having been erected
to receive it, the tablet was solemnly lifted to its
resting-place. Underneath I placed a tin box, containing
a memorandum similar to that left at Jan Mayen, as well
as a printed dinner invitation from Lady --, which I
happened to have on board. Having planted a boat's flag
beside the rude monument, and brought on board with us
a load of driftwood, to serve hereafter as Christmas
yule-logs, we bade an eternal adieu to the silent hills
around us; and weighing anchor, stood out to sea. For
some hours a lack of wind still left us hanging about
the shore, in the midst of a grave society of seals; but
soon after, a gentle breeze sprang up in the south, and
about three o'clock on Friday, the 11th of August, we
again found ourselves spanking along before a six-knot
breeze, over the pale green sea.
In considering the course on which I should take the
vessel home, it appeared to me that in all probability
we should have been much less pestered by the ice on our
way to Spitzbergen, if, instead of hugging the easterly
ice, we had kept more away to the westward; I determined
therefore--as soon as we got clear of the land--to stand
right over to the Greenland shore, on a due west course,
and not to attempt to make any southing, until we should
have struck the Greenland ice. The length of our tether
in that direction being ascertained, we could then judge
of the width of the channel down which we were to beat,
for it was still blowing pretty fresh from the southward.
Up to the evening of the day on which we quitted English
Bay, the weather had been most beautiful; calm, sunshiny,
dry, and pleasant. Within a few hours of our getting
under weigh, a great change had taken place, and by
midnight it had become as foggy and disagreeable as ever.
The sea was pretty clear. During the few days we had been
on shore, the northerly current had brushed away the
great angular field of ice which had lain off the shore,
in a northwest direction; so that instead of being obliged
to run up very nearly to the 80th parallel, in order to
round it, we were enabled to sail to the westward at
once. During the course of the night, we came upon one
or two wandering patches of drift ice, but so loosely
packed that we had no difficulty in pushing through them.
About four o'clock in the morning, a long line of close
ice was reported right a-head, stretching south as far
as the eye could reach. We had come about eighty miles
since leaving Spitzbergen. The usual boundary of the
Greenland ice in summer runs, according to Scoresby,
along the second parallel of west longitude. This we had
already crossed, so that it was to be presumed the
barricade we saw before us was a frontier of the fixed
ice. In accordance, therefore, with my predetermined
plan, we now began working to the southward, and the
result fully justified my expectations.
The sea became comparatively clear, as far as could be
seen from the deck of the vessel, although small vagrant
patches of ice that we came up with occasionally--as well
as the temperature of the air and the sea--continued to
indicate the proximity of larger bodies on either side
of us.
It was a curious sensation with which we had gradually
learnt to contemplate this inseparable companion: it had
become a part of our daily existence, an element, a thing
without which the general aspect of the universe would
be irregular and incomplete. It was the first thing we
thought of in the morning, the last thing we spoke of at
night. It glittered and grinned maliciously at us in the
sunshine; it winked mysteriously through the stifling
fog; it stretched itself like a prostrate giant, with
huge, portentous shoulders and shadowy limbs, right across
our course; or danced gleefully in broken groups in the
little schooner's wake. There was no getting rid of it,
or forgetting it, and if at night we sometimes returned
in dreams to the green summer world--to the fervent
harvest fields of England, and heard "the murmurs of
innumerous bees," or the song of larks on thymy
uplands--thump! bump! splash! gra-a-ate!--came the sudden
reminder of our friend on the starboard bow; and then
sometimes a scurry on deck, and a general "scrimmage" of
the whole society, in endeavours to prevent more serious
collisions. Moreover, I could not say, with your old
French friend, that "Familiar'ty breeds despise." The
more we saw of it, the less we liked it; its cold presence
sent a chilly sense of discouragement to the heart, and
I had daily to struggle with an ardent desire to throw
a boot at Wilson's head, every time his sepulchral voice
announced the "Ice ALL ROUND!"
It was not until the 14th of August, five days after
quitting Spitzbergen, that we lost sight of it altogether.
From that moment the temperature of the sea steadily
rose, and we felt that we were sailing back again into
the pleasant summer.
A sad event which occurred soon after, in some measure
marred our enjoyment of the change. Ever since she had
left Hammerfest, it had become too evident that a sea-going
life did not agree with the goat. Even the run on shore
at Spitzbergen had not sufficed to repair her shattered
constitution, and the bad weather we had had ever since
completed its ruin. It was certain that the butcher was
the only doctor who could now cure her. In spite, therefore,
of the distress it occasioned Maid Marian, I was compelled
to issue orders for her execution. Sigurdr was the only
person who regarded the TRAGICAL event with indifference,
nay, almost with delight. Ever since we had commenced
sailing in a southerly direction, we had been obliged to
beat, but during the last four-and-twenty hours the wind
kept dodging us every time we tacked, as a nervous
pedestrian sets to you sometimes on a narrow trottoir.
This spell of ill-luck the Icelander heathenishly thought
would only be removed by a sacrifice to Rhin, the goddess
of the sea, in which light he trusted she would look upon
the goat's body when it came to be thrown overboard.
Whether the change which followed upon the consignment
of her remains to the deep really resulted from such an
influence, I am not prepared to say. The weather immediately
thereafter certainly DID change. First the wind dropped
altogether, but though the calm lasted several hours,
the sea strangely enough appeared to become all the
rougher, tossing and tumbling restlessly UP AND DOWN--(not
over and over as in a gale)--like a sick man on a fever
bed; the impulse to the waves seeming to proceed from
all four quarters of the world at once. Then, like jurymen
with a verdict of death upon their lips, the heavy,
ominous clouds slowly passed into the north-west.
A dead stillness followed--a breathless pause--until, at
some mysterious signal, the solemn voice of the storm
hurtled over the deep. Luckily we were quite ready for
it; the gale came from the right quarter, and the fiercer
it blew the better. For the next three days and three
nights it was a scurry over the sea such as I never had
before; nine or ten knots an hour was the very least we
ever went, and 240 miles was the average distance we made
every four-and-twenty hours.
Anything grander and more exciting than the sight of the
sea under these circumstances you cannot imagine. The
vessel herself remains very steady; when you are below
you scarcely know you are not in port. But on raising
your head above the companion the first sight which meets
your eye is an upright wall of black water, towering,
you hardly know how many feet, into the air over the
stern. Like a lion walking on its hind legs, it comes
straight at you, roaring and shaking its white mane with
fury-it overtakes the vessel--the upright shiny face
curves inwards--the white mane seems to hang above your
very head; but ere it topples over, the nimble little
ship has already slipped from underneath. You hear the
disappointed jaws of the sea-monster snap angrily
together,--the schooner disdainfully kicks up her heel--and
raging and bubbling up on either side the quarter, the
unpausing wave sweeps on, and you see its round back far
ahead, gradually swelling upwards, as it gathers strength
and volume for a new effort.
We had now got considerably to the southward of North
Cape. We had already seen several ships, and you would
hardly imagine with what childish delight my people hailed
these symptoms of having again reached more "Christian
latitudes," as they called them.
I had always intended, ever since my conversation with
Mr. T. about the Malstrom, to have called in at Loffoden
Islands on our way south, and ascertain for myself the
real truth about this famous vortex. To have blotted such
a bugbear out of the map of Europe, if its existence
really was a myth, would at all events have rendered our
cruise not altogether fruitless. But, since leaving
Spitzbergen, we had never once seen the sun, and to
attempt to make so dangerous a coast in a gale of wind
and a thick mist, with no more certain knowledge of the
ship's position than our dead reckoning afforded, was
out of the question, so about one o'clock in the morning,
the weather giving no signs of improvement, the course
I had shaped in the direction of the island was altered,
and we stood away again to the southward. This manoeuvre
was not unobserved by Wilson, but he mistook its meaning.
Having, I suppose, overheard us talking at dinner about
the Malstrom, he now concluded the supreme hour had
arrived. He did not exactly comprehend the terms we used,
but had gathered that the spot was one fraught with
danger. Concluding from the change made in the vessel's
course that we were proceeding towards the dreadful
locality, he gave himself up to despair, and lay tossing
in his hammock in sleepless anxiety. At last the load of
his forebodings was greater than he could bear, he gets
up, steals into the Doctor's cabin, wakes him up, and
standing over him--as the messenger of ill tidings once
stood over Priam--whispers, "SIR!" "What is it?" says
Fitz, thinking, perhaps, some one was ill. "Do you know
where we are going?" "Why, to Throndhjem," answered Fitz.
"We were going to Throndhjem," rejoins Wilson, "but we
ain't now--the vessel's course was altered two hours ago.
Oh, Sir! we are going to Whirlpool-to WHIRL-RL-POOO-L!
Sir!" in a quaver of consternation,--and so glides back
to bed like a phantom, leaving the Doctor utterly unable
to divine the occasion of his visit.
The whole of the next day the gale continued. We had now
sailed back into night; it became therefore a question
how far it would be advisable to carry on during the
ensuing hours of darkness, considering how uncertain we
were as to our real position. As I think I have already
described to you, the west coast of Norway is very
dangerous; a continuous sheet of sunken rocks lies out
along its entire edge for eight or ten miles to sea.
There are no lighthouses to warn the mariner off; and if
we were wrong in our reckoning, as we might very well
be, it was possible we might stumble on the land sooner
than we expected. I knew the proper course would be to
lie to quietly until we could take an observation; but
time was so valuable, and I was so fearful you would be
getting anxious. The night was pretty clear. High mountains,
such as we were expecting to make, would be seen, even
at night, several miles off. According to our log we
were still 150 miles off the land, and, however inaccurate
our calculation might be, the error could not be of such
magnitude as that amounted to. To throw away so fair a
wind seemed such a pity, especially as it might be days
before the sun appeared; we had already been at sea about
a fortnight without a sight of him, and his appearance
at all during the summer is not an act DE RIGUEUR in this
part of the world; we might spend yet another fortnight
in lying to, and then after all have to poke our way
blindfold to the coast; at all events it would be soon
enough to lie to the next night. Such were the
considerations, which--after an anxious consultation with
Mr. Wyse in the cabin, and much fingering of the
charts,--determined me to carry on during the night.
Nevertheless, I confess I was very uneasy, Though I went
to bed and fell asleep--for at sea nothing prevents that
process--my slumbers were constantly agitated by the most
vivid dreams that I ever remember to have had. Dreams
of an arrival in England, and your coming down to meet
us, and all the pleasure I had in recounting our adventures
to you; then suddenly your face seemed to fade away
beneath a veil of angry grey surge that broke over low,
sharp-pointed rocks; and the next moment there resounded
over the ship that cry which has been the preface to so
many a disaster--the ring of which, none who have ever
heard it are likely to forget--"Breakers ahead!"
In a moment I was on deck, dressed--for it is always best
to dress,--and there, sure enough, right ahead, about a
mile and a half off, through the mist, which had come on
very thick, I could distinguish the upward shooting fluff
of seas shattering against rocks. No land was to be seen,
but the line of breakers every instant became more evident;
at the pace we were going, in seven or eight minutes we
should be upon them. Now, thought I to myself, we shall
see whether a stout heart beats beneath the silk tartan!
The result covered that brilliant garment with glory and
salt water. To tack was impossible, we could only wear,--and
to wear in such a sea was no very pleasant operation.
But the little ship seemed to know what she was about,
as well as any of us: up went the helm, round came the
schooner into the trough of the sea,--high over her
quarter toppled an enormous sea, built up of I know not
how many tons of water, and hung over the deck,--by some
unaccountable wriggle, an instant ere it thundered down
she had twisted her stern on one side, and the waves
passed underneath. In another minute her head was to
the sea, the mainsail was eased over, and all danger was
past.
What was now to be done? That the land we had seen was
the coast of Norway I could not believe. Wrong as our
dead reckoning evidently was, it could not be so wrong
as that. Yet only one other supposition was possible,
viz., that we had not come so far south as we imagined,
and that we had stumbled upon Roost--a little rocky island
that lies about twenty miles to the southward of the
Loffoden Islands. Whether this conjecture was correct
or not, did not much matter; to go straight away to sea,
and lie to until we could get an observation, was the
only thing to be done. Away then we went, struggling
against a tremendous sea for a good nine hours, until we
judged ourselves to be seventy or eighty miles from where
we had sighted the breakers,--when we lay to, not in
the best of tempers. The next morning, not only was it
blowing as hard as ever, but all chance of getting a
sight that day seemed also out of the question. I could
have eaten my head with impatience. However, as it is
best never to throw a chance away, about half-past eleven
o'clock, though the sky resembled an even sheet of lead,
I got my sextant ready, and told Mr. Wyse to do the same.
Now, out of tenderness for your feminine ignorance I must
state, that in order to take an observation, it is
necessary to get a sight of the sun at a particular moment
of the day: this moment is noon. When, therefore, twelve
o'clock came, and one could not so much as guess in what
quarter of the heavens he might be lying perdu, you may
suppose I almost despaired. Ten minutes passed. It was
evident we were doomed to remain, kicking our heels for
another four-and-twenty hours where we were. No!--yes!--no!
By Phoebus! there he is! A faint spongy spot of brightness
gleamed through the grey roof overhead. The indistinct
outline grew a little clearer; one-half of him, though
still behind a cloud, hardened into a sharp edge. Up went
the sextant. "52.43!" (or whatever it was) I shouted to
Mr. Wyse. "52.41, my Lord!" cried he, in return; there
was only the discrepancy of a mile between us. We had
got the altitude; the sun might go to bed for good and
all now, we did not care,--we knew our position to an
inch. There had been an error of something like forty
miles in our dead reckoning, in consequence--as I afterwards
found--of a current that sets to the northward, along
the west coast of Norway, with a velocity varying from
one to three miles an hour. The island upon which we had
so nearly run WAS Roost. We were still nearly 200 miles
from our port. "Turn the hands up! Make sail!" and away
we went again in the same course as before, at the rate
of ten knots an hour.
"The girls at home have got hold of the tow-rope, I think,
my Lord," said Mr. Wyse, as we bounded along over the
thundering seas.
[Figure: fig-p192.gif]
By three o'clock next day we were up with Vigten, and
now a very nasty piece of navigation began. In order to
make the northern entrance of the Throndhjem Fiord, you
have first to find your way into what is called the Froh
Havet,--a kind of oblong basin about sixteen miles long,
formed by a ledge of low rocks running parallel with the
mainland, at a distance of ten miles to seaward. Though
the space between this outer boundary and the coast is
so wide, in consequence of the network of sunken rocks
which stuffs it up, the passage by which a vessel can
enter is very narrow, and the only landmark to enable
you to find the channel is the head one of the string of
outer islets. As this rock is about the size of a
dining-table, perfectly flat, and rising only a few feet
above the level of the sea, to attempt to make it is like
looking for a needle in a bottle of hay. It was already
beginning to grow very late and dark by the time we had
come up with the spot where it ought to have been, but
not a vestige of such a thing had turned up. Should we
not sight it in a quarter of an hour, we must go to sea
again, and lie to for the night,--a very unpleasant
alternative for any one so impatient as I was to reach
a port. Just as I was going to give the order, Fitz--who
was certainly the Lynceus of the ship's company--espied
its black back just peeping up above the tumbling water
on our starboard bow. We had hit it off to a yard!
In another half-hour we were stealing down in quiet water
towards the entrance of the fiord. All this time not a
rag of a pilot had appeared, and it was without any such
functionary that the schooner swept up next morning
between the wooded, grain-laden slopes of the beautiful
loch, to Throndhjem--the capital of the ancient sea-kings
of Norway.
LETTER XII.
THRONDHJEM--HARALD HAARFAGER--KING HACON'S LAST BATTLE--
OLAF TRYGGVESSON--THE "LONG SERPENT"--ST. OLAVE--THORMOD
THE SCALD--THE JARL OF LADE--THE CATHEDRAL--HARALD
HARDRADA--THE BATTLE OF STANFORD BRIDGE--A NORSE BALI
--ODIN--AND HIS PALADINS.
Off Munkholm, Aug. 27, 1856.
Throndhjem (pronounced Tronyem) looked very pretty and
picturesque, with its red-roofed wooden houses sparkling
in the sunshine, its many windows filled with flowers,
its bright fiord covered with vessels gaily dressed in
flags, in honour of the Crown Prince's first visit to
the ancient capital of the Norwegian realm. Tall,
pretentious warehouses crowded down to the water's edge,
like bullies at a public show elbowing to the foremost
rank, orderly streets stretched in quiet rows at right
angles with each other, and pretty villas with green
cinctures sloped away towards the hills. In the midst
rose the king's palace, the largest wooden edifice in
Europe, while the old grey cathedral--stately and grand,
in spite of the slow destruction of the elements, the
mutilations of man's hands, or his yet more degrading
rough-cast and stucco reparations--still towered above
the perishable wooden buildings at his feet, with the
solemn pride which befits the shrine of a royal saint.
I cannot tell you with what eagerness I drank in all the
features of this lovely scene; at least, such features
as Time can hardly alter--the glancing river, from whence
the city's ancient name of Nidaros, or "mouth of the
Nid," is derived,--the rocky island of Munkholm, the
bluff of Lade,--the land-locked fiord and its pleasant
hills, beyond whose grey stony ridges I knew must lie
the fatal battle-field of Sticklestad. Every spot to me
was full of interest,--but an interest noways connected
with the neat green villas, the rectangular streets, and
the obtrusive warehouses. These signs of a modern humdrum
prosperity seemed to melt away before my eyes as I gazed
from the schooner's deck, and the accessories of an elder
time came to furnish the landscape,--the clumsy merchantmen
lazily swaying with the tide, darkened into armed galleys
with their rows of glittering shields,--the snug,
bourgeois-looking town shrank into the quaint proportions
of the huddled ancient Nidaros,--and the old marauding
days, with their shadowy line of grand old pirate kings,
rose up with welcome vividness before my mind.
What picture shall I try to conjure from the past, to
live in your fancy, as it does in mine?