RETURN TO THE YACHT--POOR JACKO--ASCENDING THE
STREAM--DESCRIPTION OF THE FAEDDE FIORD--ADVENTURES
OF AN ANGLER--SAIL TO THE BUKKE FIORD--THE
FATHOMLESS LAKE--THE MANIAC, AND HER HISTORY--THE
VILLAGE OF SAND--EXTRAORDINARY PECULIARITIES OF
THE SAND SALMON--SEAL-HUNTING--SHOOTING GULLS--THE
SEAL CAUGHT--NIGHT IN THE NORTH.
"I hope, my Lord," observed D----, as he stood at the gangway of the
yacht, and handed the man-ropes to R----, "you have had a pleasanter
voyage than we."
"Why? Has any accident occurred?" asked R----, anxiously.
"No, my Lord, no accident," continued D----; "but since your Lordship
left us, a gale of wind has been blowing from the south-west; and
knowing your Lordship would have no home until the cutter came round to
this place, I thought it best to thrash our way to Faedde in the best
manner we could."
"Oh! yes; you did right," replied R----; "but, I hope, you did not
strain the craft."
"No, my Lord, no," answered D----.
"How did she behave?" inquired R----.
"Beautifully, my Lord, beautifully," rejoined D----, rubbing his hands,
and casting his eyes up the spars towards the top-mast, which was still
struck. "We had three reefs in the main-sail, and still she made nine
knots against a heavy sea. You see, she is wet, my Lord. The sea made a
clean breach, both fore and aft."
"Ah! it won't hurt her," said R----, in a confident tone, while he
approached the companion, and began to descend into the cabin. P---- and
I had already preceded him. Every thing below seemed in the greatest
medley. The four chairs, lying on the floor, stuck their sixteen legs
right up in the air; and the books, with their covers horribly
distorted, were scattered in every corner. The sofa pillows appeared to
have been playing "bo-peep" with each other, for three had hid
themselves under one sofa, and the fourth I found in the after-cabin,
jammed between my portmanteau and the bulk-head. Nothing was in its
place, and all things were suffering the completest discomfort.
"Hollo!" exclaimed R----, as soon as he entered; "what's the row?"
"The bell is broken, my Lord," replied the steward. This was a favourite
hand-bell of R----; and any injury to it so entirely occupied his
sympathy, that, the steward generally parried a minute cross-examination
by referring, when he could, to the ill, or well, being of this bell.
"Is _that_ all?" answered R----.
"No, my Lord," said the steward, pursuing his narrative, seeing the bell
had failed; "three decanters, four couples of soup-plates, and----"
"Hang the plates!" interrupted R----; "how is Jacko?"
"Not so hearty, my Lord," replied the steward.
"Why, what's the matter with him, eh?" asked R----, going to the sofa,
and lying down. He was accustomed to do this when, on his return home,
he desired to know what had occurred in his absence.
"He went into the pantry, my Lord," the steward continued, "when my back
was turned, and while he was looking about him in one of the cupboards,
the vessel took a lurch to port, and unshipping the cruet-stand, emptied
the pepper-pot in his eye, my Lord."
"What was he doing there?" demanded R----.
"Up to his tricks again, my Lord," replied the steward, drily.
"Is he much hurt?" R---- asked.
"No, my Lord; not much," said the steward.
"Have you done anything for the eye?" continued R---- in his
interrogation.
"Cook has put on a poultice, my Lord," answered the steward, "a piece of
raw beef."
"Oh! that's it, is it?" replied R----, quietly, regaining his
self-possession.
"Yes, my Lord," rejoined the steward, with firmness, holding a positive
belief in his own, and the cook's efficacious remedy.
"Well," observed R----, with deliberate quaintness, "don't _boil_ it in
our soup afterwards."
"No, my Lord," and the steward took his leave, understanding his
master's disposition, and knowing that his dialogues with him generally
resulted in a compliment to the traditionary cleanliness of persons in
his office.
In the afternoon we went farther up the Fiord, about five miles to the
north-east of the village of Faedde. The Faedde Fiord is of great depth,
and in a circular bay to which we had now sailed, no anchorage for a
vessel of the yacht's tonnage could be found. Running her, therefore,
into a bight, ropes from the bow and stern were made fast to a couple of
firs, and by belaying them taut, the cutter was kept clear from the base
of a mountain that rose, straight as the mast, out of the water to an
altitude of several thousand feet. This was the most beautiful and
romantic spot of which the imagination of a poet might dream. The bay
was about half a league in circumference, and a perfect circle in form.
To the east, south, and west, were mountains covered nearly to their
peaks with thick forests of fir; and when the dispersion of the clouds
revealed their gray summits, many cascades, like thin pillars of light,
darted down the rocks; and the eye, following their track, could trace
their increasing bulk as they rolled along from crag to glen, bounding,
gliding, foaming, till they fell, roaring, with collected volume, into
the waters of the bay. The sound of these cascades during the heat of
the day was not only pleasant to the ear, but still more delightful was
the feeling of freshness it conveyed to the mind.
To the north a piece of level land, made into an island by the severed
branches of a river, bore, by its position, all the beauty and aptitude
for human habitation that nature could bestow; and the clean, white
cottages with their red roofs and spires of ascending smoke, its gardens
with their symmetrical flower-beds, and its cultivated fields, teemed
with every sign of ease and plenty, and revealed the ingenuity of man.
Beyond the northern limit of this island, far away in the interior, the
blue outlines of the mountains were drawn with a darker tint upon the
kindred colour of the sky, and their snowy scalps thrust to Heaven,
seemed to claim priority of creation and rule with patriarchal dominion
over the lesser hills. The main river ran along the eastern quarter of
the island, leaping and flowing over and under the rocky ledges of a
mountain, and its stream, sometimes expansive, then contracted, hurried
down a bed of scanty depth.
As the sole pursuit of my two companions was the circumvention and death
of numberless salmon, the same evening on which we arrived a start was
made for the salmon pools on the other side of the island. In the course
of an hour the pools were reached, and having gone through the usual
forms, such as solicitation for permission to fish, and the hire of two
prams, R---- and P---- began their accustomed labour. Taking, as
customary, my position on some elevated spot, whence a good range of all
my two friends' operations might be had, I strove to pass away the time
by staking bets with myself whether one fish could be caught in thirty
casts, or whether, on an average, twice as many minutes would elapse
without such a result. My left hand generally took the odds, and I
calculated that it won four times out of five.
The sun had set for many hours, but it was light as noon. Wearied with
fruitless watching, I lay down on the grass. Stretched at full length on
my back, and having read in astronomical works that, looking upwards
from a dark hole dug in the earth, the stars might be seen shining at
mid-day, I covered my face with my cap, and peered upwards at the sky
through a small hole in the crown. But my philosophy was suddenly
interrupted by the solution of another remarkable fact, and of more
personal moment than the scintillation of the stars, by finding I had
put my head in an ant's nest. I started to my feet, affirming that I
had never been so unwary before. But I am a believer in predestination,
and know that this accident could no more fail of occurrence, than that
from my cradle, in harmony of order, it should fail being traced, link
by link, to the instant at which it came upon me. See, now, its
consequences. No sooner had a score of angry ants been brushed from my
hair, in which their irritability had entangled them, than I was
gratified with the sight of a herculean salmon that rose completely out
of the water, and sprung, like a ravenous cat, at P----'s fly, which he
had just withdrawn from the water, intending to change it for another of
a brighter colour. The fish leapt about a foot and a half above the
surface of the stream, and was the largest salmon I ever saw, weighing,
I should think, between fifty and sixty pounds. If sharks inhabit the
Faedde river, I would not pledge my word it was not one. I yield,
however, my opinion to that of my gallant friend, who is a better
sportsman than myself and asserts, without any mental reservation, that
"It was a salmon, sir,--a salmon."
Be it as it may, the difference of classification has nothing to do with
my story.
The Norwegians, I know, are a bold people, but may sometimes be taken
unawares, as well as other men, and though they live and think in the
simple and primitive manner of the Mosaic era, they express the signs
and feelings of apathy and surprise, with similarity of silence and
spasmodic gestures to Indians and Englishmen. This world, too, is
certainly a world of incongruities, and the more I see of it, the more I
am biased in that way of reflection; and if any one will take the
trouble to look at things as they are, abstractedly, and observe how
good, bad and indifferent, black, white and blue, are jumbled together,
he will not deny me his assent. It so happened, throughout our travels
in Norway, and, indeed, whenever we went on these fishing excursions,
that R----, who gave little expression to success in his pastime, nor
felt annoyed at failure, invariably obtained the services of the most
expert boatmen, while P----, who threw heart and soul into everything he
undertook, and always swerved under discomfiture, secured with the same
invariableness the aid of the most consummate clowns; and the rewardless
termination of his toil, or tact, has been mainly attributable to the
thick-headedness of those who should have assisted him with their
sagacity. Scarcely, then, had this bulky salmon shown his mouth,
literally an ugly one, above the water, than P----'s boatman, instead of
keeping silence, and subduing his fears, as any reasonable being would
do, raised an immediate shout of horror, and during the paroxysms of
dismay, dipped his two sculls negligently into the stream, and in his
anxiety to make a few rapid strokes towards the shore, caught, what is
nautically called, a couple of crabs, that caused him to lose his
balance, and fall, legs uppermost, with a loud crash backwards to the
bottom of the pram. His aspiring feet, taking P---- in the flank with
the purchase of a crow-bar, raised him from the diminutive poop-deck of
the pram on which he was standing; but some part of P----'s apparel
giving way to the weight of his body, told its mute love of gravitation,
and desire to prevent any further mischief. As it was, P---- narrowly
escaped submersion; and his presence of mind alone saved the fly-rod
from any more serious damage than a slight fracture of the top joint.
The untimely vociferation of the Norwegian interrupted of necessity any
plan P---- might have adopted to secure the salmon; for the assault made
so unexpectedly on his person seemed, like an electric shock, to pursue
its course throughout his whole frame, and rushing to the tips of his
fingers sent the rod, at a tangent, bolt into the air.
About sixty yards from the inlet where the yacht was anchored, stood a
cottage, tenanted by a woman and her daughters, two girls about fourteen
and fifteen years of age, elegant as Indians, in form, and possessing
the flowing fair hair, the large, round, loving, languid, blue eye, and
the unaffected simplicity of bearing, and native loveliness of their
clime. Every morning they brought us milk, eggs, and strawberries, and
seemed to find great delight in listening to our language, and,
observing the routine of a vessel carried on with all the regularity of
a ship of war; for, with their little bare feet that escaped from their
blue gowns, and shone on the black rocks, like the white moss of the
rein-deer, they would sit for hours on the crags above us, clinging to
each other and explaining the reason why the bell struck at certain
intervals of time, and why the firing of the evening gun made the flag
to fall, as if by magic, from the mast-head to the deck.
On Sunday morning, the 11th of July, we took leave of Faedde, and
started, with a foul wind, for the Bukke Fiord. Being in want of bread,
we were obliged to anchor off the village, in order to supply our
stores; and having accomplished our object with less difficulty than we
had anticipated, we set off fairly, at one o'clock, for our destination.
The wind had been increasing the whole morning, and veering two points
from the south toward the south-west, now blew with the fury of a gale.
The shifting gusts, as they careered down the valleys, taking the head
sheets, first, on the weather, then, on the lee, bow, made us more tardy
than usual in getting up the anchor. Being the Sabbath, greater crowds
of people were abroad than on other days; and we could see, with our
telescopes, ladies and gentlemen standing or sitting, in large numbers,
in the churchyard, watching our manoeuvres with much interest. On the
brows of the headlands, the peasants, both men and women, viewed with
surprise our determination to put to sea on such an inauspicious day,
and in such stormy time; but when the cutter swung, so that the anchor
could be heaved, they could not refrain from loud expressions of praise
to see her gallant trim, and the pride of buoyancy with which she swam
the baffling waves.
At six o'clock in the evening, when we had stood out five or six miles
from the land, a calm fell; and when the sun declined, his disc,
expanded by the vapours of the mighty mountains at the mouth of the
Bukke Fiord, threw a gleam of golden light from peak to peak that,
glancing along the water, even came and danced upon our deck, and
dazzled the helmsman with its oblique light.
On Monday morning when I went on deck, I found that we had entered the
Bukke Fiord; and the same ravines, chasms, and cascades, identified the
sublimity of the scenery with that which I have already attributed to
the other Fiords. As we sailed along, the Fiord would expand into the
broad surface of a lake, and anon diminish to the narrow breadth of a
river hemmed in between two rocky banks. Smiling and still as a sleeping
child, and calmer than the watching mother, the water, undisturbed by a
breath of wind, lay without a ripple; and no cloud on the pure sky above
us intercepted the vertical rays of the sun, that descended with
intolerable heat; and, while panting beneath the piercing beams, we
turned towards the snow-clad mountains, and strove to bear the warmth by
looking on their glistening summits; but the tantalization was still
greater to see large patches of snow lying low down between the crevices
and deep glens, places where the sun had never shone, and to feel no
breath of cool air come to refresh us. Not a human habitation rose to
the sight, and no living creature, not even the gull, or smallest bird,
broke with its note the solemn stillness.
The pilot told us, that this Fiord had never been fathomed, and he
supposed it had no bottom. This was intelligence sufficiently
interesting to rouse all on board into activity; and a lead line of
eighty fathoms was nimbly brought on deck.
"I have heard say, my Lord," observed the sailing master to R----, "that
if a bottle be corked ever so tightly, and lowered to a certain depth in
the water, the water will find its way into the body of the bottle. Is
that true, my Lord?"
"Of course it is," replied R----.
D---- rather hesitated in his credulity, and to persuade him of the
fact, a bottle was tied to the line, and sunk in the water. At seventy
fathoms it was drawn up, and to D----'s astonishment the water had
nearly filled the bottle to its neck. He took the bottle in his hand,
and peering at the cork, which had been driven to float on the water
inside, said that some trick had been played.
"I don't think, my Lord," observed D----, "the cork was large enough,
and of course the weight of water, at any trifling depth, will force it
inwardly."
"You are incredulous as Didymus," said R----. "Here, bring a champagne
bottle."
A champagne bottle was brought, cork and all.
"Will you be satisfied now, D----?" continued R----. "It is quite
impossible that this cork can be too small; for you see, the upper part
of it overhangs the lip of the bottle."
"I see, my Lord," answered D----; "that's all fair enough."
And D---- took a piece of yarn, and lashed the cork at the sides and
over the top, having previously with a small stick rammed his
handkerchief into the body of the bottle, and wiped it perfectly dry.
"Let it go," said R---- to one of the men, who made the bottle fast to
the line, and did as he was commanded. D---- challenged the mate with an
equal shilling that the bottle would be water tight; and the mate, like
a sage, accepted the bet. As balance to the overlapping cork, we gave
the champagne bottle the whole length of the eighty fathoms; and then,
drawing it up, found the cork had not been moved an iota; but the
bottle was full of water.
D---- shook his head, and paid the shilling.
I do not think D---- will ever doubt any phenomena again, as he is ready
to admit the hardest truths of Science, however whimsical they may
appear, or sound to him. Indeed he believes most things, and only
mistrusts shoals and lee shores, to which he never fails to give a wide
berth.
"Now we are about it," said R----, "let us try and find the bottom."
When King told the pilot what we were going to undertake, the old man
laughed, and said we might try; but the Fiord was as deep as the
mountains were high. Another line of a hundred fathoms was joined to the
one with which we had been making the experiments to shake the
infidelity of the heterodox D----, and lowered. No weigh was on the
cutter; and two leads, being fixed to the line, were thrown over the
quarter, and leaving a perpendicular track of froth, descended, hissing
through the water. The whole hundred and eighty fathoms ran out; and we
seemed as far from the bottom of the Fiord as we were before we
commenced. Some idea may be conceived of the amazing depth of these
Fiords, when I say, that the yacht was not one hundred and twenty yards
from the shore, and the entire breadth of the Fiord about two miles.
The pilot again came aft, and through his interpreter, King, informed us
that the Fiord had never been plumbed, although the endeavour had been
made very frequently by scientific men, and Danish naval officers.
Not many miles from the village of Sand, the place to which we were
bound, on one of the sloping woodland swards that cheer by their vivid
verdure the loneliness of the Bukke Fiord, a small cottage, thatched
with the branches of the fir, may attract the traveller's observation,
and if he does not look around attentively he will not see it, for it is
low, and sheltered by the spreading arms of an old pine. The waters of
the Fiord flow not many feet from its humble threshold; and perhaps,
fastened to a stake, a fisherman's pram swings to the changing currents
of air. Now, however, as the cutter drifted, rather than sailed, nearer
to this green point of land, we saw that the pram had been untied from
the stake, and was rowed by an old woman round and round, in an unending
circuit, in midway of the Fiord. Often she ceased to row, and unfolding
a white handkerchief from her head bared her whiter hair to the burning
sky, and waved the signal in the air. Shouting with the shrill voice of
her sex and age, she beckoned us to hasten to her aid. Then, hobbling
from one end of her pram to the other, and moving quickly from side to
side she leaned over and looked steadfastly down in the water, as if
something valuable had been lost. When she saw we made no haste, she
resumed her seat, and singing a native song that had more of liveliness
than melancholy in its burden, again she rowed her pram round the same
circle, never deserting the spot, but whistling and chanting by turns,
she kept her face turned in one direction, that she might always watch
the central surface of the water.
"What means that old woman?" asked R---- of several men who were
observing her, and, clustering round the pilot, seemed to be gathering
all the information he could give.
"She is mad, my Lord," the sailors made reply.
"Mad!--why mad?" repeated R----.
"The pilot says, my Lord, that she is so, and looking for her husband,"
the cockswain answered.
"Where's her husband? Is he drowned, eh?" continued R----.
"No, my Lord," the sailor said, twitching up his trowsers, and walking
aft towards the quarter-deck; "her husband was a fisherman, and lived
hard by, my Lord,--up there. About fifteen years ago the man was bathing
hereabouts, and he was eaten up by mackerel; but the old woman thinks,
my Lord, he has only dived, and soon will rise again."
And so indeed the legend goes. One morning, fifteen summers past, the
poor fisherman plunged into the element, that had been his sole
sustaining friend from youth, to bathe, and before scarce fifteen
minutes had elapsed, surrounded by a shoal of mackerel, and in sight of
home and her who made it home, was devoured by these ravenous fish. When
he raised his arms from out the water to show the dreadful fate that
threatened him, and to rouse the alarm of his unconscious wife, a
hundred mackerel hung, like plummets, from the flesh. The fisherman
sank, and was never seen or heard of more. From that morning until
to-day his widow, having lost her reason, ever rows her husband's pram
about the spot where he perished, in the full persuasion, which she
certifies in her song, that he has gone to seek a sunken net, and in a
little while will emerge again; and, so, she prays the crew of every
vessel sailing by to stay and see the truth of what she speaks.
We arrived at Sand the same afternoon, and after ransacking the little
place from house to house, found the proprietor of the salmon river
there. With the good nature and extreme courtesy of his countrymen, the
Norwegian gave assent that we might angle, and not only favoured my two
indefatigable friends with a prolonged dissertation on the peculiarities
of the Sand salmon, but offered to undertake any duty that might lessen
the difficulties and increase the chances of taking a few of these
extraordinary fish.
It seems that the time when a salmon has been caught with a fly in the
Sand river is completely beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitant of
the village; nor is the task less difficult to snare this crafty species
in a net. On our arrival on the banks, or more properly rocks, of the
river, the salmon were thrusting their heads, like the bubbles of a
boiling pot, above the water; and leaping from one ledge of rock to a
higher, they were striving to make their way, in battalions, up a foss,
that was of no great height, but poured down its waters in a compact
flood with the din of a larger cataract. Persuaded as we had been of the
improbability that success would attend our sport, our spirits became
more buoyant as our attendant, by his despairing tone, made our
prosperity less likely.
All the most famous fishermen have visited this little river of Sand,
and after adopting every mode, all of them have failed to take the fish.
Although the salmon float within sight and reach in the most transparent
stream, they will not touch the fly, be it thrown even on their noses.
The only reason that can be given for this notorious fact is, that the
salmon, when they leave the sea, are generally gorged, and do not
desire, or seek for food until they have travelled some distance up the
rivers; for it is equally well ascertained that the farther the first
foss is removed from the mouth of a salmon river, the more voracious are
the fish. Now, the foss, or fall of the Sand river, is scarcely five
hundred feet from the shore of the Fiord, and the water is salt, or, at
least, brackish; and salmon are not caught in salt water.
It was certainly most annoying to my two companions, to see thousands of
the finest fish gamboling in the crystal water, not far from their feet,
and to throw their flies with the accumulated nicety of four Waltons,
absolutely in the teeth of these obstinate creatures, without the
semblance of success. I, myself, took R----'s rod, which with weariness
of hope he had laid on the ground, and seeing a splendid salmon two feet
below the surface of the stream, moving his fins slowly to resist the
current and remain stationary, I placed the fly above his head, allowing
the bait to sink gradually till it touched the top of his snout. The
fish did not, verily, alter the motion of its fins, either more
slothfully or quicker; but with perfect indifference permitted me to
keep the fly dangling before its eyes as long as I pleased.
To fish, therefore, at Sand was an absurdity; but having heard that the
Fiord abounded with seals, and wild fowl of every denomination, we
hoisted a square sail on the gig, and turned privateers.
The village of Sand is inclosed on three sides--north, east, and
south--by mountains; but before it, to the west, spread the broad waters
of the Fiord. The fragrant smell of uncultured flowers, the freshness of
the morning air, the serene loveliness of the sky and calm water, on
which the mountains with their peaks of snow were distinctly reflected,
even to the diminutive waterfall, and the whole solemn, yet sweet
character of the scenery, pressed upon me with an indefinite feeling of
delight and awe; and, sometimes yielding to the eternal aspirations and
impulsive passions of the soul, my heart heaved with gratitude, that I
had opportunity, health, and youth to see and feel with ardour the
infinity of God's good creation; and, then, I would relapse into the
humility of man's condition, the recollection of his trivial existence;
and the combination of excessive beauty filled my mind with sadness.
Arming ourselves with two guns and a rifle, we scoured the Fiord for
many miles round. No sooner did we fire at one seal that rose on the
gig's bow, than another would poke his rat-like head above the water, at
the stern, and a third and fourth on either beam. The report of our guns
was incessant; and the multitudes of crows, wild geese, ducks, eagles,
and gulls that croaked, and screamed, and whirled about above our heads,
to hear the echoes rattling among their silent fastnesses, were
incalculable.
Our seal-hunts, however, were most entertaining, and the excitement
relaxed not for an instant. The seal dives as soon as it is fired at, or
alarmed; but cannot remain for a prolonged period under water, nature
making it compulsory that the animal should ascend to the surface for
respiration. Having selected a particular seal, that appeared nearly as
large as a sheep, we were determined, by dint of perseverance, to hunt
it down. We divided our force in such a manner, that, rise where the
animal would, one of us must immediately see it; for R---- took the
starboard side of the gig, P---- went to port, and I stood at the stern,
while the two sailors, one being a crack shot, kept watch a-head. None
of us spoke; for the seal is as quick of hearing as of sight, and timid
to a proverb; but it was arranged, that, whoever saw it first was to
fire. We kept the boat broadside on, that is to say, her bow and stern
faced either shore, and her two sides swept, up and down, the entire
length of the Fiord. Regardless of myriads of gulls that flew close
round our heads, screaming angrily, we abated not in attention to the
water; and watched with straining eyes for the score of bubbles that
usually precede the rising of a seal; and the water being brilliant and
smooth as a looking-glass, they could not escape notice.
Up came a sleek head not twenty yards from me, and down it went again,
just in time before my rifle ball struck the eddying water; and at the
same instant both barrels of R----'s gun, discharged one after another,
made the drum of my ear ring.
"Two of them," he murmured. P---- and the sailor fired almost
immediately; but the seals were too quick for them. As fast as we could
load, these creatures kept rising around us; and they only seemed to
dive in order to spread the tidings below amongst their friends, for
they increased in numbers at each emersion. After firing a great
quantity of shot and powder to little purpose, we were making up our
minds to attack a rock covered with gulls, when a large seal rose within
reach of our oars, but sunk again the moment it discovered our
propinquity. In a few minutes afterwards, it bounced, head first, to the
top of the water, five-and-twenty or thirty yards from the boat; and
R---- and I having granted P---- the preference of first shot, he gave
the seal's full face the fuller benefit of a double charge of duck-shot.
We never saw the seal again, although we loitered about the spot for an
hour in the hope of finding its carcass. The cockswain persuaded us that
the seal was dead to a certainty; but that P---- had stowed such a
locker of shot in its head, it was too heavy to float.
The rock, moving like a huge living mass, being so thickly covered with
gulls, now attracted our attention; but we did not purpose to destroy
them for the mere sake of slaughter; for R---- had bought a couple of
young eagles a few days before, and it was necessary to procure food for
them.
"Let's pull to the rock," observed R----, "and see what we can do
there."
"I assent," said P----; "but we had better pull round to leeward, and
take them by surprise. What do you say, cockswain?"
"Yes, your Honour," replied the man, "we shall never be able to near
them as we pull now. Give the rock a wide berth, and get under the lee,
as your honour says."
"Pull away, then," said R----, to the two sailors; "but don't make a row
with your oars in the water."
The cockswain kept his eye on the rock, and, every now and then, hinted
to me the course I should steer; for I had taken the tiller.
"Port a little, your Honour," he said, in a voice hardly above a
whisper. The gig obeyed her helm instantly. We gradually came near to
the rock; and passing abreast of it, we could see the gulls basking in
the hot sun; some, standing on one leg, having the other drawn up under
the wing, and looking apathetically at us, while others arranged the
feathers of their tails, or breasts, with their bills, much after the
same fashion as ducks do, when they have been swimming in ponds, or
dabbling in puddles.
"Put your helm to starboard, your Honour," said the cockswain to me in a
quiet voice, "and bring her head right round."
I did as desired; and the men pulling noiselessly, the boat glided
towards the rock, like a needle to a magnet. The gulls had all
clustered to windward, and not one could be seen to leeward.
"I have no shot," I observed to R----, who sat just before me; "but only
balls."
"Never mind--they will do," R---- replied; "more credit to you if you
kill any."
Letting the tiller ropes loose, I allowed the boat to choose its own
course, and began to ram down my bullets. I tried two at a time. With a
slight grating, the keel of the gig touched a sunken piece of land, and
almost at the same time, its weigh was stopped entirely by the stem
coming in gentle contact with the main rock.
Like so many cats, we now crawled, without a sound, from the boat; and
P---- being the first to step on the rock, slipped back into the water.
The gurgling of the water as it ran over the tops of his jack-boots, and
the floundering P---- made to recover himself, alarmed two gulls, and
they flew, screaming, into the air. We crouched to the bare rock; and
these two sentinels, not distinguishing us from the colour of their
roosting place, took a few gyrations, and then re-perched themselves on
the rock. Aided by R---- and me, and the two sailors, P---- was got out
of the water; but it was no easy matter to accomplish this, for his
jack-boots had filled, to the brim, with water, and added considerably
to his natural weight.
We now stood fairly on the rock, prepared to encounter any given, or
ungiven quantity of birds or beasts.
"I say," observed R---- to me, in a low tone, "take a stone, or piece of
moss, or mud, or anything, and shy it amongst them--just for a start."
The cockswain, who was close behind me, had overheard R----, and being
more active than I, picked up a small pebble; and by way of giving
warning to R---- and P----, said, under his breath,
"Helm's a-lee, your Honour."
The clicking of their triggers answered the signal; and the missile
stone was tossed over the highest part of the rock in the midst of the
placid gulls. With the shrill screams of a thousand imps they darted
into the air.
"Blaze away, your Honours," shouted the cockswain, and mounting to the
top of the rock, endeavoured with an oar, which he handled like a flail,
to knock down every gull that came within reach. We all three fired at
the same instant, and some dozen gulls made a summerset in the air, and
with flapping wings and dangling legs, fell into the water. Those that
were not killed outright, screeched piteously as they floated on the
water. Their unscathed companions, with all the affection and courage of
the brute creation, hovered over their fallen kinsfolk, and descending
close to them, strove to bear them away with their beaks. Each time we
fired, the shock appeared to drive the gulls at a distance from us, as a
discharge of heavy artillery might cause a regiment of soldiers to
swerve backwards; but, as soon as the powder cleared away, these
pugnacious birds returned to the vicinity of the rock, screaming loudly;
and some of them were audacious enough to pounce upon our caps, and
wreak their vengeance by giving us one or two hearty pecks. The
cockswain, working like a telegraph with his swinging oar, generally
contrived to pick off these skirmishers.
"Load, your Honours, load," exclaimed the sporting cockswain;--"here
they come again."
And a whole shoal of gulls, like a troop of Arab cavalry, came, flying
with the speed of a whirlwind, to the attack. As soon as they were
within gun-shot, R---- and P---- gave the van the contents of two
tolerably good charges of large duck-shot, and I sent a couple of
bullets, making the third brace, right into a small division of the
approaching multitude. The surface of the water now appeared like a
field of turnips that had forced their bulky white bodies above the
earth, so thickly was it strewn with disabled and defunct gulls.
"Had those gulls not better be picked up?" said R----, while loading his
gun, to the cockswain.
"No, my Lord; let them be," replied the cockswain with as much
excitement in his face and manner, as if we had been bombarding a
strong citadel. "As long as there's one on the water, the others will
always come back; it's their love for one and t'other, my Lord."
A bevy of wild ducks now scoured the sky to windward, and quacking all
together, whirled round about in the air, and describing each circle
smaller and lower than the preceding one, approached the rock.
"Keep your weather eye up, your Honour," exclaimed the cockswain from
his commanding point to P----, who had not seen the advancing ducks;
"keep your weather eye up. Here they come; here's provender, your
Honour."
His remembrance, no doubt, returned to the eagles on board, and which,
by the bye, had been committed to his care. But the ducks kept a pretty
good elevation, being more timid, or wary than the gulls; and my rifle
now came into play. I took a random shot at the entire group just as it
was making a masterly evolution; and a drake, evidently the general
commanding, having ceased his quacking, and tumbling in tee-totum style
to the water, sufficiently proved how correctly I had, for the first
time, done my duty. The uproar of furious gulls and routed ducks was
never heard in these silent Fiords since the Flood to such a clamorous
extent; and I would not venture to say that the echoes were not as
surprisingly loud as the cries of the birds themselves. Urged on by the
entreaties and gesticulations of the warlike cockswain, the slaughter
lasted for an hour; but seeing that we had killed an ample quantity to
feed the eagles for some days, and remembering that powder and shot
could not be bought among the mountains of Norway, we retreated from the
rock, and getting into the boat, began to gather our game. This occupied
some little time; and after collecting a decent boatful, we lighted our
meerschaums, and floated homewards.
We might have proceeded nearly half way, when P---- suddenly dropped the
pipe from his mouth, and seizing his gun, fired it towards the shore,
from which we were not twenty feet, without uttering a word.
"Be quick--load!" he said, at last, to both of us, ramming down his own
charge as fast as he could. "Here's a seal."
"Where?" I asked,--"where?"
"Why, there," and he fired without any other explanation a second time
at the, apparently, bare rock.
"I see him, and here goes," said R----, and taking a deliberate aim,
fired also. "Missed him," he murmured.
I just caught a glimpse of the seal's flat tail, as the animal slided
from the rocky shore into the water.
"We have him," said P----, with brightened eyes, "if we act properly."
"There he is!" shouted one of the sailors, with a set of lungs that
might be needful in a gale, as the seal rose about ten feet from the
spot where it first sank.
"Don't make such a confounded row; you'd frighten the devil!" said
R----, to the seafaring Stentor.
"Beg pardon, my Lord," replied the man, in a low voice, and touching his
hat with a sheepish look.
"Keep the boat broadside on," observed R---- to the cockswain.
R---- had scarcely spoken, when the water bubbled a little, and the
seal's black snout, with dilating nostrils, rose close under the gig's
gunwale. The water whirled in eddies, and his tail, as he turned,
appearing slightly above the surface, showed me that the seal had seen
us, and dived again.
"He must come up in a minute; so, look out," whispered P----; and the
triggers of both barrels of his gun clicked, as he breathed the fact and
admonition. Fortunately the day was very calm, and the least
disturbance, the fall of the thistle's down, marred the bright surface
of the Fiord.
The head of the luckless seal soon peeped slowly up, a short way astern
of the boat, and before his eyes had risen above the water to take a
horizontal glance at us, P---- sent a handful, or so, of small shot into
his nose. Down popped the little dark proboscis speedily as thought.
"He hadn't much fresh air then," said R----, laughing at the promptitude
with which P---- saluted the appearance of the unfortunate seal.
"No; that's the way to do it," answered P----, smiling. Then turning to
the sailors, he said,
"Back astern."
The boat was accordingly backed, and so silently, that only the silvery
sound of the water as it fell, drop by drop, from the oars, contended
with the natural trickling of the ripples as they murmured under the
ledges of rock.
"Here he comes," whispered R----, "close on our quarter."
The seal rose, like a cork, up to its fore fins as if it had suffered
much torture from long retention of its breath, and, swifter than
thought, R----'s gun flashed, and with a sharp report seemed to take a
bucket of water from the Fiord, and fling it into the air. When the
light gray smoke of the powder had rolled in a revolving cloud from the
space intervening between us and the spot where the animal was observed,
the water was white with froth, but no sign of the seal could be seen.
"By Jove! that's odd. I thought I had killed him to a certainty," said
R----, somewhat surprised.
"Yes, my Lord, you hit him," observed the cockswain, consolingly. "I saw
him reel over to port."
"That's all right," said P----, "in that case he is done."
Once more two large bubbles, the spiteful heralds of the seal's advent,
rose to the top of the water, and then burst with a slight sound.
The purple dye of blood tinged the water, and immediately afterwards the
wounded seal, with lacerated fin, buoyed itself sluggishly to sight. Its
heavy breathing, expressive of pain, could be heard by all of us in the
boat; and levelling both their pieces, R---- and P---- fired together.
The seal rolled over with a moan, not unlike the faint lowing of a calf,
and floating in a pool of blood, rather than water, expired without a
struggle. Rowing the boat to the spot, the cockswain and his messmate
used their whole strength to pull the animal on board, its dimensions
not being contemptible. We reached the yacht about midnight, proud of
our day's sport.
Although it was the noon of night, it was light as at six o'clock in the
afternoon; and, indeed it is not an easy thing to tell the hour of the
day without referring to a time-piece; for there is but a very slight
difference in this part of the globe, during the summer months, between
the darkness of night and the transparency of day. This may sound
paradoxical enough; but the fact is no less true for all that. It would
be hardly necessary to observe, that the heat during the night in Norway
is sometimes more oppressive than during the day; and simply, I should
imagine, because, before the setting and rising of the sun, sufficient
time is not given to allow the ascending vapours to carry off the
fervour retained by the earth; and added to which the sun does not sink
at any period during the summer eighteen degrees below the horizon. His
rays therefore assist in keeping up the hot temperature until two or
three hours have elapsed, and then his great red face again begins to
parch every thing that dares come within its range. Norway being also a
very rocky country, absorbs the heat with wonderful facility, and as
every one may know, is disinclined to part with it. Returning home at
half-past twelve, or one, just before sunrise as I sometimes did, by
some shadowed path along the mountains, I have placed my hand on the
rocks, and found them still warm. The day, on the contrary, though
exposed to the direct power of the sun, has the atmosphere always cooled
by the wind, which is kept in motion more actively the hotter become the
sun's rays, the heat being a circulating medium of itself. Indeed the
departure of the sun is the signal for the wind's flight likewise; and
the night is generally painfully calm.
There is also another phenomenon that may rivet the observation of an
inhabitant of a more Southern latitude, and convey as much sublimity to
the mind, as it may be strange to the outward senses. I refer to the
appearance of a great Northern city at night. I shall not easily forget
Bergen, when for the first time, I walked through its streets at three
o'clock in the morning, and saw a bright sun in a blue sky shining over
it. Not a sound, beside my own footstep, disturbed the stillness; and
when I turned my eyes from the long, deserted avenues of streets and
closed windows of the houses, towards the mountains that droop sullenly
over the town, and sought there for some living sign to assure me that I
was not absolutely alone, not a bird or insect chirped or flitted on the
wing. I felt amid this desolation as if wandering in the fabled City of
Death; nor do I think that any man, the most elastic of disposition,
could bring to his heart any other feelings than those of awe and
sadness, when walking, as I did then, in the glare of day through the
thoroughfares of a populous city, he witnesses the silence and solemnity
that pervade it. I am glad that I have seen Bergen at midnight, for I
would see everything in this curious world; but the reflections that
troubled my mind were so much more than the sight was worth that I have
no desire to look again.