CHAPTER XVI.THE COASTING VOYAGE.
“Now launched once more, the inland seaThey furrow with fair augury.“So brilliant was the landward view,The ocean so serene;Each puny wave in diamonds rolledO’er the calm deep, where hues of goldWith 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 woesWould wish to break the soft reposeOf such enchanting scene.”Lord of the Isles.
“Now launched once more, the inland seaThey furrow with fair augury.“So brilliant was the landward view,The ocean so serene;Each puny wave in diamonds rolledO’er the calm deep, where hues of goldWith 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 woesWould wish to break the soft reposeOf such enchanting scene.”Lord of the Isles.
“Now launched once more, the inland seaThey furrow with fair augury.
“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 rolledO’er the calm deep, where hues of goldWith azure strove, and green.The hill, the vale, the tree, the tower,Glowed with the tints of evening hour,The beach was silver sheen.
“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.
“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 woesWould wish to break the soft reposeOf such enchanting scene.”
“O, who with speech of war and woes
Would wish to break the soft repose
Of such enchanting scene.”
Lord of the Isles.
Lord of the Isles.
If an Englishman can ever enter into the feelings of a Neapolitan, and in any way connect the ideas of thedolce far nientewith 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.
SCENE ON THE SOUTH COAST OF NORWAY.p. 220.
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 theGefjonsteamer, with his eyes shut, his muscles relaxed, his arms and legs sprawling about in all directions, while the indolentsmoke 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 appetizingcaviare, 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 ofthe 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 garbof 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 restoredthe 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 bonfireas 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, theHringhorn. 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 inNorway, in Sweden it is much affected by those who would wish it to be supposed that they arehabituésof 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 becomea 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!’
“‘Neither in life, nor yet in death,Gave he me gladness.Let Hell keep her prey!’
“‘Neither in life, nor yet in death,Gave he me gladness.Let Hell keep her prey!’
“‘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 fromHell, 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, theHringhorn, 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, Isuspect 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 theGefjoncarried 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 theNajadenfrigate, 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 theDictator; 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 oldDictator; 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 theDictatorcruising about and doing nothing, as we thought; we did not know that he was improving his charts, and getting bearingsand 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 oldDictator’smast-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 ofSkidbladner, 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 forthatthe 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 webrought 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 withfleurs-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 oldDictatoris 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 likeSkidbladnerherself.
“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 herthrough 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 warpto 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 oldNajaden, 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 forbeing 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, theGefjon’sswallow-tailed ensign dipped from her peak, and her little pop-guns again testified their respect to the old sailor’s memory.