A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden Part 19

"'You are yet in the prime and vigour of youth,' the Englishman said; 'and, perhaps, you swerve under the infliction of a feeling to which I have not been an entire stranger. You love.'

"My father replied not.

"'I have power in the presence of the Sultan,' replied the young Englishman, 'and doubt not, if you will inform me of your grievances, the sincerity of my desire to mitigate your grief.'

"My father looked up, and taking the Englishman's hand, thanked him, in sentences broken by his sorrow, for his generous mediation. The tale was soon told; and, when my father had recounted his fear, that a happy result could never be brought to his affections, the Englishman bade him not despair; and though the task was arduous, he still would strive to master it. Two days afterwards the Englishman returned to my father, and desired, that he would repair to Constantinople, and meet him there at a certain church which the Englishman indicated by name. Faithful to his promise, my father took leave of the Turkish n.o.bleman who had been his benefactor, and proceeded to Constantinople, where at the place and hour appointed, he met the Englishman. Grasping my father heartily by the hand, and telling him how impotent were the efforts of man to contend with the decrees of Providence, the young Englishman begged that he would follow him into the sacred edifice; and grieving no longer, humiliate himself before his Maker, and thank Him, that his misfortunes had been no greater. My father entered. Near an altar was a veiled figure, and by its side a priest, clad in the snowy flowing robes of his office, seemed busy with some holy ordinances; but when my father came near, the Englishman raised suddenly the white veil, and allowing it to fall on the marble floor, lo! with palpitating heart, before him stood the Circa.s.sian slave. The Englishman had bought her for a large sum of money from the Turk, and conveying her to Constantinople, gave her in marriage to my father. My father's joy knew no bounds, and his grat.i.tude to the Englishman became a feeling as limitless in its ecstasy.

"'I desire no thanks,' the n.o.ble Englishman replied, 'for you would have done the same for me had our positions been reversed; but I would always be remembered by you both, and, that, I may not be forgotten, take this ring, and wear it for my sake. When I was at Cairo, an Arab gave it me, and bade, when I performed a deed that pleased me by its generosity, to part with it in token of the heart's content.'

"See!" said Gunilda, holding up her hand, "this is the ring;" and she kissed it. It was the same ring I had observed the first day I saw the Norwegian girl; and it was a plain circlet of solid gold, surmounted by a curiously-worked figure, having the beak and plumed wings of a bird, and the body and tail of a lion.

"Since my mother's death I have worn it," said Gunilda sadly; and added, with a faint smile, "but when I wed, my husband will make his claim, no doubt."

Applying herself again to the cultivation of the flowers planted around her mother's grave, the beautiful Norwegian informed me, while engaged in her affectionate office, that, her mother survived the intelligence of her husband's death but a short time; and on her death-bed, committed Gunilda to the care of an old friend.

Mid-day came, and brought with it the sultriness and cheerful brightness of a Norwegian summer's day. Through the fir-trees I could see the waters of the Fiord sparkling, like liquid silver, in the glare of noon; and far away, the clouds, like pieces of white wool, resting half-way up the mountains. Gunilda, perceiving my pensive mood, observed,

"To-morrow, sir, at this hour, I shall not see you; and, I dare say, you will almost have forgotten the Norwegian peasant girl."

"If there be any grief that pains me," I replied, "it is the one, because it is fruitless, which reminds me how faithfully and long I shall remember you and to-day."

"Take me with you to England," she exclaimed, "I will ever serve you diligently, like a menial."

"To take you hence," I replied, "is only to lead you to destruction. A flower so delicate in its texture, will not bear transplanting, or lack of tenderness; and I would not see it droop and fade for all the gratification I may derive from its presence and sweet perfume."

"What the heart desires, the body can endure," she answered in an earnest tone. "My grief will be bitterer in your absence than all the tortures which may attend me when I am near you. Let me go with you,"

and she seized my hand, and clung to it with affectionate tenacity.

"It is impossible," I answered. "In a short time after I am gone, you will think of me no longer, and selecting from your countrymen one whose feelings may sympathise with your own, you will pa.s.s your days in happiness, and go to your grave in peace."

The young girl rose to her feet, for she had hitherto sat on the ground, or retained a kneeling position; and taking the ring, I have casually alluded to, from her finger, she said in her native tongue;

"The great and the humble, the rich and poor, feel alike, for G.o.d has made no distinction between the peasant girl's deep affections and those of a queen. My father's name and family will end with me, but let my memory live with you."

She placed the ring upon my finger. She wept not, and not a sigh escaped her; but her whole frame trembled with excess of feeling.

"You think," I exclaimed, "that I reverence not your love, and deem your affectionate and n.o.ble heart worthy of my acceptance; but you know not the false position in which I stand, or you would favour that apparent apathy which wounds my soul. Had it been in my destiny, I could have dwelt for ever among these mountains, with no other minister to my love than your own self; but to take you hence to England, and refuse you the cheerfulness and honourable endearments of wedlock, is to humiliate my own conscience, and covet the curse of G.o.d in your hatred."

I had scarcely spoken, when a flash of light shot across the sky, and before the girl had even ceased to start at the sight, the long, loud roar of a gun succeeded. I understood the signal. The token of a sincerely cherished, and steadfast friends.h.i.+p, I had worn, since I left England, a valuable ring, and removing it from my finger, I took Gunilda's hand and replaced her gift with mine. Gunilda held up her hand before her for some minutes, without the utterance of a word, and gazed on the brilliant jewel, then allowing her hand to fall by her side, burst into a pa.s.sionate flood of tears.

Again, a sudden gleam of light glanced through the forest, and, a moment after, the booming of another gun rolled away down the valleys, and over the rocks, with a faint, and then a loudly reviving echo.

"Good bye, Gunilda," I said. She spoke not, nor moved; but her shoulders shook with a convulsive heaving.

"Will you not shake hands with me?" I asked, my voice almost indistinct with emotion. Still, she spoke not. I kneeled down, for Gunilda had reseated herself near her mother's grave, and raising her hand, I took it in mine, and pressed it. I felt the pressure returned, and allowing her small pa.s.sive hand to fall gently again in her lap, I rose.

"G.o.d bless you!" I said.

She uttered a low, pa.s.sionate cry, and then checking her anguish, murmured faintly,

"Farval!" and covering her face with her hands, fell, sobbing violently, on her mother's grave.

I hurried from the spot; and hardly knew that I had left Gunilda, until the boat ran against the cutter's bow, and roused me as from a dream.

When I got on board, I found that the wind was still too trivial to allow us even to drift out of the harbour, and the cutter lay the whole night immoveably on the water.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE YACHT UNDER SAIL--JACKO OVERBOARD--FREDRICKSVaeRN --THE UNION JACK--SCENERY ON THE LARVIG RIVER--TRANSIT OF TIMBER--SALMON FIs.h.i.+NG--THE DEFEATED ANGLER-- LUDICROUS ADVENTURE WITH AN EAGLE--RESULT OF THE ANGLING EXPEDITION--THE BEVY OF LADIES--NORWEGIAN DINNER-PARTY SINGULAR AND AMUSING CUSTOMS.

At eight o'clock on Tuesday morning, the 6th, we started for Larvig.

About sixty miles from Christiania, at the mouth of the Fiord, a fine, light air sprung up, and, delighted with the expectation that we should reach Larvig before set of sun on Wednesday, we amused ourselves by firing at bottles thrown into the sea, and afterwards by watching the gambols of Sailor and Jacko. Sailor, stretched at full length on his back, allowed Jacko to pull his ears, and bite his claws; and mindless of the monkey's antics, seemed rather to encourage, than object to his vagaries. Wearied, at last, with his pulling, and jumping, and biting, Jacko sought a variation to his amus.e.m.e.nts, by springing on the weather runner-block, and thence depending by his tail. When Sailor perceived that Jacko had removed his gymnastics from himself, and transferred them to the block, he rose from his rec.u.mbent att.i.tude on the deck, and, squatting on his haunches, observed, for some little time, with singular attention and silence, the extraordinary flexibility of Jacko's limbs; but at the moment when Jacko suspended his little carcase by his smaller tail from the runner-block, whether it was the manner in which Sailor expressed a roar of laughter, or whether it was a shout of applause at the comical likeness of Jacko's body, swinging in the air, to a bunch of black grapes, certain it is, that, at that instant, Sailor gave one, but one, tremendous bark, and, in the twinkling of an eye, Jacko fell souse into the water. He sank like a boiled plum-pudding to the vessel's keel; for when he rose again, his little round head could just be seen a hundred feet astern. Never was there such dismay on board the Iris before.

"Jacko's overboard!" shouted each man; and echo taking up the cry, "Jacko's overboard!" must have alarmed Jacko himself by its forlorn expression. Struggling with the waves, and striking out manfully with his hands, and not like a monkey, Jacko kept his head above water, and his eyes turned towards the cap of the top-mast.

"Hard a-port the helm!" bellowed D----, rus.h.i.+ng to the tiller himself; and soon as the cutter shot up in the wind, he added,

"Now, then, two of you, my sons, jump into the dingy."

The command was obeyed quickly as it was given; and Jacko has to thank his star, whichever it may be, that the boat had not been hoisted on the davits, but towing in the vessel's wake; or he might, many months ago, have been a source of entertainment at the Court of Neptune.

If a drowned rat looks sleekly wretched, Jacko looked ten times worse when taken out of the water. The brightness of his eye had fled,--his tail, which curled usually like a sucking-pig's, hung now straight down behind him, relaxed from its ringlet, like a piece of tarred rope,--and his stomach, vying once with the symmetry of the greyhound's, was distended and globular as a small barrel of oysters. Half a spoonful of brandy was poured down his throat, and having been wrapped up in some odd pieces of flannel, he was put in a soup-plate, and set down before the fire. This was all that human art could do, and the rest was left to the control of time, or Jacko's robust const.i.tution.

At twelve o'clock we were off Fredricksvaern, the Norwegian Portsmouth, which is a small town at the entrance of the Larvig Fiord. Here Jacko came on deck buoyant as a ball, and with a coat made more glossy by the chemical action of the salt water.

Looking towards Larvig, we saw, an unusual sight in this country, the Union-jack flying on a little rock; and were puzzled for some time to know whether it was a compliment that had reference to us. After a tedious contention with _dead water_, light puffs of wind that came down the gulleys on our starboard beam, and s.h.i.+fted to our bows, and then veering right aft, jibed the main-sheet, we cast anchor about twenty yards from the rock on whose summit the Union-jack waved.

The Consul sent on board to say, that his house was at our service, as well as any other kindness he could show us. We understood afterwards, that the Consul had mistaken the Iris for the Fairy schooner, belonging to Sir Hyde Parker; and had hoisted the jack in compliment to his old friend the baronet.

It was not possible for us to fish to-day; but P---- hired a carriole, and drove about six miles into the country, to obtain leave from the proprietors on the banks of the Larvig River, to fish on the following morning. The task of gaining permission to fish for salmon in Norway is sometimes a tedious one; for every man is his own landlord, and possesses a few acres of land that he tills himself. All lands on the banks make the portion of the river flowing by them, the property of the landowner; and the angler may have to secure the good-will and a.s.sent of fifty persons, before he can fish in any part of a river, which is more difficult to do, as the Norwegians are jealous of their little privileges. They rarely deny courtesy to a stranger; but they like to have it in their power to do so if they please. This, however, was not P----'s case; for through the hearty a.s.sistance and recommendation of the Consul, no obstruction was made to the attainment of everything we desired.

As all fishermen are aware, it is necessary to angle for salmon, and indeed many fish, either very early in the morning, or in the cool of the afternoon, the heat of noon being perfectly inimical to the sport.

At two o'clock, therefore, on Friday morning, the memorable 9th of June, we started in the gig, stored with abundant provision, for the first foss, or fall, of the Larvig River.

The scenery of this river was the most beautiful we had yet seen, though not the grandest, the banks being thickly wooded, and the diversity of the foliage more striking than at Krokleven, or in the Christiania Fiord. Nearly four hours elapsed before we reached the spot selected for fis.h.i.+ng; but our pa.s.sage up the river had been obstructed occasionally by bars across the water. These bars are large stakes or piles driven, about twenty feet apart, into the bed of the river, and carried from one bank to the other, to which the trunks of trees are chained to prevent the timber from escaping to the sea; and it is no uncommon thing to meet with an immense field of timber, covering the whole surface of the river as far as the eye can see. A pa.s.sage is kept between two of these stakes, distinguished from the others by a mark, for the ordinary traffic of the river; and is defended by a huge bar of timber, secured by a chain, on removing which, the boats are, after a good deal of b.u.mping, pulled through. The interior of the country being so inaccessible, the Norwegians have no other alternative but to roll the timber from the tops of the mountains, and casting it on the rivers, allow it to float to these artificial havens, where it is collected, and then, being made into immense rafts, guided by some half dozen men to the town, whence it is s.h.i.+pped to France or Holland.

P---- had made such excellent arrangements, that two prams were in readiness to receive R---- and himself when we arrived at our destination. In some of the salmon rivers it is quite impossible to fish from the banks, but the sportsman hires a boat, and angles in the centre of the stream, which is generally interrupted by large stones, or pieces of rock, in the eddy of which the salmon delight to sport.

P---- was the first to get his rod together, and selecting a particular fly that he had considered as "a certain killer," jumped into his pram.

The men who row these prams are generally Norwegians, born on the banks of the river, and knowing pretty well under what rocks, or in what eddy, the salmon abound. The Norwegian who rowed P----'s pram was a fine young fellow, but as unable to understand the English language as he was athletic. R---- and P---- divided the river in two parts, so that neither sportsman should interfere with the amus.e.m.e.nt of the other.

P---- took the upper part of the stream, and R---- the lower; or, in other words, or other ideas, P---- was the wolf who came to drink of the limpid tide, and R---- was the lamb who had to put up with the muddy water.

Broiling my back in the rising sun, I took my seat on a high rock from which I had a commanding view of both my friends, and could note the praiseworthy tact and labour with which they angled. Time flew on; a quarter of an hour elapsed, and then another quarter; and to these thirty minutes, twice thirty more were added, when the heat at my back was relieved by the furious and rapid clicking of P----'s reel. I started from my seat, and lo! P----'s rod had a.s.sumed quite a new appearance; for instead of its taper, arrowy form, it looked more like a note of interrogation, and seemed to ask as loudly and plainly as it could,

"What in heavens, master, has hold of my other end?"