CHAPTER XXXVIII 



IN the smoking-room on the way south on board we 

 naturally talk much about fishing, for half our fellow- 

 passengers have been salmon-fishing and there is much 

 comparison of Bags and Rivers. Some have done better than 

 they expected, others growl at their bags, and the season, 

 and at the agent, whoever it was, that put them on to such 

 a bad river. But all are charmed with Norse scenery, and 

 Norse people. We come in for some questioning about bears. 

 There is no invidious comparison between a bag of bears 



r 



and a creel of salmon ; but we have to be careful about 

 whales, for it would be a little rough on the veteran salmon- 

 fisher to cap his best with a yarn on whales : after he has, 

 at length and with the utmost modesty, recounted the fight 

 his fifty-pounder put up, and the hundred yards it took out, 

 it would scarcely be considerate to refer to some fifty- ton or 

 one-hundred-ton whale, and the miles of cable it had reeled 

 off in a twinkling. Of course everyone knows a whale is 

 not a fish still, the slight similarity is such that whaling 

 yarns are apt to be damping when fishing stories are going ; 



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