272 SHORT STALKS 



AVliat Norwegian sportsman of tbe last generation does 

 not remember tliat old ship ? She plied from Hull to 

 Throndhjem, threading the islands for the last quarter of 

 the way, and dropping or picking up her ardent passengers 

 at various outlandish points. How jealously they guarded 

 the secrets of the rivers and fjelds, and yet how friendly 

 they were 1 If I remember rightly she had been once cut 

 in half and mended again to suit the passenger traffic. In 

 the winter she returned to her vocation of carrying stock- 

 fish to the Mediterranean, and you would have known that 

 too without l)eing told. In spite of the tumbling seas on 

 the Dogger, and the fcit pork, and greasy stewards, which 

 things were a snare for weak stomachs, those of her 

 patrons who have not gone on a longer voyage must have 

 memories of jovial hours on her salted decks. The last I 

 saw of the old ship was the tips of her masts sticking up 

 in one of the narrow channels between Stavanger and 

 Beroen. Once more and for the last time she broke her 

 back, I)ut it was on a rock and in a snowstorm. She 

 was past patching that time and her old liones were to be 

 put up to auction on a certain day at twelve o'clock. But 

 at ten o'clock she had cheated the hammer by knocking 

 herself down for nothing, and sinking in deep water. 

 However that was years after the date of which I am 

 writing. 



The next time I visited my bear-ground, we disem- 

 barked at Christiansund, and hired a little steam launch 

 which carried us through the night up the long and narrow 

 strait of the Vinge Fjord, the head of which is divided by 

 a few miles of isthmus from the Hevne Fjord. When the 

 little engine stopped its panting, we Ijreakfasted in the 



