CHAPTER TWENTY 



The Old Oaken Chest 



IN THE WESTFOLD district of Norway there lives to-day a 

 community which is a modern counterpart of that which 

 once flourished in Nantucket. It owes its prosperity to 

 its speciaHsed knowledge of whale hunting and yet, like 

 the people of old Nantucket its roots are in its homeland 

 farms. 



In one of the farmhouses of this district on a wintry 

 February evening in the year 1 954 a broad weatherbeaten 

 man in his middle fifties was replacing some old documents 

 and books in an oak chest. His name was Olafsen; Peter 

 Oakley Olafsen, and this was the first winter since boy- 

 hood that he had not sailed south with the whaling fleets. 

 Gout had finally forced him to bid farewell to the rigours 

 of the Antarctic whaling and to admit that it was a life 

 for younger men like his son Carl. 



The twelve-year-old boy sprawling at Peter's feet before 



