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Words: 144097 in 39 pages
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mously assert, and they ought to know best,--at all events, ensuring a wet jacket to every one on board, be the weather as fine as it may, from the time they leave the port to the time they return to it.
Then came, crowding all sail and looking as if they were rigged for a regatta, with their butterfly summer gear and tapering spars, the lobster smacks from Lyng?r, and Osteris?, and Arendahl, and Hellesund: and a regatta it was on a large scale, with the wide North Sea for a race-course, omnivorous London for the goal, and its ever-fluctuating markets for a prize. These were sharp, trim-looking vessels, admirably handled, and not unworthy of a place in the lists of any Royal Yacht Club for beauty or for speed; somewhat less sharp, perhaps, than the Bergeners, but scarcely less weatherly or sitting less lightly on the seas.
The near approach to the land, which had been for so many hours looked for in vain, seemed to bring no great comfort to the unfortunate Skipper, who kept fidgetting about the decks with a perplexed and anxious countenance. Glasses were brought on deck, and rubbed and polished over and over again, and directed in succession to every mountain peak that showed itself, and every inlet that opened before them. Then, little mysterious consultations were held between the Skipper and his First Mate; then, one man was sent for, then another; then more whispering, and more mystery, more shaking of the heads and examination of charts; then an adjournment to the bridge, on which the Parson was then standing, taking his survey of the craft in sight, and enjoying the sunshine. At last, the whispering took a more objurgatory tone; more in the way of a growl, with now and then a short, emphatic sentence of eternal condemnation on somebody's eyes, or blood, or other personalities,--as is the custom of those who "go down to the sea in ships."
The first distinct words which met the Parson's ear, came from the lips of the Skipper, pronounced in a sharp, acid, querulous sort of tone; such as superiors sometimes indulge in, when they are fixing on the shoulders of an inferior the blame they shrewdly suspect all the while, ought, if justice had its due, to rest on their own.
"You are not worth your salt, sir," he said; "you are not worth your salt--you ought to be ashamed of wearing a blue jacket, you know-nothing, lubberly ..." and so forth; expressions by no means unusual at sea, certainly, but sounding somewhat misplaced in the present instance, inasmuch as if there was any one in the whole ship not worth his salt, the speaker certainly was the man, in his own proper person.
"Upon my soul, sir," said the man addressed, "if I tried to tell you anything about it, I should be only deceiving you. I know the coast about Christiansand as well as any man. I have traded to that port for years, and taken the old brig in and out twenty times; but the land before us is all strange to me. I never saw those three hummocky hills before in my life. This is not Christiansand."
"Well, but if it is not, does Christiansand lie east or west of us--which way am I to steer?"
The man raised his glass again, and took a long and anxious survey, but apparently with no better result.
"Really, sir, I cannot say. I cannot make it out at all; there is not one single sea-mark that I know."
"Then what the devil did you ship for as a pilot, if you knew nothing of your business?" Here followed another strong detachment of marine expletives.
"I shipped as a pilot for Christiansand, sir; and, for the Sound, and for Copenhagen; and can take the steamer into any one of them, if she drew as much as a first-rate; but this place is neither one nor the other of them, and I never called myself a coasting pilot."
"Well," said the Parson, "this seems to me sad waste of breath and temper; if you are a couple of lost babes, why do you not ask your way? There lies a pilot-boat, as you may see with your own eyes," pointing to a little cutter exhibiting in the bright sunshine a single dark cloth in a very white mainsail, which, with her foresheet to windward, lay bobbing about in the swell right ahead of them. "That is a pilot-boat, and I suppose she knows the way, if you do not--why do you not hail her?"
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