第74章 LETTER XI(14)

The result covered that brilliant garment with glory and salt water.To tack was impossible,we could only wear,--and to wear in such a sea was no very pleasant operation.

But the little ship seemed to know what she was about,as well as any of us:up went the helm,round came the schooner into the trough of the sea,--high over her quarter toppled an enormous sea,built up of I know not how many tons of water,and hung over the deck,--by some unaccountable wriggle,an instant ere it thundered down she had twisted her stern on one side,and the waves passed underneath.In another minute her head was to the sea,the mainsail was eased over,and all danger was past.

What was now to be done?That the land we had seen was the coast of Norway I could not believe.Wrong as our dead reckoning evidently was,it could not be so wrong as that.Yet only one other supposition was possible,viz.,that we had not come so far south as we imagined,and that we had stumbled upon Roost--a little rocky island that lies about twenty miles to the southward of the Loffoden Islands.Whether this conjecture was correct or not,did not much matter;to go straight away to sea,and lie to until we could get an observation,was the only thing to be done.Away then we went,struggling against a tremendous sea for a good nine hours,until we judged ourselves to be seventy or eighty miles from where we had sighted the breakers,--when we lay to,not in the best of tempers.The next morning,not only was it blowing as hard as ever,but all chance of getting a sight that day seemed also out of the question.I could have eaten my head with impatience.However,as it is best never to throw a chance away,about half-past eleven o'clock,though the sky resembled an even sheet of lead,I got my sextant ready,and told Mr.Wyse to do the same.

Now,out of tenderness for your feminine ignorance I must state,that in order to take an observation,it is necessary to get a sight of the sun at a particular moment of the day:this moment is noon.When,therefore,twelve o'clock came,and one could not so much as guess in what quarter of the heavens he might be lying perdu,you may suppose I almost despaired.Ten minutes passed.It was evident we were doomed to remain,kicking our heels for another four-and-twenty hours where we were.No!--yes!--no!

By Phoebus!there he is!A faint spongy spot of brightness gleamed through the grey roof overhead.The indistinct outline grew a little clearer;one-half of him,though still behind a cloud,hardened into a sharp edge.Up went the sextant."52.43!"(or whatever it was)I shouted to Mr.Wyse."52.41,my Lord!"cried he,in return;there was only the discrepancy of a mile between us.We had got the altitude;the sun might go to bed for good and all now,we did not care,--we knew our position to an inch.There had been an error of something like forty miles in our dead reckoning,in consequence--as I afterwards found--of a current that sets to the northward,along the west coast of Norway,with a velocity varying from one to three miles an hour.The island upon which we had so nearly run WAS Roost.We were still nearly 200miles from our port."Turn the hands up!Make sail!"and away we went again in the same course as before,at the rate of ten knots an hour.

"The girls at home have got hold of the tow-rope,I think,my Lord,"said Mr.Wyse,as we bounded along over the thundering seas.

[Figure:fig-p192.gif]

By three o'clock next day we were up with Vigten,and now a very nasty piece of navigation began.In order to make the northern entrance of the Throndhjem Fiord,you have first to find your way into what is called the Froh Havet,--a kind of oblong basin about sixteen miles long,formed by a ledge of low rocks running parallel with the mainland,at a distance of ten miles to seaward.Though the space between this outer boundary and the coast is so wide,in consequence of the network of sunken rocks which stuffs it up,the passage by which a vessel can enter is very narrow,and the only landmark to enable you to find the channel is the head one of the string of outer islets.As this rock is about the size of a dining-table,perfectly flat,and rising only a few feet above the level of the sea,to attempt to make it is like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay.It was already beginning to grow very late and dark by the time we had come up with the spot where it ought to have been,but not a vestige of such a thing had turned up.Should we not sight it in a quarter of an hour,we must go to sea again,and lie to for the night,--a very unpleasant alternative for any one so impatient as I was to reach a port.Just as I was going to give the order,Fitz--who was certainly the Lynceus of the ship's company--espied its black back just peeping up above the tumbling water on our starboard bow.We had hit it off to a yard!

In another half-hour we were stealing down in quiet water towards the entrance of the fiord.All this time not a rag of a pilot had appeared,and it was without any such functionary that the schooner swept up next morning between the wooded,grain-laden slopes of the beautiful loch,to Throndhjem--the capital of the ancient sea-kings of Norway.