Chasing the Sun, R. M. Ballantyne [freenovel24 TXT] 📗

roads were narrow, and they wound along the top of precipices over which a false step might easily have hurled them. At the foot of many of the roads, too, there were sharp turns, and it was a matter of intense delight to Sam Sorrel to try how fast he could gallop down and take the turn without upsetting.

The Norwegian ponies are usually small and cream-coloured, with black manes and tails or white manes and tails; always, from some incomprehensible reason, with manes and tails different in colour from their bodies. They are hardy, active animals, and they seem to take positive pleasure in the rattling, neck-or-nothing scamper that succeeds each toilsome ascent.

The shooscarle is usually the owner of the pony. He may be a man or a boy, but whether man or boy he almost invariably wears a red worsted nightcap. He also wears coarse homespun trousers, immensely too long in the body, and a waistcoat monstrously too short. He will hold the reins and drive if you choose, but most travellers prefer to drive themselves.

During the journey Fred Temple usually led the way. Norman Grant, being a careless, easy-going, drowsy fellow, not to be trusted, was placed in the middle, and Sam Sorrel brought up the rear. Sam’s duty was to prevent straggling, and pick up stray articles or baggage.

On the day of which I write the three friends had travelled far, and were very sleepy. It was near midnight when they came to a steep and broken part of the road, which ran alongside of the foaming river already mentioned, and, turning at a sharp angle, crossed it by means of a rude wooden bridge.

Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, the sky was almost as bright as at noon.

“Mind yourself here,” shouted Fred, looking back at Grant, who was almost asleep.

“Hallo! oh, all right!” cried Grant, gathering up the reins and attempting to drive. Fortunately for him Norwegian ponies need no driving. They are trained to look after themselves. Fred went down the hill at a canter. Grant followed at a spanking trot, and both of them reached the bridge, and made the turn in safety.

Sam Sorrel was some distance behind. Both he and his shooscarle were sitting bolt-upright, more than half-asleep, with the reins hanging loose on the pony’s back. The first thing that awakened Sam was the feeling of going down hill like a locomotive engine. Rousing himself, he seized the reins, and tried to check the pony. This only confused it, and made it run the cariole so near to the edge of the river, that they were almost upset into it.

When Sam became fully aware of his position, he opened his eyes, pursed his lips, and prepared for “squalls.” Not being a practised driver, he did not make sufficient allowance for a large stone which had fallen from the cliffs, and lay on the road. He saw what was coming, and gathered himself up for a smash; but the tough little cariole took it as an Irish hunter takes a stone wall. There was a tremendous crash. Sam’s teeth came together with a snap, and the shooscarle uttered a roar; no wonder, poor fellow, for his seat being over the axle, and having no spring to it, the shock which he received must have been absolutely shocking! However, they got over that without damage, and the river was crossed by all three in safety.

The next hill they came to was a still worse one. When they were half-way down the leader came to a sudden halt; Grant’s cariole almost ran over it; Sam and the luggage-cart pulled up just in time, and so, from front to rear, they were jammed up into the smallest space they could occupy.

“Hallo! what’s wrong?” shouted Grant.

“Oh! nothing, only a trace or something broken,” replied Fred. “Mend it in a minute.”

It was mended in a minute, and away they went again on their reckless course over hill and dale.

The mending of the trace was a simple affair. The harness of each pony consisted of nothing more than the reins, a wooden collar, and a wooden saddle. The shafts were fastened to the collar by means of an iron pin, and this pin was secured in its place by a green withe or birch-bough twisted in a peculiar manner, so as to resemble a piece of rope. This was the only part of the harness that could break, so that when an accident of the kind occurred the driver had only to step into the woods and cut a new one. It is a rough-and-ready style of thing, but well suited to the rough country and the simple people of Norway.

Fred, being anxious to see as much as possible, had compelled his guide to turn out of the usual high-road, the consequence of which was that he soon got into difficulties; for although each shooscarle knew the district through which they were passing, they could not quite understand to what part of the country this peculiar Englishman was going. This is not surprising, for the peculiar Englishman was not quite sure of that point himself!

On this particular night they seemed to have got quite lost among the hills. At every stage of ten or twelve English miles they changed horses and drivers. The drivers on this particular stage were more stupid than usual, or Fred Temple was not so bright. Be that as it may, about midnight they arrived at a gloomy, savage place, lying deep among the hills, with two or three wooden huts, so poor-looking and so dirty that a well-bred dog would have objected to go into them. Fred pulled up when he came to this place, and Grant’s pony pulled up when his nose touched the back of Fred’s cart. Grant himself and his man were sound asleep. In a few seconds Sam joined them.

There was a brilliant, rosy light on the mountain-tops, but this came down in a subdued form to the travellers in the valley. The place scarcely deserved the name of a valley. It was more of a gorge. The mountains rose up like broken walls on each side, until they seemed to pierce the sky. If you could fancy that a thunderbolt had split the mountain from top to bottom, and scattered great masses of rock all over the gorge thus formed, you would have an idea of the soft of place in which our belated travellers found themselves. Yet even here there were little patches of cultivated ground, behind rocks and in out-of-the-way corners, where the poor inhabitants cultivated a little barley and grass for their cattle.

It was a lovely calm night. Had you been there, reader, you would have said it was day, not night. There was no sound to break the deep stillness of all around except the murmur of many cataracts of melted snow-water, that poured down the mountainsides like threads of silver or streams of milk. But the rush of these was so mellowed by distance that the noise was soft and agreeable.

“I say, Grant, this will never do,” said Fred gravely.

“I suppose not,” returned Grant, with a yawn.

“What say you, Sam,—shall we go on?”

“I think so. They can have nothing to give us in such miserable huts as these except gröd (barley-meal porridge), and sour milk, and dirty beds.”

“Perhaps not even so much as that,” said Fred, turning to his driver. “How far is it, my man, to the next station?”

“Ten miles, sir.”

“Hum; shall we go on, comrades?”

“Go on; forward!” cried Grant and Sorrel.

So on they went as before, over hill and dale for ten miles, which poor Sam (who was very sleepy, but could not sleep in the cariole) declared were much more like twenty miles than ten.

The sun was up, and the birds were twittering, when they reached the next station. But what was their dismay when they found that it was poorer and more miserable than the last! It lay in a wilder gorge, and seemed a much more suitable residence for wolves and bears than for human beings. Indeed, it was evident that the savage creatures referred to did favour that region with their presence, for the skin of a wolf and the skull of a bear were found hanging on the walls of the first hut the travellers entered.

The people in this hamlet were extremely poor and uncommonly stupid. Living as they did in an unfrequented district, they seldom or never saw travellers, and when Fred asked for something to eat, the reply he got at first was a stare of astonishment.

“We must hunt up things for ourselves, I see,” cried Sam Sorrel, beginning to search through the hut for victuals. Seeing this, the people assisted him; but all that they could produce was a box of barley meat and two large flat dishes of sour milk.

This sour milk is a favourite dish with the Norwegians. During summer the cattle are sent to the pastures high up in the mountains, in order to spare the small quantity of grass grown in the valleys, which is made into hay and stored for winter use. These mountain pastures are called saeters, and the milk required by each family for daily use is carried down from the saeter by the girls. The milk is put into round flat tubs, varying from one to two feet in diameter and four or five inches deep. It is then allowed to stand, not only until it is sour, but until it is thick throughout like curd, with a thick coat of cream on the top. In this form it is eaten with a spoon, and a very pleasant sight it is to behold three or four sturdy herdsmen, and, perchance, one or two boys, squatting round one of these large dishes, and supping away to their hearts’ content.

Grant seized the first dish of milk he discovered, and at once sat down on a stool and began to devour it.

“Hold on, let us start fair!” cried Sam Sorrel, catching up a spoon, and sitting down opposite his comrade on another stool.

The hut was built of rough logs, and the only furniture in it was of the rudest description; a couple of box-beds, two or three stools, and a bench, a gaily-painted chest in one corner, and a misshapen table was all that it contained. There was a very small door at one side, a particularly small window at the other, and a raised stone fireplace at one end.

“Well, while you two are stuffing yourselves with sour milk, I’ll go and search for better fare,” said Fred, with a laugh as he left the hut.

“Good luck go with you,” cried Grant; “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Now, then, old boy,” he continued, turning to the owner of the hut, “could your goodwife make us a little porridge; I say, Sam, what’s the Norse for porridge?”

“Gröd, (Gröd is pronounced groot) I believe,” said Sam, who was still busy with the sour milk.

“Ah yes! gröd, that’s it,” said Grant, turning again to the old man; “gröd, gröd, get us some gröd, gröd, gröd,—d’ye understand?”

“Ya, ya,” answered the man. It would have been very strange if he had not understood, for though Grant addressed him in English the word gröd bawled so frequently into his ear was sufficiently comprehensible.

A fire was quickly kindled by the goodwife, a pleasant-looking elderly woman; and the black family-pot was soon smoking. The old man was smoking too, in less than five minutes, for Grant, in the fulness of his heart, gave him a pipe and a lump of tobacco.

This man was a fine specimen of a hale old Norseman. He wore a complete suit of brown homespun—excepting the jacket, which hung on a rusty nail in the wall. Knee-breeches and worsted stockings showed that even in declining years he had a good pair of legs. His grey hair hung in long straight locks over his shoulders, and on his