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And now the steamer is ploughing in among the skerries, and a world of rocks and islets unfolds on every side. There is the first red fisher-hut. And then the entrance to Christiansand, between wooded hills and islands, where white cottages shine out, each with its patch of green grassland and its flagstaff before it. Peer watched it all, drinking it in like nourishment.
The King sailed with his warships out among the skerries, intending to proceed north to Drontheim, while Haldor the Fierce, with his friends and men, went back to Horlingdal.
Besides, in a few hours now they should sight the skerries on the Norwegian coast; and the thought awoke in him a strange excitement it was a moment he had dreamed of many and many a time out there in the wide world. After a while stillness fell on the decks around him, and he too went below, but lay down in his cabin without undressing.
And indeed, for a man who has been much tumbled round Orcadian skerries, what scene could be more agreeable to witness? On such a day, the valley wears a surprising air of festival. It is what Paris ought to be. It has the scenic quality that would best set off a life of unthinking, open-air diversion. It was meant by nature for the realization of the society of comic operas.
His father often sat by his sick-bed, and beguiled his small son from fears and pains by tales "of ship-wreck on outlying iron skerries' pitiless breakers, and great sea-lights, clothed in language apt, droll and emphatic." His mother and Cummie read to him day and night. Thus early the instinct of authorship was fired within him.
And all the rocky knolls that we see so firmly united, can they be only holms and skerries parted by the rolling waves? No, we should never believe it was possible, Grim, my dog." Torarin laughed and Grim still lay quiet and did not stir. Torarin drove on, until he rounded a high knoll. Then he gave a cry as though he had seen something strange.
There is no fairway now for ship or boat among the islands, nothing but firm, hard ice, so that a man may drive with horse and sledge as far as Marstrand and Paternoster Skerries." To all this the dog listened, and it seemed not to displease him. He lay still and blinked at Torarin. "We have no great store of fish left on our load," said Torarin, as though trying to talk him over.
But upon that half of Marstrand island which looked westward to the sea, unguarded by isles or skerries, there was nothing but bare and barren rocks and ragged headlands thrust out into the waves. Heather there was in brown tufts and prickly thorn bushes, holes of the otter and the fox, but never a path, never a house or any sign of man.
As I watched, I felt the boat plummet down, as if the sea was snatched from under her; it was the undertow the wave was drawing the waters back beneath it. By the gunwale the blue-green sea frothed white as it poured back from the skerries near the entrance to the creek.
"Captain, are the islands as numerous everywhere along the coast as they are here?" said Fred. "'Deed ay, an' more," answered the Captain, "some places ye'll sail for fifty or sixty miles after getting among the skerries before reachin' the main." They were now within a hundred yards of the islands, towards a narrow channel, between two of which the Captain steered.
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