The Modern Vikings. Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
quietly, and I will soon rid you of the little beast.”
Tharald, clinching his teeth, sat down on a bowlder. Anders drew his knife.
“No, I thank you,” shouted Tharald, as he saw the knife, “I can do that myself. I don’t want you to harm him.”
“I don’t intend to harm him,” said Anders. “I only want to force his mouth open.”
To this Tharald submitted. The knife was carefully inserted at the corner of the little monster’s mouth, when lo! he let the hand go, and snapped after the knife-blade. Anders quickly threw his hat over him, and held it down with his knees, while he tore a piece off the lining of his coat to bandage his brother’s wound. Then they trudged home together with the otter imprisoned in the hat.
You would scarcely have thought that “Mons” – for that became the otter’s name – would have made a pleasant companion; but strange as it may seem, he improved much, as soon as he got into civilized society. He soon learned that it was not good-manners to snarl and show his teeth when politely addressed, and if occasionally he forgot himself, he got a little tap on the nose which quickened his memory. He was scarcely six inches long when he was caught, not reckoning the tail; and so sleek and nimble and glossy, that it was a delight to handle him His fur was of a very dark brown, and when it was wet looked black. It was so dense that you could not, by pulling the hair apart, get the slightest glimpse of the skin. But the most remarkable things about Mons were the webs he had between his toes, and his long glossy whiskers. Of the latter he was particularly proud; he would allow no one to touch them.
Tharald taught him a number of tricks, which Mons learned with astonishing ease. He was so intelligent that Sultan, the bull-terrier, grew quite jealous of him.
Inquisitiveness seemed to be the strongest trait in Mons’s character. His curiosity amounted to an overmastering passion. There was no crevice that he did not feel called upon to investigate, no hole which he did not suspect of hiding some interesting secret. Again and again he made explorations in the flour-barrel, and came out as white as a miller. Once, for the sake of variety, he put his nose into the inkstand, and in attempting to withdraw it, poured the contents over his head.
In the part of Norway where Tharald’s father lived, the people added largely to their income by salmon-fishing. Nay, those who had no land made their living entirely by fishing and shooting. Every spring the salmon migrated from the sea into the rivers, to deposit their spawn; you could see their young darting in large schools over the pebbles in the shallows of the streams, pursued by the big fishes that preyed upon them. Then the perch and the trout grew fat, and the pike and the pickerel made royal meals out of the perch and trout. All along the coast lay English schooners, ready to buy up the salmon and carry it on ice to London. Everywhere there was life and traffic; everybody felt prosperous and in good-humor.
It was during this season that Tharald one day walked down to the lake to try his luck with a fly. It had been raining during the night; and the trees along the shore shivered and shook down showers of raindrops. The only trouble was that the water was so clear that you could see the bottom, which sloped gently outward for fifty or a hundred feet. Mons, who was now a year old, was sitting in his usual place on Tharald’s shoulder, and was gazing contentedly upon the smiling world which surrounded him. He was so fond of his master, now, that he followed him like a dog, and could not bear to be long away from him.
“Mons,” said Tharald, after having vainly thrown the alluring fly a dozen times into the river, “I think this is a bad day for fishing; or what do you think?”
At that very instant a big salmon-trout – a six-pounder at the very least – leaped for the fly, and with a splash of its tail sent a shower of spray shoreward. The line flew with a hum from the reel, and Tharald braced himself to “play” the fish, until he should tire him sufficiently to land him.
But the trout was evidently of a different mind. He sprang out of the water, and his beautiful spotted sides gleamed in the sun.
That was a sight for Mons! Before his master could prevent him, he plunged from his shoulder into the lake, and shot through the clear tide like a black arrow. The trout saw him coming, and made a desperate leap!
The line snapped; the trout was free!
Free! It was delightful to see Mons’s supple body as it glided through the water, bending upward, downward, sideward, with amazing swiftness and ease. His two big eyes (which were conveniently situated so near the tip of his nose that he could see in every direction with scarcely a turn of the head) peered watchfully through the transparent tide, keeping ever in the wake of the fleeing fish. If the latter had had the sense to keep straight ahead, he might have made good his escape. But he relied upon strategy, and in this he was no match for Mons. He leaped out of the water, darted to the right and to the left, and made all sorts of foolish and flurried manœuvres. But with the calmness of a Von Moltke, Mons outgeneralled him. He headed him off whenever he turned, and finally by a brisk turn plunged his teeth into the trout’s neck, and brought him to land.
I need not tell you that Tharald made a hero of him. He hugged him and patted him and called him pet names, until Mons grew quite bashful. But this exploit of Mons’s gave Tharald an idea. He determined to train him as a salmon-fisher.
It was in the spring of 1880, when Mons was two years old and fully grown, that he landed his first salmon. And when he had landed the first, it cost him little trouble to secure the second and the third. Tharald felt like a rich man that day, as he carried home in his basket three silvery beauties, worth, at the very least, a dollar and a half apiece. He made haste to dispose of them to an English yachtsman at that figure, and went home in a radiant humor, dreaming of “gold and forests green,” as the Norwegians say.
“Now, Mons,” he said to his friend, whom he was leading after him by a chain, “if we do as well every day as we have done to-day, we shall soon be rich enough to go to school. What do you think of that, Mons?”
One day a big fish-tail splashed out of an eddy, and a black furry head and back rose for an instant and were whirled out of sight.
“Oh, dear, dear,” cried Tharald, “he will die! He will drown! How often have I told you, Mons,” he shouted, “that you shouldn’t attack fishes that are bigger than yourself.”
“Whom are you talking to?” asked a fisherman named John Bamle, who had come to look after his traps.
“To Mons,” answered the boy, anxiously.
“You don’t mean to say your brother is out there in the water!” shouted John Bamle, in amazement.
“Yes, Mons, my otter,” cried Tharald, piteously.
“Mons, your brother!” yelled the man, and seizing a boat-hook, he ran out on the beams from which the traps were suspended. The roar of the waters was so loud that it was next to impossible to distinguish words, and “Mons, my otter,” and “Mons, my brother,” sounded so much alike that it was not wonderful that John mistook the former for the latter. For awhile he balanced himself by means of the boat-hook on the slippery beams, peering all the while anxiously into the rapids.
Suddenly he saw something struggling in the water; showers of spray whirled upward. Could it be possible that a fish had attacked the drowning child? Full of pity, he stretched himself forward, extending the boat-hook before him, when lo! he lost his balance, and tumbled headlong into the cataract.
Half a dozen other fishermen who were sauntering down the hill-sides saw their comrade fall, and rushed into the water to rescue him.
One man, bolder than the rest, sat astride a floating log and rode out into the seething current. Now he was thrown off; now he scrambled up again; at last, as his drowning comrade appeared for the third time, with an arm extended out of a whirling eddy, he caught him deftly with his boat-hook, and pulled him up toward the log.
As John Bamle lay there, more dead than alive, upon the bank, emitting streams of water through mouth and nostrils, the question was asked how he came to endanger his life in such a reckless manner. At that very instant the head of a black otter was seen emerging from the water, dragging a huge salmon up among the stones.
“Look,