Chasing the Sun | Page 7

round a neighbouring cliff, disappeared from view.
A deep groan burst from the poor artist as he exclaimed, "Oh dear, I've missed it!"
But Sam was wrong. He had not missed it. On climbing to the other side of the cliff he found the eagle stretched on the ground in a dying state. Its noble-looking eye scowled for a moment on him as he came up, then the head drooped forward and the bird died. It measured six feet four inches from tip to tip of its expanded wings, and was as magnificent a specimen of the golden eagle as one could wish to see.
With a triumphant step Sam carried it down to the yacht, where he found his comrades still sound asleep; so he quietly fastened the eagle up over Grant's bed, with the wings expanded and the hooked beak close to the sleeper's nose!
The day that followed this event continued calm, but towards evening a light breeze sprang up, and before midnight the Snowflake cast anchor in the harbour of Bergen.
CHAPTER THREE.
BERGEN--TALKING, SUPPING, AND SLEEPING UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
The city of Bergen is a famous and a strange old place. In ancient days it was a stronghold of the Vikings--those notorious sea-warriors who were little better than pirates, and who issued from among the dark mountains of Norway in their great uncouth galleys and swept across the seas, landing on the coasts everywhere, to the terror of surrounding nations.
They were a bold, fearless set, the Norse Vikings of old. They voyaged far and wide in open boats round the coasts of Europe, and across the stormy sea, long before the mariner's compass was invented, and they discovered Iceland and America long before Christopher Columbus was born. They had free spirits, these fierce Norwegians of old, and there was much good as well as evil in them. They had good and wise laws when nearly all the rest of the world was lawless; and many of the laws and customs which prevailed among them a thousand years ago exist at the present day. The bold Vikings were great colonisers; among other parts of the world they overran and settled in a large portion of Great Britain, and much of their blood--more than many people are aware of-- flows in our own veins.
But I am wandering from my subject. Let me return to it by repeating that Bergen, this ancient stronghold of the Vikings, is a famous and a strange old place.
It is built at the foot of a steep mountain-range which is so close to the margin of the sea that the city has barely room to stand. One might fancy that the houses were crowding and jostling each other and squeezing themselves together, in order to avoid on the one hand being pushed up the mountain-side, and, on the other hand, being thrust into the sea. Some of the smaller cottages and a few villas seem to have been beaten in this struggle for standing-room, for they appear to have been obliged to clamber up the mountain-side, and perch themselves on spots where there does not seem to be standing-room for a goat. From such elevated positions they look down complacently on their crowded brethren.
The houses near the sea have not fared so well. They are built in the water on piles, and are all of them warehouses with projections in front, from which hang blocks and hoisting tackle. These projections resemble heads; the piles look like legs; and it does not require a very strong effort of imagination to believe that the warehouses are great living creatures which have waded into the sea, and are looking earnestly down into the water to observe how the fish are getting on.
The houses are all built of wood; all are painted white, and all have red-tiled roofs. They are peaked and gable-ended to an extraordinary degree, so that the general aspect of the city is confused and irregular--all the more interesting and picturesque on this account.
A thought strikes me here, and when a thought strikes one, I think we ought always to pay that thought the compliment of jotting it down. It is this--regularity in small details is pleasing; regularity on a grand scale is disagreeable. For instance, a chair with one leg turned, another square, and a third ornamentally carved, would be a disagreeable object. The two front legs at least must be regular, and the two back legs regular. A chair is a small matter. But proceed to a grander subject--a city. If every house is similar to its neighbours, if every street is parallel to the rest, the effect is bad; regularity here is disagreeable. This is a deep subject requiring much study and philosophical inquiry. If I were to go farther into it, our friend Fred Temple's adventures would have