The Recipe for Diamonds.
by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne.
CHAPTER I.
BIG GAME.
... The first shot was just a rib too far back, and though it staggered him, he didn"t stop to it. Out tinkled cartridge number one and in went a second, and "_cluck_" said the breech-block. And then as he slewed round, I got the next bullet home, bang behind the shoulder. That did it. He tucked down his long Roman nose, and went heels over tip like a shot rabbit; and when a big elk that stands seventeen hands at the withers plays that trick, I tell you it shows a new hand something he hadn"t much idea of before.
We ran up eagerly enough. "_Meget stor bock_," shouted Ulus, and whipped out his knife, and proceeded to do the offices, being filled with strong glee, which he imparted to the driving rain, the swishing trees, and my dripping self.
And, by Jove, his highness was a beauty too! Antlers in velvet, of course, as is the fashion with all Norwegian deer at this time of year; but there were eight points on each, and they"ve got the most approved "impudent" downward curve. What with no _rype_ and few trout, I"d been feeling rather down on my luck all these long weeks till now; but this big elk turned the scale. Glad I came.
September nights drop down early here, and day was getting on, so we hurried up with the work, and loitered not for tempting admiration. Off came the coa.r.s.e-haired pelt, pull by pull; and away dropped head and neck, after a haggle through sinew and vertebrae; and then we got heavy stones and built in the meat securely, lest the lynxes should thieve the lot. It all took time, and meanwhile the weather worsened steadily.
The rain was snorting down in heavy squalls, and often there were crashes from amongst the pines. But the _stor bock"s_ trophies repaid one for these things.
At last we got through the obsequies, shouldered the spoils between us, and started.
It was slow pa.s.sage. On this primaeval ground one is so constantly being baulked. There are so many knotted jungles of splintered rock, such frequent swamps, so much fallen timber. And, moreover, the watercourses and torrents were all new-bloated with the rain, so that we had to cast about for fords, and then to grip one another at stiff arm"s length, so as not to get swept adrift whilst wading amongst the eddying boulders.
And when at last we did come to the lake, we saw there in the gray dusk a thing which caused Ulus to offer up hot words in Norsk, which were not words of prayer.
To remind you again of where we were:--
Some eight miles distant in crow-flight was the salt-water fjord. From it two mountain walls sprout out towards the north. At first the valley between these is filled with land which is mostly forest. Then comes a lake, hemmed by two precipices. Then another two-mile-wide strip of forest. Then another lake, with shiny granite walls running up sheer two thousand feet, so that of the fosses which jump in cream over the brinks above, only the stouter ones reach more than half-way down.
We were on the farther side of this last sheet of water, and across it lay our only practicable way to the coast--to home, dinner, dry things, and other matters longed for. And on this lake a lake-sea was running, short, quick, and steep, which is the wettest of all seas for small craft to tackle. The boat which had carried us up was one of those _retrousse_-nosed punts peculiar to the country, the very worst possible breed of craft for the weather. She would not face it for thirty seconds. Her turn-up snout would fall off the moment we left the shingle, she would fill and swamp, and we should be left a swim without having in any degree furthered our cause. Wherefore I also bowed to the inevitable, but like Ulus I said things. There was no chance of reaching the abodes of men by any other route. We were booked till the gale chose to ease--at any rate till morning; and for myself, I contemplated a moist bivouac under streaming Jove, with one clammy elk-skin for a joint coverlet.
But luckily Ulus was a man of the land besides being a vagrant hunter.
He led back into the forest. A score of yards from the margin, in an overgrown clearing, was an abandoned _saeter_ hut. It was in none of the best of repair, was seven feet square inside, and held five feet of head-room under the roof-tree. It was about half filled with dried birch-bark, piled up against the farther end. It also contained a rude wooden trough and ball for pounding up coffee, three sections of pine-stem for seats, and a rusted old stove which had not been worth carrying away.
Four words made a division of labour. Ulus set off to revisit the _stor bock_, Se going with him in case there should be any doubt about the track. It was my task to create a blaze with the dry, spluttering birch-bark, and collect a stack of solider fuel to feed it with. Afterwards I went and stopped the more obvious gaps in the roof with turf and logs, and by the time these things were done hunter and hound had returned. Then we wrung the supersaturation of wet from our clothes, and Se had a centrifugal shake; and so prepared, we went inside. Thanks to wasteful use of an absent person"s store of birch-bark, the place was warm as an oven. Such an atmosphere was grateful and comforting. Se indeed revelled in the heat too much at first, and pressing over near its source, thrust out a moist black nose, and got the full effect. There followed a hiss and a howl, and a sulky retreat to the farther angle. Then we two bipeds hacked off gobbets from the venison, and taking us sharpened sticks, roasted and charred and toasted the meat in the doorway of the stove and over the gap in its lid. And in time we made a satisfying meal, though the courses straggled, and their texture was savage. And so on to pipes, and water boiled in a pewter flask-cup with whisky added, whilst the injured Se champed over juicy rib-bones in his corner.
The hum and crackle from the stove, the grinding of the gray dog"s teeth, the b.u.mping and hissing of the gale outside, the boom of the cascades at the precipices, made up most of the sounds for that evening. Of chat there was a paucity. My knowledge of Norsk extends to few parts of speech beyond the common noun; and Ulus, ignorant person that he is, has no Sa.s.senach: pantomime makes our usual phrase-book.
Talk under these circ.u.mstances is a strain, and we were too tired for unnecessary athletics. So we smoked, and pondered over the slaying of the great deer.
In a while we discarded the stump-stools and trundled them aside. A bunk ran along the farther side of the hut where the bark had been stowed, but I had my doubts about its vacancy, and surrendered it to Ulus. His hide is tough; he had no qualms. I spread for myself a spring mattress of birch-bark upon the floor. Se annexed the clammy skin. And so we were all satisfied.
One does not wind up watches in these regions, and as time is arbitrarily marked off by the cries of the gastric juices, I cannot tell you how the hours were reckoned up that evening. I think we two humans verged into a semi-torpid condition after that barbaric meal.
Repletion, heat, and fatigue were too strong a combination for complete wakefulness; and though perhaps not exactly asleep, we were, like hibernating animals, very dully conscious of pa.s.sing events. Se"s condition was inscrutable. His eyes were closed, but that is no criterion. He may have been asleep. But yet he possessed certain senses more keenly active than ours. As evidence of this, when the night had worn on to a tolerable age, we heard him give a growl in _crescendo_, and then a short yap.
Se in general is undemonstrative to a degree. Hence the short culminating bark, which might have been overlooked if emanating from another dog, in his case commanded attention.
I rose on an elbow, but could hear no new sound except the soft rustle of Ulus"s wet clothes. He was moving too. There was a pause. Presently he whispered "_Bjorn_," and I saw in the stove"s faint glow the b.u.t.t of the Martini steal across to me.
You can lay your life to it I was awake enough then. What sportsman in Norway would not tingle with delight at the chance of getting a bear?
Ulus had slipped a thong round Se"s throat, and that wily hound was mute. He was as keen on _bjorn_ as either of us, and being gray, and vastly experienced, he knew better than to bay or otherwise create a disturbance.
"_Patron?_" whispered Ulus.
I loaded cautiously, not sending the lever quite home, so as to avoid a click, and nodded. Then we slipped our knife-sheaths round to the hip--for a shot in the dark is apt to wound only and cause a red-mouthed charge--and then the door was opened.
We stooped and went outside. The rain was tumbling in sheets; the night was dark as the pit, and very noisy; we could make out nothing. Se strained forward in the leash, neck thrust out, nose on high, up wind towards the lake sh.o.r.e. As we neared the edge of the clearing a falling branch struck me across the face. The pine-needles stung, and I stopped, blinded for the moment. Then Ulus gripped my shoulder and I wiped the tears away, and saw dimly a dark shape coming out of the trees. The Martini swung up, and I squinted along the barrel. A mountain-ash was in the line of fire, swishing, swaying, so that it was impossible to aim; but the animal was coming along bravely--had not seen us probably--and so I determined to hold the shot till I could make sure.
The beast came nearer, dodging amongst the stems.
Suddenly, as it got into an opener s.p.a.ce, I noted that it was erect.
This surprised me, for I had heard that bears never reared on to their hind feet till wounded. Still you can bet that I intended to shoot first and inquire afterwards.
But just at that moment Ulus screamed "_Nei bjorn_," and hitting up the rifle barrel, brought my finger sufficiently hard on the hair trigger to cause explosion. The shot went Lord knows where. I swore, and when the echoes had finished bellowing, I heard the bear swearing too. Then I began to sweat, for it dawned upon me that I had been within an ace of deliberately potting a man.
Ulus also used powerful language, and by letting drop the word "_Finne_," gave me to understand that he supposed the intruder to be a Laplander; but it seemed to me that the shape that loomed through the trees was too big for one of those dwarfish aborigines. And, moreover, although I only caught the import of the stranger"s words by tone and not by literal meaning, I could have taken affidavit that none of them were Norsk.
However, we did not stay in ignorance long. Before the powder smoke had been all driven away by the rain the intruder was out of the trees, and had pulled up in front of us, chuckling. Then--"Hallo! an Englishman?
How we islanders do get to out-of-the-way c.h.i.n.ks of the globe!"
He paused, and I began to apologize--to say how sorry I was, and work up a neat speech generally--when he cut me short.
"Nearly sent me to the happy hunting grounds, sir? Well, perhaps so, p"raps not. I"ve seen men missed at shorter rise."
I was a bit piqued at this, and said something about being pretty useful with a rifle.
He laughed again. "We won"t quarrel over it, sir, anyway. I expect we"re both of us satisfied as it is. My hide would have been no use to you; and for myself, I"m quite content to wear it a bit longer. It fits tolerably enough. But you"ve a camp somewhere hereaway, haven"t you? I thought I caught the gleam of a flying spark from down by the shingle yonder. That"s what brought me up."
I explained how we had got pinned in by the gale, and the quartette of us went back to the _saeter_ hut. The newcomer feasted there off elk-venison (contriving to cook it, I noticed, much more cannily than we had done, though with exactly the same appliances), and between whiles he was told of the chase of the _meget stor bock_--the tracking, the view, and the place of the bullet wounds. Afterwards, when we got to pipes and the last drainings of the grog, he explained his presence.
"I expect the wandering Englishman is about as scarce up here as the hoopoo, even when he"s got a rifle or a rod in his fist; and as I"ve neither the one nor the other, I must be very much of a _rara avis_, and quite the sort of animal to shoot on sight. Fact is, I was round on the fjord there with my boat, and from what my eyes showed me, and from what a local _topografisk_ chart told, the country on the norrard side was much as G.o.d stuck it together. I wanted to see a strip of that sort up here, so I fixed a rendezvous and slipped ash.o.r.e. As it turned out, the map is a pretty bad one, and I lost time in _culs-de-sac_. Finally came this lake with the steep flanks. I couldn"t see to p.r.i.c.k out another course, and I was just casting about for a rock that held a dry lee when I saw your light. And now, as I hear you chaps yawning and as I"m about spun out, "twouldn"t be a bad notion to turn in."
CHAPTER II.
HALCYONII DIES.
It is a tolerably insane amus.e.m.e.nt for a foreigner to go tramping over wild fields and valleys in Northern Norway with no other guide than the thing they call an ordnance map and a bit of a pocket-compa.s.s. And to do the same without intent to slay the beasts, the birds, or the fish of the country seems, to my way of thinking, even more mad still.
Perhaps I am peculiarly const.i.tuted, but that"s the way it strikes me personally. So I was rather curious to know what make of man it was that did these things.
Overnight I had seen little of him that was not heavily shadowed. The stranger preferred to do his own cooking, saying that he was used to it, and had elected to heat his meat at the doorway of the stove.
Through this gap little radiance escaped. The only matters illuminated were the slices of venison, the toasting-splinter, and the hands that held it alternately. These last, being the solitary things one"s eyes could make out, naturally were glanced over more than once. They were slightly above the medium size for hands, and long in proportion to their breadth. The fingers were tapered like a woman"s. The nails were filbert-shaped, and grimy with recent climbing. The palms were hard.
The knuckle-side was very brown, and showed the tendons prominently.
They were those lean, nervous sort of hands which you find out at times can grip like thumbscrews.
My couch was an uneasy one, and I awoke early. The visitor was snoring away on the log-floor, looking comfortable and contented.
He was a man of about two-and-thirty, dark, tall, and well-built. His clothes were those of the merchant seamen--that is, they smacked in no degree whatever of the sea. Indeed, the only outward things which connected him with the water were certain weather stains. He wore a moustache cropped somewhat over close, and the teeth then showing beneath it, though white, were chaotic; and, moreover, there was the purple ridge of a scar running from the corner of his mouth which might advantageously have been hidden. A beard also would have become him, for his chin verged slightly to the cut-away type, and a three-days"
stubble looks merely unkempt. He would never have been a beauty, but groomed up he would have made a very pa.s.sable appearance amongst other men, although the scar near his mouth, and another similar emblem of roughness over the opposite eye, would have made him a trifle remarkable.