have the heart to tell him how
incredulous I was; but, when I got on board the yacht, I repeated the
circumstance, as a jest, to the sailor who stood at the gangway to
receive me.

"Well, your Honour," replied the man, after listening with attention to
my narrative, "he arn't put his helm too hard a-port."

"What!" I said, "do you intend to tell me you believe that a salute will
frighten herrings, from this fiord, or any other fiord, so that they
never return?"

"Why, your Honour," answered the sailor, touching his hat, "I must run
alongside this ere foreigner, and sequeeze [acquiesce] with him like;
for when I was aboard the Racehorse, sloop o' war, we fired a salute off
the Western coast of England, and I'm blowed, your Honour, if they
didn't ax Sir Everard to cease the hullabaloo."

"Why?" I asked.

"Ay; your Honour," said the credulous tar, "that's just what I'm bearing
up to--why, your Honour, bekase we frightened away the pilchards! May I
never lift another handspike if that ain't gospel, that's all your
Honour!"

"You be hanged!" I muttered.

"What! your Honour," exclaimed the man, warming with his faith, "have
you never heerd, that the report of a cannon will make a lobster shake
off his big, starboard claw?"

"No, nor you either," I answered walking away; for I thought the man was
striving to palm off a joke.

"Ay; but it's gospel your Honour," I heard the man reply; and, I
believe, sailors do hand down to each other a tradition of that kind;
for there is a figure of speech, and it is nothing more, with which the
English men-of-war's men used to hail the lobster smacks going up the
Thames.

"Smack a-hoy! hand us a few lobsters, or--you know what'll happen!"

CHAPTER XI.

RETURN TO NORWAY--SAIL UP THE GULF--APPROACH TO
CHRISTIANIA--ITS APPEARANCE FROM THE WATER--ANECDOTE
OF BERNADOTTE--DESCRIPTION OF THE CITY--THE
FORTRESS--CHARLES THE XIITH--THE CONVICTS--STORY
OF THE CAPTURED CANNON--THE HIGHWAYMAN--PROSPECT
FROM THE MOUNTAINS--THE NORWEGIAN PEASANT GIRL.

Wednesday dawned cloudless; and the round, red Sun rose on our right
hand, and glared through his magnifying lattice, the mist, to see us
come back again to Norway.

The smooth and glassy surface of the tideless Fiord, hemmed in by lofty
mountains, stands forth the grand characteristic of Norway. The
weather-beaten rocks, rising abruptly from the water, have beauty and
boldness on their broad, blank fronts; and how infinit