ng to anchor there and get into better sea trim; but as
the weather improved we went on our way. It was not till the afternoon
that we steered into Ekersund, owing to thick weather and a stiff
breeze, and anchored in Hovland's Bay, where our pilot, Hovland, [18]
lived. Next morning the boat davits, etc., were put in good working
order. The Fram, however, was too heavily laden to be at all easy
in a seaway; but this we could not alter. What we had we must keep,
and if we only got everything on deck shipshape and properly lashed,
the sea could not do us much harm, however rough it might be; for we
knew well enough that ship and rigging would hold out.

It was late in the evening of the last day of June when we rounded
Kvarven and stood in for Bergen in the gloom of the sullen night. Next
morning when I came on deck Vagen lay clear and bright in the sun,
all the ships being gayly decked out with bunting from topmost to
deck. The sun was holding high festival in the sky--Ulriken, Floeiren,
and Loevstakken sparkled and glittered, and greeted me as of old. It
is a marvellous place, that old Hanseatic town!

In the evening I was to give a lecture, but arrived half an hour too
late. For just as I was dressing to go a number of bills poured in,
and if I was to leave the town as a solvent man I must needs pay them,
and so the public perforce had to wait. But the worst of it was that
the saloon was full of those everlastingly inquisitive tourists. I
could hear a whole company of them besieging my cabin door while I was
dressing, declaring "they must shake hands with the doctor!" [19] One
of them actually peeped in through the ventilator at me, my secretary
told me afterwards. A nice sight she must have seen, the lovely
creature! Report says she drew her head back very quickly. Indeed,
at every place where we put in we were looked on somewhat as wild
animals in a menagerie. For they peeped unceremoniously at us in our
berths as if we had been bears and lions in a den, and we could hear
them loudly disputing among themselves as to who was who, and whether
those nearest and dearest to us whose portraits hung on the walls could
be called pretty or not. When I had finished my toilette I opened the
door cautiously and made a rush through the gaping company. "There
he is--there he is!" [20] they called to each other as they tumbled
up the steps after me. It was no use; I was on the quay and in the
carriage long before they had reached t