y he?"

"Yes," I replied.

Twenty-eight men, the crews of four boats, including the captains, lived
together. A cooking-stove was in the centre of the room; a few wooden
benches and a table composed the rest of the furniture, while a number
of chests contained the garments of the men, several coffee kettles, a
pan and a big pot, etc.

All these twenty-eight men insisted that I should have a whole bunk to
myself--the occupant would shift and go to another fellow. I must be
comfortable, they said. I was not accustomed to living in their way.

A man took his things from his bunk. He was the captain of one of the
boats. He said to me: "Paul, my bunk is yours." I had to accept.

When they had cooked their meal, they said: "Paul, eat with us simple
fisher folk; we will give you the best we have; you are welcome." We had
only one dish, and it was entirely new to me.

It was what the sailors called lobscouse, a sort of pudding made of ship
biscuits, liver, and fish. I did not care much for it, but I said
nothing to the fishermen. One said: "We eat this dish every day, and
that will be your food when you are with us."

"Humph!" I said to myself. I remembered the elephants, the crocodiles,
the snakes, and the monkeys, etc., I had had to eat while in Africa. The
monkeys when fat were fine, and tasted so good I should have been
willing to exchange a dish of lobscouse for a monkey.

After our meal we had coffee; each man owned his own cup. "We drink only
coffee," they said, "for no spirits are allowed to be sold here, for
fear some of the men while going to sea might become drunk, and endanger
their lives, and the lives of those that are with them."

Our coffee drunk, we talked first about fish and their peculiar habits.
The names of the four captains were John Ericksen, Hakon Johansen, Ole
Larsen, Harald Andersen.

"Every spring," said Captain Ole, "salmon come up from the sea and
ascend our rivers to spawn, and in time the little ones go to sea. As
they grow up they continue to come every year to the same river where
they were born, and nobody knows where they spend the interval."

After a pause, during which the fishermen filled their pipes, Captain
Ericksen said: "Every year the codfish make their appearance in winter
in vast shoals and countless millions on the Lofoden Islands banks to
spawn. Then they migrate further north to the coast of Finmarken, then
eastward as far as Russia. Then they disappear until the foll