d smack of about
seventy tons burthen, with which we were in the habit of fishing among
the islands beyond Moskoe, nearly to Vurrgh. In all violent eddies at
sea there is good fishing at proper opportunities if one has only the
courage to attempt it, but among the whole of the Lofoden coastmen, we
three were the only ones who made a regular business of going out to the
islands, as I tell you. The usual grounds are a great way lower down to
the southward. There fish can be got at all hours, without much risk,
and therefore these places are preferred. The choice spots over here
among the rocks, however, not only yield the finest variety, but in far
greater abundance, so that we often got in a single day what the more
timid of the craft could not scrape together in a week. In fact, we made
it a matter of desperate speculation--the risk of life standing instead
of labor, and courage answering for capital.

"We kept the smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast than
this; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take advantage of the
fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main channel of the
Moskoe-strom, far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage
somewhere near Otterholm, or Sandflesen, where the eddies are not so
violent as elsewhere. Here we used to remain until nearly time for slack
water again, when we weighed and made for home. We never set out upon
this expedition without a steady side wind for going and coming--one
that we felt sure would not fail us before our return--and we seldom
made a miscalculation upon this point. Twice during six years we were
forced to stay all night at anchor on account of a dead calm, which is a
rare thing indeed just about here; and once we had to remain on the
grounds nearly a week, starving to death, owing to a gale which blew up
shortly after our arrival, and made the channel too boisterous to be
thought of. Upon this occasion we should have been driven out to sea in
spite of everything (for the whirlpools threw us round and round so
violently that at length we fouled our anchor and dragged it) if it had
not been that we drifted into one of the innumerable cross
currents--here to-day and gone to-morrow--which drove us under the lee
of Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up.

"I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we
encountered 'on the grounds'--it is a bad spot to be in, even in good
weather--but we made shift always to run the g