ier lay on one side down in the sea, a couple of piles having
been displaced by the waves. The storehouse, too, had suffered some
damage.

Our yacht, however, was most evidently in danger. Two of her ropes had
given way, the anchors having lost their hold, and everything now
depended upon the third and longest rope, which was fastened to the
mooring ring on the rock at the mouth of the bay. There was only the
ship's dog on board, a large white poodle, which stood with its
fore-paws on the stern bulwarks and barked, without our being able to
hear a sound in the wind, while the waves washed over the yacht's bows.

The situation was desperate, for the long rope was stretched as tight as
a violin string, and the middle of it scarcely touched the water. It was
blowing so hard, too, that a man could hardly stand upright, but was
obliged to creep along the clean-swept snow-field, so that there could
be no thought of helping.

I had crept up the hill at the back of the house, and stood in the
shelter of a rocky knoll, from which I could see both out over the sea
and down into the bay.

West Fjord on this wintry day lay as if covered with a silvery grey
smoke from the spray that was driving across the sea. Beneath the cliffs
the waves came in like great, green, foam-topped mountains, breaking on
the shore with a noise like thunder, and then retreating an immense
distance, leaving a long stretch of dry beach.

At one place, where a rock went perpendicularly down to the sea, a
great, broad jet of spray was sent straight up every time a wave broke,
and was driven in over the land by the wind like smoke. At another place
the waves stormed in a Titanic way a sloping rock, which lay, now in
foam, now high and dry, and I saw a poor exhausted gull, which had
probably got out from its mountain cliff into the wind, fighting and
battling in it, often with its wings almost twisted.

In anxious suspense I watched the yacht down in the bay. To my
astonishment, I saw a man on board, and recognised the stalwart Jens,
who had ventured out with one of the men, from the windward side, in a
six-oared boat. After a short stay on board he stepped down alone into
the boat with a rope round his waist, and began the dangerous work of
hauling the boat against the waves, along the tight land-rope, out
towards the rock.

I expected every instant that the boat would fill, and it seemed to me
that the waves washed in several times. As the boat slowly