[Illustration: Viking Boats on Enare See]
INTO THE LAND OF HORRIBLE FLIES: A NARRATIVE OF PERSONALLY-CONDUCTED TRAVEL
It was manifestly absurd to drag the Marlin and its cartridges any farther. In the first case there was absolutely no probability of finding big game for it to shoot; in the second it was more than likely that carriers would be unprocurable farther inside the country, and we should have to hump all necessaries on our own backs, and the rifle would have to be jettisoned. In mid-Lapland it was unlikely also that we should find a purchaser, and here in Enare one offered. Who does not know the delights of doing a trade? We sold the Marlin for the price it had cost in London town, and threw in the cartridges as ballast to the bargain. It was the postmaster who bought; and in the joy of his purchase he put the Marlin to his shoulder, aimed at a hut some fifty yards away, and pulled trigger. The result was surprising. The bullet went in at one side of the hut and out at the other, and as the inhabitants happened to be within at the time, they came out hurriedly, and looking distinctly worried. The postmaster was only acquainted up to then with the penetrative power of the local weapon. So this performance of the Marlin made him dance with delight.
His thirst was whetted. He had tasted the delights of owning one good weapon, and he wanted another, and he cast his eyes upon it with frank longing. Now our 12-bore shot-gun would not have been classed in England as excellent; indeed it would barely have toed the mark at tolerable. It was an old friend certainly; it had done good service in many climes, and it had seen so many things that its owner was devoutly thankful it could not talk. But it showed the batterings of travel. Its stock was scored and scarred; its barrel was browned more by oil and tallow rubbed on bright-red rust than by the more scientific method of the gunsmith's shop. It had been spoken of by a whisky miller in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee (who used shot-guns in the defence of his business) as homely; it had been described in more than one stately home of England as "that qualified old blunderbuss"; and its owner always started out across the seas from his native island with the advice, "Now, don't bring that rotten old tin spout back this time."