So we went steadily for a long way, and then we came to a place
where the rocky walls of the channel nearly met, so that one could
have thrown a stone from the deck on either as we passed. High up
on the left cliffside a little light glimmered, for a cottage hung
as it were on a shelf of the mountain above us. The measured beat
of the oars sounded hollow here as the sheer cliffs doubled their
sounds. Some man heard it, and a door opened by the little light,
like a square patch of brightness on the shadow of the hillside.
Then he hailed us in a great voice which echoed back to us, and one
of the pilots answered him cheerily with some homely password, and
we saw his form stand black against his door for a moment before he
closed it, and he waved his hand to the friend whose voice he knew.
The pilot told me that it was his duty to listen for passing ships
thus and hail them. Beside his hut was piled a beacon ready to
light if all was not well, and in the hut hung a great, wooden
cattle lure wherewith to alarm the town. We were close to it now.
By this time it was as if I knew the place well, so often had Gerda
told me of it. The fjord opened out from this narrow channel into a
wide lake from which the mountains fell back, seamed and laced with
bright streams and waterfalls, and clad with forests, amid which
the cornfields were scattered wherever the rocks gave way to deeper
soil.
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