On the Seaboard. August Strindberg

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СКАЧАТЬ all the many paper covered ones in light, gay, easy, spring coats, the salmon red Revue des deux Mondes, the lemon yellow Comtemporaine, the rush green Fortnightly, the grass green Morgenländische. From the backs big names saluted him as acquaintances whom he had in his chamber, and here he had the best part of them, more than they could give a traveler who came on a visit to trouble their dinner naps or breakfast.

      With the writing table and the book shelves placed in order, he felt himself recovered after the voyage's disturbing influences; his soul regained its strength since his implements were accessible, these instruments and books which had grown fast to his being as new senses, as other organs stronger and finer than those nature had given him as an inheritance.

      The occasional attack of fear which was caused from isolation, solitude and from being pent-up with enemies—for thus he considered the fishermen, with reason—gave way before the quiet which the installment must induce, and now, the headquarters being raised, he sat down as a well-armed general to plan for the campaign.

CHAPTER THIRD

       Table of Contents

      The wind had shifted north-east during the night and the drifting ice had floated down from Aland, when the commissioner took his boat to make a preparatory investigation of the quality of the sea's bottom depth of water, sea flora and sea fauna.

      A pilot who was with him as oarsman, soon became tired of giving explanations, when he saw that the commissioner by means of chart, sounding lead and other different instruments, found out facts that he had never thought of. Where the shoals lay was known to the pilot, and he also knew on which shoal the stromling nets should be set, but the commissioner was not satisfied with this and began to dredge at different depths, taking up small creatures and vegetable slime on which he believed the stromling fed. He lowered the lead to the bottom and drew up samples of clay, sand, mud, mold and gravel, which he assorted, numbered and placed in small glasses with labels.

      Finally he took out a big spyglass which resembled a speaking trumpet, and looked down into the sea. The pilot had never dreamed that one could gaze into the water with an instrument and in his astonishment asked permission to place his eye to the glass and look down into the mysteries.

      The commissioner on the one hand would not play wizard, and on the other did not desire hastily to solve the problem which time would clear up, or to inspire too high hopes about the results, he therefore granted the pilot's entreaty and gave some popular explanation of the living pictures which were unfolding down in the depths.

      "Do you see that seaweed upon the shoal?" began the commissioner, "and do you see that it is first olive yellow, lower down liver colored and at the bottom red? That comes from the diminution of light!"

      He took a few pulls at the oars, off the shallow, and kept constantly to lee of the rock so as to keep free from the drifting ice.

      "What do you see now?" he asked the man who lay on his stomach.

      "Oh Jesus! I think it is stromling, and they are standing close, as close as cards in a pack."

      "Do you see now that the stromling go not on the shallows only, and do you understand now that one could catch them from the depths, and do you believe now when I tell you that one ought never to fish them on the shallows where they only go up to spawn where the eggs are reached by the sun's heat better than in deep water?"

      The commissioner rowed on until he saw the water become greenish gray on account of the nature of the clay bottom.

      "What do you see now?" he continued, meanwhile resting on the oars.

      "I believe, on my soul, there are serpents on the sea bottom! there are real serpents' tails sticking out of the mud—and there are their heads."

      "They are eels, my boy!" informed the commissioner.

      The pilot looked incredulous for he had never heard of eels in the sea, but the commissioner would not give out his best card in advance or lavish long explanations over intricate things, therefore he left the oars and, taking his water telescope, leaned over the gunwale for observation.

      He seemed to seek something with uncommon ardor, something that must be there, on this or that shoal but which he naturally had not seen there before, never having investigated that water.

      They rowed around for two hours as the commissioner indicated, sometimes letting down his dredge, sometimes the lead line, and after each haul lying face downwards and looking through the glass into the water. His pale face contracted from the efforts and the eyes sunk into his head while the hand which held the tube trembled and the arms seemed stiff and numb as a stake. The cold, humid wind, which passed through the pilot's jacket did not seem to bite the frail figure which was only wrapped in a half-buttoned spring coat. His eyes watered from the sea wind and the endeavor to look sharply down into the half-impenetrable element which forms three-quarters of the earth's surface, about the life of which the other quarter generally knows so little and guesses so much.

      Through the water telescope, which was not of his invention, but one he had made from what he had heard from bridge builders and laborers in marine blasting, he saw down into a lower world from which the great creation above the waters had been evolved. The forest of seaweed which had just advanced over the border from inorganic to organic life, swayed in the cold bottom current and resembled whites of eggs just coagulated, borrowing their shape from the surf and recalling frost flowers, when water freezes on the window pane. Down in the depths the kelp spread out like big parks with golden leaves, over which the inhabitants of the sea bottom dragged themselves on their bellies seeking cold and obscurity, concealing their shame of being behind in their long wandering toward the sun and air. Lowest down in the clay the flounder rests, partly dug into the ooze, lazy, immovable, without inventive faculty to develop a swim-bladder with which to raise himself, waiting a happy chance that leads the prey past his nose, without the impulse of turning the random to his advantage, and from pure laziness having twisted and stretched himself until his eyes for convenience' sake have stopped on the right side of the twisted head.

      The blenny has already put one pair of oars out forward, but is loaded down by the stern and reminds one of the first trial at boat building, showing between the kelp's heraldic foliage his architectonic stone head with a Croat's mustache, lifting himself a moment from the mud to sink again immediately into it.

      The lump sucker with its seven ridges goes with a keel to the air, the whole fish one enormous nose, smelling only for food and females, lighting for a moment the blue-green water with its rose-colored belly, spreading a faint aurora around him down in the gloom, and hugging again quickly a stone with his sucker to await the issue of the millions of years, which shall bring delivery to those left behind in the endless path of evolution.

      The dreadful sea scorpion, that fury incarnate, with malice expressed in the spines of its face, whose swimming limbs are claws, but more for torturing than for attack or defense, lying on one side pining for enjoyment, and caressing his own body with his slimy tail.

      Higher up in lighter and warmer water swims the handsome but profound thinking perch, perhaps the most characteristic fish of the Baltic Sea, well built and steady but still somewhat clumsy as a Koster boat, bearing the peculiar blue-green color of the Baltic and a Norseman's temper, part philosopher part pirate, a sociable hermit, a superficial creature who likes to seek the depths, and sometimes reaches them, idle and eccentric. He stands during long leisure moments and stares at the stones on the beach until awakening he darts off like an arrow, tyrant against his own but soon tamed, returns willingly to the same СКАЧАТЬ