Part 37 (2/2)

Everything was managed in the most business-like fas.h.i.+on, and with great cleanliness. Two men, one on either side of the pier, sat on tubs turned upside down and, each with a knife in his hand, proceeded to clean the fish. They cut its throat, and, with the most marvellous rapidity, cleansed it, the mysteries from the interior being put aside for sale to the poor; then another man came forward and, picking up the fish thus prepared, washed it most carefully in the stream. In a very short s.p.a.ce of time the whole catch of salmon were lying cleaned and washed upon the dripping pier. They were then put on trucks or wheelbarrows and rolled up to the ice-house. Here all the fish were accurately weighed, the number of kilos. being entered in a ledger, and, after sorting out the large from the small, they were packed into ice in enormous wooden tubs, and within a couple of hours most of them were on their way to St.

Petersburg.

The net fis.h.i.+ng ends during the last days of August, when the nets and the piers have to be taken away and packed up carefully for the following summer's use.

It was at this salmon ground that my sister and I were much amused at two little incidents.

We were sitting on a wooden bench, waiting till all should be ready, when one of the fishermen came and stood before us. He was smoking and his hands were in his pockets as he paused within a few feet of us in a most leisurely manner. He did not do so rudely, although perhaps somewhat awkwardly. As he was evidently a Finlander we felt unable to converse with the gentleman, and therefore merely smiled.

”You speak English?” he said in that language.

”Certainly,” we replied, somewhat taken aback.

”So do I,” he rejoined.

As he was a poor-looking person, with tattered clothing and a Finnish countenance, we were somewhat amazed, and we asked if he were a Scotchman, that type more closely resembling the Finn than the Saxon race.

”No,” he replied, ”I am a Finn, but was a sailor for years, and I have been over to America as an emigrant.”

”You speak English wonderfully well,” we answered, really surprised at the purity of the man's accent.

”Yes,” he said, ”I was several years in America, where I lost all the money I had made at sea. It took me a long time to collect enough to come home again, but I have just come back, and if not richer, anyway I hope I'm wiser.” And he thereupon began to explain the advantages and disadvantages of emigration.

Imagine in the far North, almost on the borders of Lapland, being addressed in our own tongue by a man in rags. We were astonished; yet all over Finland one meets with sailors who speak the King's English, and in _Uleborg_ we were struck with the fact on two other occasions--the first being when the man at the helm of a small penny steamer addressed us, and the second when a blue-coated policeman entered into conversation.

This shows how universal our clumsy grammarless language is becoming.

But still, although English is the language of commerce, and with English one can travel all over the world, better than with any other tongue, the only way really to enjoy and appreciate voyaging in foreign lands is either to speak the language of the people, or, if that cannot be managed, to have some one always at hand capable and willing to translate.

Knowledge of the language of a country is a golden key to enjoyment.

As we left the salmon ground a lady, who had apparently been watching the proceedings from afar, desiring to know more of such strange beings as the ”two English ladies,” advanced, and, on the trifling pretext of asking if we had lost our way, addressed us in excellent French.

We thanked her, and replied we had been for several days in _Uleborg_ and knew our way quite well; but she was not to be baffled--she came to have a talk and she meant to have it--therefore she walked beside us the whole way back to the hotel, giving us little bits of information, though much more inclined to ask us questions than to answer those to which we were really in need of replies.

Will any one deny that the Finlander is inquisitive? Perhaps the reader will be inquisitive too when he learns that unintentionally we made a match. Nevertheless, the statement is quite true. We, most innocent and unoffending--we, who abhor interference in all matrimonial affairs--we, without design or intent, made a match.

It came about in this way.

By mere chance I chaperoned a charming and delightful girl down the Gulf of Bothnia. Her coming with us was only decided upon during the last five minutes of our stay, and her clothes were positively repacked on the platform of the station to enable her to do so at all.

We had been given introductions to a delightful Baron at one of the towns _en route_ to _Hango_, and having arrived at our destination, and not being masters of the language, we asked our maiden fair to kindly telephone in her own language and acquaint the Baron with the fact of our arrival. She did so; they were strangers, and each heard the other's dulcet tones for the first time through the mechanical mysteries of the telephone. The Baron joined us an hour later, he invited us to dinner, he escorted us about, he drove us to a park, he sat beside us in the evening while we drank coffee and admired the view. He came to see us off the following day, he gave us books and flowers as a parting gift, and we left.

Pangs of remorse fill my soul as I write these lines. For the twenty-four hours we remained in that town I monopolised this delightful Baron. I plied him with questions, I insisted on his showing me everything there was to be seen of interest, and telling me many things I wished to know about his country, and, with regret, truth compels me to repeat, that, so dense were my powers of perception, I monopolised him almost entirely, while he must have been longing to be alone with the girl he had fallen in love with at first sight--or at first hearing.

We left Finland shortly after this, but had hardly reached our native sh.o.r.e before a letter from the charming girl arrived, in which she said, ”Fancy, the Baron turned up here the other day, and the day after his arrival he proposed, I accepted him, and we shall be married by the end of the month.”

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