real _molinask_, as it was Sunday and the young folk hung round the
walls like half-dead flies in the heat. But there had been grease burnt,
which made it more slippery than soft soap on the deck, and there lay
the whole master-pilot in the middle of the _molinask_, and bit off the
stalk of his clay pipe, but he kept his tooth, which has already been
spoken about, and to his shame had to be lifted by four firm-handed
fellows with much laughing, wherefore I have sat myself down in my chair
to wait for the autumn, because I cannot speak or write about the
drought, but only get angry and unreasonable.

Yours very truly,
LAURITZ BOLDEMANN SEEHUS.




KRYDSVIG, October 20, 1889.

MR. EDITOR,

I could have continued my silence a very long time yet, for it has not
been a great autumn either on land or sea, but little summer storms, as
if for frolic, with small seas and loose wreckage, but unusually far
out, about three miles from land. But the long, dark lamp-lit evenings
are come, and this shoal of fish which I must write to you about and ask
what the end is going to be; for now we almost think that the sea up
north Stavanger way must be choke-full, as it was of herrings in the
good old days that are no more, but it is now big with coal-fish, mostly
north by the Reef, they say, but the undersigned and old Velas, who is a
still older man, got about four boxes of right nice coal-fish yesterday,