impossible. Waiting respectfully for his revival I had full time to
look about. The fiord here was about a mile broad. From the shore we
had left the hills rose steeply, but with no rugged grandeur; the
outlines were soft; there were green spaces and rich woods on the
lower slopes; a little white town was opening up in one place, and
scattered farms dotted the prospect. The other shore, which I could
just see, framed between the gunwale and the mainsail, as I sat
leaning against the hatchway, and sadly missing a deck-chair, was
lower and lonelier, though prosperous and pleasing to the eye.
Spacious pastures led up by slow degrees to ordered clusters of wood,
which hinted at the presence of some great manor house. Behind us,
Flensburg was settling into haze. Ahead, the scene was shut in by the
contours of hills, some clear, some dreamy and distant. Lastly, a
single glimpse of water shining between the folds of hill far away
hinted at spaces of distant sea of which this was but a secluded
inlet. Everywhere was that peculiar charm engendered by the
association of quiet pastoral country and a homely human atmosphere
with a branch of the great ocean that bathes all the shores of our
globe.

There was another charm in the scene, due to the way in which I was
viewing it--not as a pampered passenger on a 'fine steam yacht', or
even on 'a powerful modern schooner', as the yacht agents advertise,
but from the deck of a scrubby little craft of doubtful build and
distressing plainness, which yet had smelt her persistent way to this
distant fiord through I knew not what of difficulty and danger, with
no apparent motive in her single occupant, who talked as vaguely and
unconcernedly about his adventurous cruise as though it were all a
protracted afternoon on Southampton Water.