The anchor-hook, so sharp and strong, deep in his palate drove,
The keen steel flukes their bloody way into his gullet clove.
Stung with the pain, the serpent rush’d, lashing the frothing deep,
O’er shoals and splintering bergs and rocks, where herds of walrus sleep.
Thor, by the rowlocks, grim and stern, held stalwartly and fast,
Clenching the cable in his grip until the worse were past.
Then, with a power divine, he seized the line that held his prey,
Until the waves rose frothing up and hid that savage fray;
He pull’d until he forced his feet through the boat’s yielding planks,
And, planted firm, he stood at last upon the granite banks.
Slowly uprising through the sea the Midgard Serpent came,
Spouting out venom in black floods, and breathing clouds of flame;
O’er leagues of ocean spread his coils in scaly mountains piled,
Far o’er the ice that roll’d and crash’d in tumult loud and wild.
When Hymir saw the serpent rise, cold turn’d his coward blood,
For fast his skiff was settling down into the whirlpool flood,
And just as Thor upraised his mace, his hunting-knife he drew,
And with a stroke the massive rope he sever’d clean in two.
Down, down the wounded serpent sank, writhing round sunken rock,
Deep in the dark abyss to wail till the day of Ragnarök,
The axe-age and the sword-age dire, when shields shall cleave in twain,
And Loki over Nifleheim with his wolf brood shall reign.
Then the god turn’d and struck the boor a fierce and crushing blow,—
A buffet that would split an oak. Into the rolling flow
Headlong he fell, and headlong sank; then, with swift strides the god
Forded the whirling torrent, and once more dry land trod.
SHARKS AND CONGERS.
It is not long ago that I was staying with a friend at the Land’s End. We had taken a little house about a quarter of a mile from Sennen Cove, and had tried most of the sports of the place, such as fowling, shooting, and fishing in the bay or from the rocks, but we had not yet been able to have an expedition against the larger fish, for which these waters are famous. They are only fished for at the dead tides, as they inhabit such deep water, and the currents are so strong at the edge of that branch of the Gulf stream, that it would be impossible for the leads to reach the bottom or a bite to be felt. The weather had been roughish for a month, but was tolerably calm now, and meanwhile our imagination had been inflamed by wonderful tales told by the Cove “sea-dogs” in their languid Cornish drawl, while we all sat or lay on the shingle smoking and longing for an east wind. They had told us of horrible sounds heard through a fog, which at last rolled away in the moonlight and showed a whale attacked by threshers: one had been chased by grampus, a “school” of which clumsy fish had insisted on following his boat, probably meaning to have a game of play with it, till he thought of throwing out some bloody water and insides of fish, which frightened them off. Another man had gone to fish by the Longships Lighthouse, and in the shallow water saw fish twenty feet long, “speckled and spotted, and with snouts and long saws on their noses,” chasing the cod and coal-fish. Then we had long heard of boats coming back from a night at the Seven Stones, laden with congers to the gunwale, for the Seven Stones are a favourite haunt of the big fish, which find abundant food in the seaweed round these granite columns, which rise far above the surface in forty fathoms of water.
There are several columns of rock like the Seven Stones in these parts, round all of which there is abundance of fish. Not to dwell on the seven rocks, on the highest of which stands the Longships Lighthouse, or the small rock near them called the Shark’s Fin, there is the celebrated Wolf Rock, nine miles out, on which they are attempting to raise a lighthouse, and which had once a huge bronze wolf with open mouth upon it, which was to warn sailors by the roars and bellowings of the wind in its throat. The Seven Stones are twenty-one miles from the shore, but amply repay a long sail to them. A gentleman lately there came back with 112 congers of different sizes. Another fisherman is said to have come back with his boat perfectly full, which would hold about two tons of fish.
My friend C unluckily could not come that day; but I started off for the bay, with my roughest clothes and a thick great coat, carrying a basket well stocked with beef, whiskey, and tobacco. There, as I had been told, I found all hands “lying like great pigs in the sun,” and determined not to fish that day: for, unless it is such fine weather as to drive them for very shame, they do not go out till there is nothing in the cupboard at home. Partly, however, excited by the prospect of meat and spirits, partly by finding that one of their number had all along secretly determined to try his luck, one Billy Penrose and his sons prepared to come with me, on condition that if it got rough I was to be content with catching one conger and then go home. When one started the rest were all activity, for in Cornwall, where a joke lasts a long time, it would never do to give one man a chance of crowing over the rest for the next few years. About one o’clock p.m. we all started, with as much shouting and swearing as if the whole Channel fleet were called out for active service at half an hour’s notice. As we danced over the waves with full sail, Billy took the opportunity of praising his two sons, who were then fighting at the other end of the boat. “Them’s two nobble lads, sir, and I’ve