At First
I Took Little Heed Of This, Thinking That Sea-Sickness Would Soon Be
Overcome By A Traveller Like Myself, Who Should Be Inured To Every
Thing.
But in vain did I bear up; I became worse and worse, till I
was at length obliged to remain in my berth with but one consoling
thought, namely, that we were to-day on the open sea, where there
was nothing worthy of notice.
But the following day the Norwegian
coast was in sight, and at all hazards I must see it; so I crawled
on deck more dead than alive, looked at a row of mountains of
moderate elevation, their tops at this early season still sparkling
with their snowy covering, and then hurried back, benumbed by the
piercing icy wind, to my good warm feather-bed. Those who have
never experienced it can have no conception of the biting,
penetrating coldness of a gale of wind in the northern seas. The
sun shone high in the heavens; the thermometer (I always calculate
according to Reaumur) stood 3 degrees above zero; I was dressed much
more warmly than I should have thought necessary when, in my
fatherland, the thermometer was 8 degrees or 10 degrees BELOW zero,
and yet I felt chilled to the heart, and could have fancied that I
had no clothes on at all.
On the fourth night we sailed safely past the Shetland Islands; and
on the evening of the fifth day we passed so near the majestic rocky
group of the Feroe Islands, that we were at one time apprehensive of
being cast upon the rocks by the unceasing gale.
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