The Great Hunger

For sheer havoc, there is no gale like a good northwester, when it roars in, through the long winter evenings, driving the spindrift before it between the rocky walls of the fjord. It churns the water to a froth of rushing wave crests, while the boats along the beach are flung in somersaults up to the doors of the grey fisher huts, and solid old barn gangways are lifted and sent flying like unwieldy birds over the fields. “Mercy on us! ” cry the maids, for it is milking-time, and they have to fight their way on hands and knees across the yard to the cowshed, dragging a lantern that WILL go out and a milk-pail that WON'T be held. And “Lord preserve us! ” mutter the old wives seated round the stove within doors— and their thoughts are far away in the north with the Lofoten fishermen, out at sea, maybe, this very night.