The Essential Edward Stratemeyer Collection. Stratemeyer Edward
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entrance to Christiania Fjord--_fjord_ being the local name for bay.
But at last the snow stopped coming down and the wind subsided a little, and the steamer headed up the bay to Drbak, located on the east shore of the harbor. Here there was a good deal of floating ice, and plowing among it were vessels of all kinds and sizes, all covered with ice and snow.
"It's wintry enough up here, goodness knows," remarked Roger. "I wonder how far north Christiania is?"
"I was looking it up on the map," answered Dave. "It is located about sixty degrees north, which is just about the latitude of the lower coast of Greenland."
"What, as far north as that! No wonder it is cold."
"Don't forget, Roger, that Norway is the Land of the Midnight Sun. At the far north they have a night lasting about three months."
"Well, I don't want such a night as that, just yet."
"No--you might do too much sleep-walking," and Dave grinned.
"Oh, cut that out!" and the face of the senator's son grew red.
"I shan't mention it again."
Drbak is but a small place, containing less than twenty-five hundred inhabitants, but during the winter all the shipping of the fjord congregates there, and as a consequence the scene was a lively one. The boys were quickly landed, and then from one of the dock officials learned where they could get a train running to the capital. Their baggage had been examined and passed upon by the usual custom officials.
"Well, this is certainly a second-rate railroad," was Dave's comment, as they seated themselves in the stuffy coach and had the door locked upon them. Then the train moved off at a slow rate of speed that was tantalizing to both. With half a dozen stops, it took them nearly an hour to reach Christiania, only eighteen miles away. Looking out of the window, the landscape was a dreary one, of marshland on one side and rocks on the other, all covered with ice and snow. The coach had no heat in it, and Roger declared that his feet were half frozen.
"Puts me in mind of the time I visited a lumber camp in upper Maine," he told his chum. "It was in the winter-time, and they only ran one train a day, of two cars, a freight and a combination of everything else. We were delayed on the road, almost snowed in, and I didn't thaw out for a week afterwards."
At the railroad station in Christiania they had some trouble passing the guard. Again their baggage was looked over, and they were taken to an office and asked a dozen or more questions by a man who looked as if he might be a police-inspector. What it was all about they could not make out, but at first the officer was not inclined to let them go.
"Perhaps you had better go back to where you came from," said the man to Dave.
"Why, what's the trouble?" demanded the youth. "I am sure I have done no wrong."
"What brought you to Norway?"
"I am looking for my father. His name is David Porter, like my own. He has joined the Lapham-Hausermann Expedition, bound for the interior of Norway."
"Exactly," and the officer looked wise. "Who is this young man?"
"This is my friend, Roger Morr. He is traveling with me for company."
"You are very young to be traveling alone."
"I can't help that. I want to find my father, and do it as soon as I can."
"Is he expecting you?"
"I don't know. I sent him a cablegram, but I do not know if he received it."
"That expedition--do you know anything about it?" asked the officer, shrewdly.
"No, sir--nothing more than what I saw in the English papers."
"Didn't your father tell you anything about it?"
"No, he couldn't." And Dave hesitated.
"Why?"
"Because--well, he doesn't know me--that is, he doesn't know I am alive."
"This is extraordinary, young man!" exclaimed the officer of the police, for such the man was. "I think you had better explain."
"I am in a great hurry, sir," pleaded Dave.
"He wants to catch his father before the expedition leaves Christiania," put in Roger.
"Before it leaves?"
"Yes."
The police official drew up his shoulders and made a wry face.
"Has it left already?" questioned Dave, eagerly.
"To be sure--four days ago," was the answer, which filled Dave's heart with fresh dismay.
CHAPTER XIX
OFF TO THE NORTHWARD
Dave and Roger were told to follow the police officer, and did so, to a large stone building, located on one of the principal streets of the Norwegian capital. As they walked along many gazed at the American boys with interest.
Conducted into a plainly furnished office, the boys were told to sit down. Then they were asked if they had any objection to their baggage being examined.
"Not the slightest," answered Dave, and Roger said the same.
"At the same time I wish you to understand one thing," went on Dave's chum. "I am the son of a United States senator, and if I have to suffer any indignity at your hands you'll hear from it later, through the proper authorities."
"A United States senator's son!" murmured the police official. "Ah!" He took a long breath. "I shall not detain you a second longer than is necessary, sir," he went on, more civilly.
After that Dave and Roger were asked a great number of additional questions, and Dave had virtually to tell his story from beginning to end. Several officials listened with interest, but whether they believed him or not the boy could not tell.
"I am afraid you will have hard work finding your parent," said the police officer, at the conclusion of the interview.
"He must have left some directions behind--for forwarding mail, and the like."
"Possibly, but I doubt it. The expedition was bound up into the mountains,--so it was said. The means of communication are very poor at this time of year."
The baggage was gone over with care, and the examination was evidently a disappointment to those who made it. A long talk in Norwegian followed between several police officials, and then Dave and Roger were told that they could go.
"Would you mind telling me what it is all about?" questioned Dave, when he was ready to leave.
"You will have to excuse me, but I am not permitted to answer that question," said the man who had brought them in, gravely. "If we have detained you without just cause, we are very sorry for it." And that was all he would say.
"It's mighty queer, to say the least," observed Roger, after they had taken their departure. "Dave, what do you make of it?"
"I think they took us to be some foreigners who had come to Norway for no good purpose. You must remember that throughout Europe they have great trouble with anarchists and with political criminals who plot all sorts of things against the various governments. Maybe they took us to be fellows who had come here to blow somebody up."
"They ought to know better than that. I don't think we look like anarchists."
"Since that uprising in Russia, and the attempt on the king in Italy, every nation over here looks with suspicion on all foreigners. But there is something else to it, I imagine," went on Dave, seriously. "Those fellows