Excerpt from A Daughter of the North The boats began to arrive on the course early. They came from the north coast and the south coast; but most of them, having arrived the day before and passed the night at Brevik, now came sailing down the fjord, a long procession of white-winged boats. There were at least a hundred of them, large and small, gathered at the starting point. Excursion steamers were crowded with sight-seers; tugs were converted into passenger boats; fishing smacks were now pleasure boats. Everything that would float on the ruffled water outside the harbor was pressed into service that day. One of the last of the boats that sped down the waters of the fjord to the open sea was a graceful craft, painted white and bearing the name of the Swan. Captain Halvor Steen sat at the helm. A steamer-load of people cheered him as he passed, as an expression of admiration for the young man, who was well known among his pleasure-faring countrymen. He waved his cap in return as his boat turned gracefully in towards the starting line. The first gun from the judges' boat was fired just as the Swan arrived. This signal was for the boats in class one to get ready. The Swan belonged to class two, so she had plenty of time to swing around into position. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.