The Argosy — page 160: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

PERIL ON THE SEA. A TRUE STORY. HE little island of Kildena lies in the Arctic Ocean, seven miles to the North of Lapland. Formerly it was uninhabited, but, of late years, eleven families of different races have settled there for the sake of its fisheries. Undaunted by the privations and hardships of their chosen lot, they remain, year by year, on the barren island waiting with patience through the long night of winter. They make and mend nets, put the little fleet of fishing boats into seaworthy condition, and fill up the remaining dark days with what ever pursuits or recreations the limited light given by fish and seal oils | will permit them to follow. One man, a Norwegian, had constituted himself general provider to the little colony, supplying them with food and clothes on the exchange system. He would take all the fish caught on the island and give to each fisherman, in return, a garment, or sack of rye flour, or some reindeer flesh, according to the several wants, and extent of each man’s catch. At intervals he sailed his boat to the mainland, and followed the course of a river for eighty miles, to Kola, a town of nine hundred inhabitants, principally Russian merchants. Here he sold his fish, and packed his little craft with a store of merchandise suited to the primitive needs of the settlers. In this way he had contrived to scrape together a sum equivalent to sixty pounds English money, which he stored away in a sealskin pouch, that always hung suspended from his neck. Coin is scarce in those latitudes, and most of the fisherpeople are content to toil incessantly for a bare existence, knowing nothing of the mingled heartburnings and delights experienced by speculators. But Carl Hansen, the merchant of Kildena, whose adventures form the subject of this sketch, began to think this manner of amassing a fortune rather slow work ; and he determined, as soon as the fishing season was over, to leave the island, sell his boat at Kola, and make the best of his way to Bergen, his native town. There he hoped to lay out his small capital to better advantage, or otherwise go to sea in a merchant steamer. / When he first became the merchant of Kildena Island he planned to make a certain sum in a given time, which would enable him to return to Bergen, where a certain blue-eyed, fair-haired damsel, named Albertina, patiently waited for his home-coming, employing her time in spinning household linen in preparation for the one great event of her life. comicbooks.com