‘So I am, Edward,’ answered Marian, sobbing; ‘but it’s so sudden, so very sudden.’ ‘She’ll be all right in a minute or two, Mr Hawthorn,’ Nora said, looking up at him with an arch smile as she held Marian’s hand in hers and bent over her to kiss her forehead. ‘She’s only taken aback a little at the suddenness of the surprise.—And now, Marian, we shall all be able actually to go out to Trinidad together in the same steamer.’ Edward’s heart smote him rather at the strange way Marian had received the news that so greatly delighted him. It was very natural, after all, no doubt. Every girl feels the wrench of having to leave her father’s house and her mother and her familiar surroundings. But still, he somehow felt vaguely within himself that it seemed like an evil omen for their future happiness in the Trinidad judgeship; and it dashed his joy not a little at the moment when his dearest hopes appeared just about to be so happily and successfully realised. A WHALE-HUNT IN THE VARANGER FJORD. BY A NORWEGIAN. There seems, indeed, to be no limit to the part science is destined to play in the pursuits of man of late; but that it should lend a hand in killing the leviathans of the sea, would hardly have been credited a few years ago. This is, however, now a fact. Along the shores of Arctic Norway, in latitudes seventy to seventy-one degrees north, whale-hunting takes place annually by means of steamers and a cleverly contrived piece of ordnance. The steamers are seventy or eighty feet long, with very powerful engines, the number of vessels at present engaged in this pursuit being about thirty, most of which belong to the indefatigable hunter, Sven Foyn, of Tönsberg, the inventor of the gun, and originator of this important industry. The gun, which plays the leading part in the pursuit, is mounted on a platform in the prow of the vessel, so as to have an all-round range. A shaft is passed into the muzzle, leaving a small portion outside the nozzle, carrying four movable hooks pointing to the gun, and placed crosswise, each of the hooks being about eight inches long. In front of these, a large iron ball, or shell, with a steel point, is affixed, filled with an explosive substance. On the shaft runs an iron ring, to which a cable is attached about the thickness of a man’s arm, which, when the shaft is inserted in the gun, is run up to the nozzle, and secured by a cord. When this terrible projectile is launched into the animal, the jerk of the rope is diminished by the cord holding the ring breaking, which latter thereby runs up to the top of the shaft. As soon as the animal feels the wound, it makes a sudden bound, whereby the hooks on the shaft spring into a horizontal position; by which action, again, through an ingenious piece of mechanism, the explosive in the shell is fired, and the latter bursts with such a force that death is almost instantaneous. This is Foyn’s invention, on which he has spent large