{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_13508/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_13508","id":"gutenberg_13508","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13508","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Short Stories","Fantasy fiction, Danish -- Translations into English","Sea stories, Danish -- Translations into English"],"text":"WEIRD TALES FROM NORTHERN SEAS FROM THE DANISH OF JONAS LIE\n\nBY R. NISBET BAIN\n\nWITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS\n\nBY LAURENCE HOUSMAN\n\nTranslation 1893\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[Illustration: _THE GAN-FINN._]\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nJonas Lie is sufficiently famous to need but a very few words of\nintroduction. Ever since 1870, when he made his reputation by his first\nnovel, \"_Den Fremsynte_,\" he has been a prime favourite with the\nScandinavian public, and of late years his principal romances have gone\nthe round of Europe. He has written novels of all kinds, but he excels\nwhen he describes the wild seas of Northern Norway, and the stern and\nhardy race of sailors and fishers who seek their fortunes, and so often\nfind their graves, on those dangerous waters. Such tales, for instance,\nas _\"Tremasteren Fremtid,\" \"Lodsen og hans Hustru,\" \"Gaa Paa!\"_ and\n\"_Den Fremsynte_\" are unique of their kind, and give far truer pictures\nof Norwegian life and character in the rough than anything that can be\nfound elsewhere in the literature. Indeed, Lie's skippers and mates are\nas superior to Kjelland's, for instance, as the peasants of Jens Tvedt\n(a writer, by the way, still unknown beyond his native land) are\nsuperior to the much-vaunted peasants of Bj\u00f6rnstjerne Bj\u00f6rnson.\n\nBut it is when Lie tells us some of the wild legends of his native\nprovince, Nordland, some of the grim tales on which he himself was\nbrought up, so to speak, that he is perhaps most vivid and enthralling.\nThe folk-lore of those lonely sub-arctic tracts is in keeping with the\nsavagery of nature. We rarely, if ever, hear of friendly elves or\ncompanionable gnomes there. The supernatural beings that haunt those\nshores and seas are, for the most part, malignant and malefic. They seem\nto hate man. They love to mock his toils, and sport with his despair. In\nhis very first romance, \"_Den Fremsynte_,\" Lie relates two of these\nweird tales (Nos. 1 and 3 of the present selection). Another tale, in\nwhich many of the superstitious beliefs and wild imaginings of the\nNordland fishermen are skilfully grouped together to form the background\nof a charming love-story, entitled \"Finn Blood,\" I have borrowed from\nthe volume of \"_Fort\u00e6llinger og Skildringer_,\" published in 1872. The\nremaining eight stories are selected from the book \"_Trold_,\" which was\nthe event of the Christmas publishing season at Christiania in 1891.\nLast Christmas a second series of \"_Trold_\" came out, but it is\ndistinctly inferior to the former one.\n\nR.N.B.\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n                         CONTENTS\n\nCHAPTER\n\nI. THE FISHERMAN AND THE DRAUG\n\nII. JACK OF SJ\u00d6H\u00d6LM AND THE GAN-FINN\n\nIII. TUG OF WAR\n\nIV. \"THE EARTH DRAWS\"\n\nV. THE CORMORANTS OF ANDV\u00c6R\n\nVI. ISAAC AND THE PARSON OF BR\u00d6N\u00d6\n\nVII. THE WIND-GNOME\n\nVIII. THE HULDREFISH\n\nIX. FINN BLOOD\n\nX. THE HOMESTEAD WESTWARD IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS\n\nXI. \"IT'S ME!\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n_THE FISHERMAN AND THE DRAUG_\n\n[Illustration: _THE FISHERMAN AND THE DRAUG._]\n\n\n\n\nTHE FISHERMAN AND THE DRAUG\n\n\nOn Kvalholm, down in Helgeland,[1] dwelt a poor fisherman, Elias by\nname, with his wife Karen, who had been in service at the parson's over\nat Alstad. They had built them a hut here, and he used to go out fishing\nby the day about the Lofotens.\n\nThere could be very little doubt that the lonely Kvalholm was haunted.\nWhenever her husband was away, Karen heard all manner of uncanny shrieks\nand noises, which could mean no good. One day, when she was up on the\nhillside, mowing grass to serve as winter fodder for their couple of\nsheep, she heard, quite plainly, a chattering on the strand beneath the\nhill, but look over she durst not.\n\nThey had a child every year, but that was no burden, for they were both\nthrifty, hard-working folks. When seven years had gone by, there were\nsix children in the house; but that same autumn Elias had scraped\ntogether so much that he thought he might now venture to buy a\n_Sex\u00e6ring_,[2] and henceforward go fishing in his own boat.\n\nOne day, as he was walking along with a _Kvejtepig_[3] in his hand, and\nthinking the matter over, he unexpectedly came upon a monstrous seal,\nwhich lay sunning itself right behind a rock on the strand, and was as\nmuch surprised to see the man as the man was to see the seal. But Elias\nwas not slack; from the top of the rock on which he stood, he hurled the\nlong heavy Kvejtepig right into the monster's back, just below the neck.\n\nThe seal immediately rose up on its tail right into the air as high as a\nboat's mast, and looked so evilly and viciously at him with its\nbloodshot eyes, at the same time showing its grinning teeth, that Elias\nthought he should have died on the spot for sheer fright. Then it\nplunged into the sea, and lashed the water into bloody foam behind it.\nElias didn't stop to see more, but that same evening there drifted into\nthe boat place on Kvalcreek, on which his house stood, a Kvejtepole,\nwith the hooked iron head snapped off.\n\nElias thought no more about it, but in the course of the autumn he\nbought his _Sex\u00e6ring_, for which he had been building a little boat-shed\nthe whole summer.\n\nOne night as he lay awake, thinking of his new _Sex\u00e6ring_, it occurred\nto him that his boat would balance better, perhaps, if he stuck an extra\nlog of wood on each side of it. He was so absurdly fond of the boat that\nit was a mere pastime for him to light a lantern and go down to have a\nlook at it.\n\nNow as he stood looking at it there by the light of the lantern, he\nsuddenly caught a glimpse in the corner opposite, on a coil of nets, of\na face which exactly resembled the seal's. For an instant it grinned\nsavagely at him and the light, its mouth all the time growing larger and\nlarger; and then a big man whisked out of the door, not so quickly,\nhowever, but that Elias could catch a glimpse, by the light of the\nlantern, of a long iron hooked spike sticking out of his back. And now\nhe began to put one and two together. Still he was less anxious about\nhis life than about his boat; so he there and then sat him down in it\nwith the lantern, and kept watch. When his wife came in the morning, she\nfound him sleeping there, with the burnt-out lantern by his side.\n\nOne morning in January, while he was out fishing in his boat with two\nother men, he heard, in the dark, a voice from a skerry at the very\nentrance of the creek. It laughed scornfully, and said, \"When it _comes\nto a Femb\u00f6ring_,[4] Elias, look to thyself!\"\n\nBut there was many a long year yet before it _did_ come to that; but one\nautumn, when his son Bernt was sixteen, Elias knew he could manage it,\nso he took his whole family with him in his boat to Ranen,[5] to\nexchange his _Sex\u00e6ring_ for a _Femb\u00f6ring_. The only person left at home\nwas a little Finn girl, whom they had taken into service some few years\nbefore, and who had only lately been confirmed.\n\nNow there was a boat, a little _Femb\u00f6ring_, for four men and a boy, that\nElias just then had his eye upon--a boat which the best boat-builder in\nthe place had finished and tarred over that very autumn. Elias had a\nvery good notion of what a boat should be, and it seemed to him that he\nhad never seen a _Femb\u00f6ring_ so well built _below_ the water-line.\n_Above_ the water-line, indeed, it looked only middling, so that, to one\nof less experience than himself, the boat would have seemed rather a\nheavy goer than otherwise, and anything but a smart craft.\n\nNow the boat-master knew all this just as well as Elias. He said he\nthought it would be the swiftest sailer in Ranen, but that Elias should\nhave it cheap, all the same, if only he would promise one thing, and\nthat was, to make no alteration whatever in the boat, nay, not so much\nas adding a fresh coat of tar. Only when Elias had expressly given his\nword upon it did he get the boat.\n\nBut \"yon laddie\"[6] who had taught the boat-master how to build his\nboats so cunningly _below_ the water-line--_above_ the water-line he had\nhad to use his native wits, and they were scant enough--must surely have\nbeen there beforehand, and bidden him both sell it cheaply, so that\nElias might get it, and stipulate besides that the boat should not be\nlooked at too closely. In this way it escaped the usual tarring fore and\naft.\n\nElias now thought about sailing home, but went first into the town,\nprovided himself and family with provisions against Christmas, and\nindulged in a little nip of brandy besides. Glad as he was over the\nday's bargain, he, and his wife too, took an extra drop in their e'en,\nand their son Bernt had a taste of it too.\n\nAfter that they sailed off homewards in their new boat. There was no\nother ballast in the boat but himself, his old woman, the children, and\nthe Christmas provisions. His son Bernt sat by the main-sheet; his wife,\nhelped by her next eldest son, held the sail-ropes; Elias himself sat at\nthe rudder, while the two younger brothers of twelve and fourteen were\nto take it in turns to bail out.\n\nThey had eight miles of sea to sail over, and when they got into the\nopen, it was plain that the boat would be tested pretty stiffly on its\nfirst voyage. A gale was gradually blowing up, and crests of foam began\nto break upon the heavy sea.\n\nAnd now Elias saw what sort of a boat he really had. She skipped over\nthe waves like a sea-mew; not so much as a splash came into the boat,\nand he therefore calculated that he would have no need to take in all\nhis clews[7] against the wind, which an ordinary _Femb\u00f6ring_ would have\nbeen forced to do in such weather.\n\nOut on the sea, not very far away from him, he saw another _Femb\u00f6ring_,\nwith a full crew, and four clews in the sail, just like his own. It lay\non the same course, and he thought it rather odd that he had not noticed\nit before. It made as if it would race him, and when Elias perceived\nthat, he could not for the life of him help letting out a clew again.\n\nAnd now he went racing along like a dart, past capes and islands and\nrocks, till it seemed to Elias as if he had never had such a splendid\nsail before. Now, too, the boat showed itself what it really was, the\nbest boat in Ranen.\n\nThe weather, meantime, had become worse, and they had already got a\ncouple of dangerous seas right upon them. They broke in over the\nmain-sheet in the forepart of the boat where Bernt sat, and sailed out\nagain to leeward near the stern.\n\nSince the gloom had deepened, the other boat had kept almost alongside,\nand they were now so close together that they could easily have pitched\nthe baling-can from one to the other.\n\nSo they raced on, side by side, in constantly stiffer seas, till\nnight-fall, and beyond it. The fourth clew ought now to have been taken\nin again, but Elias didn't want to give in, and thought he might bide a\nbit till they took it in in the other boat also, which they needs _must_\ndo soon. Ever and anon the brandy-flask was brought out and passed\nround, for they had now both cold and wet to hold out against.\n\nThe sea-fire, which played on the dark billows near Elias's own boat,\nshone with an odd vividness in the foam round the other boat, just as if\na fire-shovel was ploughing up and turning over the water. In the bright\nphosphorescence he could plainly make out the rope-ends on board her. He\ncould also see distinctly the folks on board, with their sou'westers on\ntheir heads; but as their larboard side lay nearest, of course they all\nhad their backs towards him, and were well-nigh hidden by the high\nheeling hull.\n\nSuddenly a tremendous roller burst upon them. Elias had long caught a\nglimpse of its white crest through the darkness, right over the prow\nwhere Bernt sat. It filled the whole boat for a moment, the planks shook\nand trembled beneath the weight of it, and then, as the boat, which had\nlain half on her beam-ends, righted herself and sped on again, it\nstreamed off behind to leeward.\n\nWhile it was still upon him, he fancied he heard a hideous yell from the\nother boat; but when it was over, his wife, who sat by the shrouds,\nsaid, with a voice which pierced his very soul: \"Good God, Elias! the\nsea has carried off Martha and Nils!\"--their two youngest children, the\nfirst nine, the second seven years old, who had been sitting in the hold\nnear Bernt. Elias merely answered: \"Don't let go the lines, Karen, or\nyou'll lose yet more!\"\n\nThey had now to take in the fourth clew, and, when this was done, Elias\nfound that it would be well to take in the fifth and last clew too, for\nthe gale was ever on the increase; but, on the other hand, in order to\nkeep the boat free of the constantly heavier seas, he dare not lessen\nthe sail a bit more than he was absolutely obliged to do; but they found\nthat the scrap of sail they could carry gradually grew less and less.\nThe sea seethed so that it drove right into their faces, and Bernt and\nhis next eldest brother Anthony, who had hitherto helped his mother with\nthe sail-lines, had, at last, to hold in the yards, an expedient one\nonly resorts to when the boat cannot bear even the last clew--here the\nfifth.\n\nThe companion boat, which had disappeared in the meantime, now suddenly\nducked up alongside again, with precisely the same amount of sail as\nElias's boat; but he now began to feel that he didn't quite like the\nlook of the crew on board there. The two who stood and held in the yards\n(he caught a glimpse of their pale faces beneath their sou'westers)\nseemed to him, by the odd light of the shining foam, more like corpses\nthan men, nor did they speak a single word.\n\nA little way off to larboard he again caught sight of the high white\nback of a fresh roller coming through the dark, and he got ready betimes\nto receive it. The boat was laid to with its prow turned aslant towards\nthe on-rushing wave, while the sail was made as large as possible, so as\nto get up speed enough to cleave the heavy sea and sail out of it again.\nIn rushed the roller with a roar like a foss; again, for an instant,\nthey lay on their beam ends; but, when it was over, the wife no longer\nsat by the sail ropes, nor did Anthony stand there any longer holding\nthe yards--they had both gone overboard.\n\nThis time also Elias fancied he heard the same hideous yell in the air;\nbut in the midst of it he plainly heard his wife anxiously calling him\nby name. All that he said when he grasped the fact that she was washed\noverboard, was, \"In Jesus' Name!\" His first and dearest wish was to\nfollow after her, but he felt at the same time that it became him to\nsave the rest of the freight he had on board, that is to say, Bernt and\nhis other two sons, one twelve, the other fourteen years old, who had\nbeen baling out for a time, but had afterwards taken their places in the\nstern behind him.\n\nBernt had now to look to the yards all alone, and the other two helped\nas best they could. The rudder Elias durst not let slip, and he held it\nfast with a hand of iron, which continuous exertion had long since made\ninsensible to feeling.\n\nA moment afterwards the comrade boat ducked up again: it had vanished\nfor an instant as before. Now, too, he saw more of the heavy man who sat\nin the stern there in the same place as himself. Out of his back, just\nbelow his sou'wester (as he turned round it showed quite plainly),\nprojected an iron spike six inches long, which Elias had no difficulty\nin recognising again. And now, as he calmly thought it all over, he was\nquite clear about two things: one was that it was the _Draug_[8] itself\nwhich was steering its half-boat close beside him, and leading him to\ndestruction; the other was that it was written in heaven that he was to\nsail his last course that night. For he who sees the Draug on the sea is\na doomed man. He said nothing to the others, lest they should lose\nheart, but in secret he commended his soul to God.\n\nDuring the last hour or so he had been forced out of his proper course\nby the storm; the air also had become dense with snow; and Elias knew\nthat he must wait till dawn before land could be sighted. Meanwhile he\nsailed along much the same as before. Now and then the boys in the stern\ncomplained that they were freezing; but, in the plight they were now in,\nthat couldn't be helped, and, besides, Elias had something else to think\nabout. A terrible longing for vengeance had come over him, and, but for\nthe necessity of saving the lives of his three lads, he would have tried\nby a sudden turn to sink the accursed boat which kept alongside of him\nthe whole time as if to mock him; he now understood its evil errand only\ntoo well. If the _Kvejtepig_[9] could reach the Draug before, a knife or\na gaff might surely do the same thing now, and he felt that he would\ngladly have given his life for one good grip of the being who had so\nmercilessly torn from him his dearest in this world and would fain have\nstill more.\n\nAt three or four o'clock in the morning they saw coming upon them\nthrough the darkness a breaker of such a height that at first Elias\nthought they must be quite close ashore near the surf swell.\nNevertheless, he soon recognised it for what it really was--a huge\nbillow. Then it seemed to him as if there was a laugh over in the other\nboat, and something said, \"There goes thy boat, Elias!\" He, foreseeing\nthe calamity, now cried aloud: \"In Jesus' Name!\" and then bade his sons\nhold on with all their might to the withy-bands by the rowlocks when the\nboat went under, and not let go till it was above the water again. He\nmade the elder of them go forward to Bernt; and himself held the\nyoungest close by his side, stroked him once or twice furtively down the\ncheeks, and made sure that he had a good grip. The boat, literally\nburied beneath the foaming roller, was lifted gradually up by the bows\nand then went under. When it rose again out of the water, with the keel\nin the air, Elias, Bernt, and the twelve-year-old Martin lay alongside,\nholding on by the withy-bands; but the third of the brothers was gone.\n\nThey had now first of all to get the shrouds on one side cut through, so\nthat the mast might come to the surface alongside instead of disturbing\nthe balance of the boat below; and then they must climb up on the\nswaying bottom of the boat and stave in the key-holes, to let out the\nair which kept the boat too high in the water, and so ease her. After\ngreat exertions they succeeded, and Elias, who had got up on the top\nfirst, now helped the other two up after him.\n\nThere they sat through the long dark winter night, clinging convulsively\non by their hands and knees to the boat's bottom, which was drenched by\nthe billows again and again.\n\nAfter the lapse of a couple of hours died Martin, whom his father had\nheld up the whole time as far as he was able, of sheer exhaustion, and\nglided down into the sea. They had tried to cry for help several times,\nbut gave it up at last as a bad job.\n\nWhilst they two thus sat all alone on the bottom of the boat, Elias said\nto Bernt he must now needs believe that he too was about to be \"along o'\nmother!\"[10] but that he had a strong hope that Bernt, at any rate,\nwould be saved, if he only held out like a man. Then he told him all\nabout the _Draug_, whom he had struck below the neck with the\n_Kvejtepig_, and how it had now revenged itself upon him, and certainly\nwould not forbear till it was \"quits with him.\"\n\nIt was towards nine o'clock in the morning when the grey dawn began to\nappear. Then Elias gave to Bernt, who sat alongside him, his silver\nwatch with the brass chain, which he had snapped in two in order to drag\nit from beneath his closely buttoned jacket. He held on for a little\ntime longer, but, as it got lighter, Bernt saw that his father's face\nwas deadly pale, his hair too had parted here and there, as often\nhappens when death is at hand, and his skin was chafed off his hands\nfrom holding on to the keel. The son understood now that his father was\nnearly at the last gasp, and tried, so far as the pitching and tossing\nwould allow it, to hold him up; but when Elias marked it, he said, \"Nay,\nlook to thyself, Bernt, and hold on fast. I go to mother--in Jesus'\nName!\" and with that he cast himself down headlong from the top of the\nboat.\n\nEvery one who has sat on the keel of a boat long enough knows that when\nthe sea has got its own it grows much calmer, though not immediately.\nBernt now found it easier to hold on, and still more of hope came to him\nwith the brightening day. The storm abated, and, when it got quite\nlight, it seemed to him that he knew where he was, and that it was\noutside his own homestead, Kvalholm, that he lay driving.\n\nHe now began again to cry for help, but his chief hope was in a current\nwhich he knew bore landwards at a place where a headland broke in upon\nthe surge, and there the water was calmer. And he did, in fact, drive\ncloser and closer in, and came at last so near to one of the rocks that\nthe mast, which was floating by the side of the boat all the time,\nsurged up and down in the swell against the sloping cliff. Stiff as he\nnow was in all his limbs from sitting and holding on, he nevertheless\nsucceeded, after a great effort, in clambering up the cliff, where he\nhauled the mast ashore, and made the _Femb\u00f6ring_ fast.\n\nThe Finn girl, who was alone in the house, had been thinking, for the\nlast two hours, that she had heard cries for help from time to time, and\nas they kept on she mounted the hill to see what it was. There she saw\nBernt up on the cliff, and the overturned _Femb\u00f6ring_ bobbing up and\ndown against it. She immediately dashed down to the boat-place, got out\nthe old rowing-boat, and rowed along the shore and round the island\nright out to him.\n\nBernt lay sick under her care the whole winter through, and didn't go a\nfishing all that year. Ever after this, too, it seemed to folks as if\nthe lad were a little bit daft.\n\nOn the open sea he never would go again, for he had got the sea-scare.\nHe wedded the Finn girl, and moved over to Malang, where he got him a\nclearing in the forest, and he lives there now, and is doing well, they\nsay.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[1] A district in northern Norway.\n\n[2] A boat with three oars on each side.\n\n[3] A long pole, with a hooked iron spike at the end of it, for spearing\nKvejte or hallibut with.\n\n[4] A large boat with five oars on each side, used for winter fishing in\nnorthern Norway.\n\n[5] The chief port in those parts.\n\n[6] _Hin Karen_ = \"the devil.\" _Karen_ is the Danish _Karl_.\n\n[7] The _Kl\u00f6r_, or clews, were rings in the corner of the sail to fasten\nit down by in a strong wind. _Setja ei Klo_ = \"take in the sail a clew.\"\n_Setja tvo_, or _tri Kl\u00f6r_ = \"take it in two or three clews,\" _i.e._,\ndiminish it still further as the wind grew stronger.\n\n[8] A demon peculiar to the north Norwegian coast. It rides the seas in\na half-boat. Compare Icelandic _draugr_.\n\n[9] See note 3 above.\n\n[10] _V\u00e6re med hu, Mor. Hu_ is the Danish _Hun_.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_JACK OF SJ\u00d6HOLM AND THE GAN-FINN_\n\n[Illustration: _THE GAN-FINN._]\n\n\n\n\nJACK OF SJ\u00d6HOLM AND THE GAN[1]-FINN\n\n\nIn the days of our forefathers, when there was nothing but wretched\nboats up in Nordland, and folks must needs buy fair winds by the sackful\nfrom the Gan-Finn, it was not safe to tack about in the open sea in\nwintry weather. In those days a fisherman never grew old. It was mostly\nwomenfolk and children, and the lame and halt, who were buried ashore.\n\nNow there was once a boat's crew from Thj\u00f6tt\u00f6 in Helgeland, which had\nput to sea, and worked its way right up to the East Lofotens.\n\nBut that winter the fish would not bite.\n\nThey lay to and waited week after week, till the month was out, and\nthere was nothing for it but to turn home again with their fishing gear\nand empty boats.\n\nBut Jack of Sj\u00f6holm, who was with them, only laughed aloud, and said\nthat, if there were no fish there, fish would certainly be found higher\nnorthwards. Surely they hadn't rowed out all this distance only to eat\nup all their victuals, said he.\n\nHe was quite a young chap, who had never been out fishing before. But\nthere was some sense in what he said for all that, thought the\nhead-fisherman.\n\nAnd so they set their sails northwards.\n\nOn the next fishing-ground they fared no better than before, but they\ntoiled away so long as their food held out.\n\nAnd now they all insisted on giving it up and turning back.\n\n\"If there's none here, there's sure to be some still higher up towards\nthe north,\" opined Jack; \"and if they had gone so far, they might surely\ngo a little further still,\" quoth he.\n\nSo they tempted fortune from fishing-ground to fishing-ground, till they\nhad ventured right up to Finmark.[2] But there a storm met them, and,\ntry as they might to find shelter under the headlands, they were obliged\nat last to put out into the open sea again.\n\nThere they fared worse than ever. They had a hard time of it. Again and\nagain the prow of the boat went under the heavy rollers, instead of over\nthem, and later on in the day the boat foundered.\n\nThere they all sat helplessly on the keel in the midst of the raging\nsea, and they all complained bitterly against that fellow Jack, who had\ntempted them on, and led them into destruction. What would now become of\ntheir wives and children? They would starve now that they had none to\ncare for them.\n\nWhen it grew dark, their hands began to stiffen, and they were carried\noff by the sea one by one.\n\nAnd Jack heard and saw everything, down to the last shriek and the last\nclutch; and to the very end they never ceased reproaching him for\nbringing them into such misery, and bewailing their sad lot.\n\n\"I must hold on tight now,\" said Jack to himself, for he was better even\nwhere he was than in the sea.\n\nAnd so he tightened his knees on the keel, and held on fast till he had\nno feeling left in either hand or foot.\n\nIn the coal-black gusty night he fancied he heard yells from one or\nother of the remaining boats' crews.\n\n\"They, too, have wives and children,\" thought he. \"I wonder whether they\nhave also a Jack to lay the blame upon!\"\n\nNow while he thus lay there and drifted and drifted, and it seemed to\nhim to be drawing towards dawn, he suddenly felt that the boat was in\nthe grip of a strong shoreward current; and, sure enough, Jack got at\nlast ashore. But whichever way he looked, he saw nothing but black sea\nand white snow.\n\nNow as he stood there, speering and spying about him, he saw, far away,\nthe smoke of a Finn Gamme,[3] which stood beneath a cliff, and he\nmanaged to scramble right up to it.\n\nThe Finn was so old that he could scarcely move. He was sitting in the\nmidst of the warm ashes, and mumbling into a big sack, and neither spoke\nnor answered. Large yellow humble-bees were humming about all over the\nsnow, as if it were Midsummer; and there was only a young lass there to\nkeep the fire alight, and give the old man his food. His grandsons and\ngrand-daughters were with the reindeer, far far away on the _Fjeld_.\n\nHere Jack got his clothes well dried, and the rest he so much wanted.\nThe Finn girl, Seimke, couldn't make too much of him; she fed him with\nreindeer milk and marrow-bones, and he lay down to sleep on silver\nfox-skins.\n\nCosy and comfortable it was in the smoke there. But as he thus lay\nthere, 'twixt sleep and wake, it seemed to him as if many odd things\nwere going on round about him.\n\nThere stood the Finn in the doorway talking to his reindeer, although\nthey were far away in the mountains. He barred the wolf's way, and\nthreatened the bear with spells; and then he opened his skin sack, so\nthat the storm howled and piped, and there was a swirl of ashes into the\nhut. And when all grew quiet again, the air was thick with yellow\nhumble-bees, which settled inside his furs, whilst he gabbled and\nmumbled and wagged his skull-like head.\n\nBut Jack had something else to think about besides marvelling at the old\nFinn. No sooner did the heaviness of slumber quit his eyes than he\nstrolled down to his boat.\n\nThere it lay stuck fast on the beach and tilted right over like a\ntrough, while the sea rubbed and rippled against its keel. He drew it\nfar enough ashore to be beyond the reach of the sea-wash.\n\nBut the longer he walked around and examined it, the more it seemed to\nhim as if folks built boats rather for the sake of letting the sea in\nthan for the sake of keeping the sea out. The prow was little better\nthan a hog's snout for burrowing under the water, and the planking by\nthe keel-piece was as flat as the bottom of a chest. Everything, he\nthought, must be arranged very differently if boats were to be really\nseaworthy. The prow must be raised one or two planks higher at the very\nleast, and made both sharp and supple, so as to bend before and cut\nthrough the waves at the same time, and then a fellow would have a\nchance of steering a boat smartly.\n\nHe thought of this day and night. The only relaxation he had was a chat\nwith the Finn girl of an evening.\n\nHe couldn't help remarking that this Seimke had fallen in love with him.\nShe strolled after him wherever he went, and her eyes always became so\nmournful when he went down towards the sea; she understood well enough\nthat all his thoughts were bent upon going away.\n\nAnd the Finn sat and mumbled among the ashes till his fur jacket\nregularly steamed and smoked.\n\nBut Seimke coaxed and wheedled Jack with her brown eyes, and gave him\nhoneyed words as fast as her tongue could wag, till she drew him right\ninto the smoke where the old Finn couldn't hear them.\n\nThe Gan-Finn turned his head right round.\n\n\"My eyes are stupid, and the smoke makes 'em run,\" said he; \"what has\nJack got hold of there?\"\n\n\"Say it is the white ptarmigan you caught in the snare,\" whispered she.\n\nAnd Jack felt that she was huddling up against him and trembling all\nover.\n\nThen she told him so softly that he thought it was his own thoughts\nspeaking to him, that the Finn was angry and muttering mischief, and\n_j\u00f6jking_,[4] against the boat which Jack wanted to build. If Jack were\nto complete it, said she, the Gan-Finn would no longer have any sale for\nhis fair-winds in all Nordland. And then she warned him to look to\nhimself and never get between the Finn and the Gan-flies.\n\nThen Jack felt that his boat might be the undoing of him. But the worse\nthings looked, the more he tried to make the best of them.\n\nIn the grey dawn, before the Finn was up, he made his way towards the\nsea-shore.\n\nBut there was something very odd about the snow-hills. They were so many\nand so long that there was really no end to them, and he kept on\ntrampling in deep and deeper snow and never got to the sea-shore at all.\nNever before had he seen the northern lights last so long into the day.\nThey blazed and sparkled, and long tongues of fire licked and hissed\nafter him. He was unable to find either the beach or the boat, nor had\nhe the least idea in the world where he really was.\n\nAt last he discovered that he had gone quite astray inland instead of\ndown to the sea. But now, when he turned round, the sea-fog came close\nup against him, so dense and grey that he could see neither hand nor\nfoot before him.\n\nBy the evening he was well-nigh worn out with weariness, and was at his\nwits' end what to do.\n\nNight fell, and the snowdrifts increased.\n\nAs now he sat him down on a stone and fell a brooding and pondering how\nhe should escape with his life, a pair of snow-shoes came gliding so\nsmoothly towards him out of the sea-fog and stood still just in front of\nhis feet.\n\n\"As you have found me, you may as well find the way back also,\" said he.\n\nSo he put them on, and let the snow-shoes go their own way over hillside\nand steep cliff. He let not his own eyes guide him or his own feet carry\nhim, and the swifter he went the denser the snowflakes and the driving\nsea-spray came up against him, and the blast very nearly blew him off\nthe snow-shoes.\n\nUp hill and down dale he went over all the places where he had fared\nduring the daytime, and it sometimes seemed as if he had nothing solid\nbeneath him at all, but was flying in the air.\n\nSuddenly the snow-shoes stood stock still, and he was standing just\noutside the entrance of the Gan-Finn's hut.\n\nThere stood Seimke. She was looking for him.\n\n\"I sent my snow-shoes after thee,\" said she, \"for I marked that the Finn\nhad bewitched the land so that thou should'st not find the boat. Thy\n_life_ is safe, for he has given thee shelter in his house, but it were\nnot well for thee to see him this evening.\"\n\nThen she smuggled him in, so that the Finn did not perceive it in the\nthick smoke, and she gave him meat and a place to rest upon.\n\nBut when he awoke in the night, he heard an odd sound, and there was a\nbuzzing and a singing far away in the air:\n\n       \"The Finn the boat can never bind,\n        The Fly the boatman cannot find,\n        But round in aimless whirls doth wind.\"\n\nThe Finn was sitting among the ashes and _j\u00f6jking_, and muttering till\nthe ground quite shook, while Seimke lay with her forehead to the floor\nand her hands clasped tightly round the back of her neck, praying\nagainst him to the Finn God. Then Jack understood that the Gan-Finn was\nstill seeking after him amidst the snowflakes and sea-fog, and that his\nlife was in danger from magic spells.\n\nSo he dressed himself before it was light, went out, and came tramping\nin again all covered with snow, and said he had been after bears in\ntheir winter retreats. But never had he been in such a sea-fog before;\nhe had groped about far and wide before he found his way back into the\nhut again, though he stood just outside it.\n\nThe Finn sat there with his skin-wrappings as full of yellow flies as a\nbeehive. He had sent them out searching in every direction, but back\nthey had all come, and were humming and buzzing about him.\n\nWhen he saw Jack in the doorway, and perceived that the flies had\npointed truly, he grew somewhat milder, and laughed till he regularly\nshook within his skin-wrappings, and mumbled, \"The bear we'll bind fast\nbeneath the scullery-sink, and his eyes I've turned all awry,[5] so that\nhe can't see his boat,[6] and I'll stick a sleeping-peg in front of him\ntill springtime.\"\n\nBut the same day the Finn stood in the doorway, and was busy making\nmagic signs and strange strokes in the air.\n\nThen he sent forth two hideous Gan-flies, which flitted off on their\nerrands, and scorched black patches beneath them in the snow wherever\nthey went. They were to bring pain and sickness to a cottage down in the\nswamps, and spread abroad the Finn disease, which was to strike down a\nyoung bride at Bod\u00f6 with consumption.\n\nBut Jack thought of nothing else night and day but how he could get the\nbetter of the Gan-Finn.\n\nThe lass Seimke wheedled him and wept and begged him, as he valued his\nlife, not to try to get down to his boat again. At last, however, she\nsaw it was no use--he had made up his mind to be off.\n\nThen she kissed his hands and wept bitterly. At least he must promise to\nwait till the Gan-Finn had gone right away to Jokmok[7] in Sweden.\n\nOn the day of his departure, the Finn went all round his hut with a\ntorch and took stock.\n\nFar away as they were, there stood the mountain pastures, with the\nreindeer and the dogs, and the Finn's people all drew near. The Finn\ntook the tale of the beasts, and bade his grandsons not let the reindeer\nstray too far while he was away, and could not guard them from wolves\nand bears. Then he took a sleeping potion and began to dance and turn\nround and round till his breath quite failed him, and he sank moaning to\nthe ground. His furs were all that remained behind of him. His spirit\nhad gone--gone all the way over to Jokmok.\n\nThere the magicians were all sitting together in the dark sea-fog\nbeneath the shelter of the high mountain, and whispering about all\nmanner of secret and hidden things, and blowing spirits into the novices\nof the black art.\n\nBut the Gan-flies, humming and buzzing, went round and round the empty\nfurs of the Gan-Finn like a yellow ring and kept watch.\n\nIn the night Jack was awakened by something pulling and tugging at him\nas if from far away. There was as it were a current of air, and\nsomething threatened and called to him from the midst of the snowflakes\noutside--\n\n     \"Until thou canst swim like the duck or the drake,\n     The egg[8] thou'dst be hatching no progress shall make;\n     The Finn shall ne'er let thee go southwards with sail,\n     For he'll screw off the wind and imprison the gale.\"\n\nAt the end of it the Gan-Finn was standing there, and bending right over\nhim. The skin of his face hung down long and loose, and full of\nwrinkles, like an old reindeer skin, and there was a dizzying smoke in\nhis eyes. Then Jack began to shiver and stiffen in all his limbs, and he\nknew that the Finn was bent upon bewitching him.\n\nThen he set his face rigidly against it, so that the magic spells should\nnot get at him; and thus they struggled with one another till the\nGan-Finn grew green in the face, and was very near choking.\n\nAfter that the sorcerers of Jokmok sent magic shots after Jack, and\nclouded his wits. He felt so odd; and whenever he was busy with his\nboat, and had put something to rights in it, something else would\nimmediately go wrong, till at last he felt as if his head were full of\npins and needles.\n\nThen deep sorrow fell upon him. Try as he would, he couldn't put his\nboat together as he would have it; and it looked very much as if he\nwould never be able to cross the sea again.\n\nBut in the summer time Jack and Seimke sat together on the headland in\nthe warm evenings, and the gnats buzzed and the fishes spouted close\nashore in the stillness, and the eider-duck swam about.\n\n\"If only some one would build me a boat as swift and nimble as a fish,\nand able to ride upon the billows like a sea-mew!\" sighed and lamented\nJack, \"then I could be off.\"\n\n\"Would you like me to guide you to Thj\u00f6tt\u00f6?\" said a voice up from the\nsea-shore.\n\nThere stood a fellow in a flat turned-down skin cap, whose face they\ncouldn't see.\n\nAnd right outside the boulders there, just where they had seen the\neider-duck, lay a long and narrow boat, with high prow and stern; and\nthe tar-boards were mirrored plainly in the clear water below; there was\nnot so much as a single knot in the wood.\n\n\"I would be thankful for any such guidance,\" said Jack.\n\nWhen Seimke heard this, she began to cry and take on terribly. She fell\nupon his neck, and wouldn't let go, and raved and shrieked. She promised\nhim her snow-shoes, which would carry him through everything, and said\nshe would steal for him the bone-stick from the Gan-Finn, so that he\nmight find all the old lucky dollars that ever were buried, and would\nteach him how to make salmon-catching knots in the fishing lines, and\nhow to entice the reindeer from afar. He should become as rich as the\nGan-Finn, if only he wouldn't forsake her.\n\nBut Jack had only eyes for the boat down there. Then she sprang up, and\ntore down her black locks, and bound them round his feet, so that he had\nto wrench them off before he could get quit of her.\n\n\"If I stay here and play with you and the young reindeer, many a poor\nfellow will have to cling with broken nails to the keel of a boat,\"[9]\nsaid he. \"If you like to make it up, give me a kiss and a parting hug,\nor shall I go without them?\"\n\nThen she threw herself into his arms like a young wild cat, and looked\nstraight into his eyes through her tears, and shivered and laughed, and\nwas quite beside herself.\n\nBut when she saw she could do nothing with him, she rushed away, and\nwaved her hands above her head in the direction of the Gamme.[10]\n\nThen Jack understood that she was going to take counsel of the Gan-Finn,\nand that he had better take refuge in his boat before the way was closed\nto him. And, in fact, the boat had come so close up to the boulders,\nthat he had only to step down upon the thwarts. The rudder glided into\nhis hand, and aslant behind the mast sat some one at the prow, and\nhoisted and stretched the sail: but his face Jack could not see.\n\nAway they went.\n\nAnd such a boat for running before the wind Jack had never seen before.\nThe sea stood up round about them like a deep snow-drift, although it\nwas almost calm. But they hadn't gone very far before a nasty piping\nbegan in the air. The birds shrieked and made for land, and the sea rose\nlike a black wall behind them.\n\nIt was the Gan-Finn who had opened his wind-sack, and sent a storm after\nthem.\n\n\"One needs a full sail in the Finn-cauldron here,\" said something from\nbehind the mast.\n\nThe fellow who had the boat in hand took such little heed of the weather\nthat he did not so much as take in a single clew.\n\nThen the Gan-Finn sent double knots[11] after them.\n\nThey sped along in a wild dance right over the firth, and the sea\nwhirled up in white columns of foam, reaching to the very clouds.\n\nUnless the boat could fly as quick and quicker than a bird, it was lost.\n\nThen a hideous laugh was heard to larboard--\n\n    \"Anfinn Ganfinn gives mouth,\n     And blows us right south;\n     There's a crack[12] in the sack,\n     With three clews we must tack.\"\n\nAnd heeling right over, with three clews in the sail, and the heavy\nforemost fellow astride on the sheer-strake, with his huge sea-boots\ndangling in the sea-foam, away they scudded through the blinding spray\nright into the open sea, amidst the howling and roaring of the wind.\n\nThe billowy walls were so vast and heavy that Jack couldn't even see the\nlight of day across the yards, nor could he exactly make out whether\nthey were going under or over the sea-trough.\n\nThe boat shook the sea aside as lightly and easily as if its prow were\nthe slippery fin of a fish, and its planking was as smooth and fine as\nthe shell of a tern's egg; but, look as he would, Jack couldn't see\nwhere these planks ended; it was just as if there was only half a boat\nand no more; and at last it seemed to him as if the whole of the front\npart came off in the sea-foam, and they were scudding along under sail\nin half a boat.\n\nWhen night fell, they went through the sea-fire, which glowed like hot\nembers, and there was a prolonged and hideous howling up in the air to\nwindward.\n\nAnd cries of distress and howls of mortal agony answered the wind from\nall the upturned boat keels they sped by, and many hideously\npale-looking folks clutched hold of their thwarts. The gleam of the\nsea-fire cast a blue glare on their faces, and they sat, and gaped, and\nglared, and yelled at the blast.\n\nSuddenly he awoke, and something cried, \"Now thou art at home at\nThj\u00f6tt\u00f6, Jack!\"\n\nAnd when he had come to himself a bit, he recognised where he was. He\nwas lying over against the boulders near his boathouse at home. The tide\nhad come so far inland that a border of foam gleamed right up in the\npotato-field, and he could scarcely keep his feet for the blast. He sat\nhim down in the boathouse, and began scratching and marking out the\nshape of the Draugboat in the black darkness till sleep overtook him.\n\nWhen it was light in the morning, his sister came down to him with a\nmeat-basket. She didn't greet him as if he were a stranger, but behaved\nas if it were the usual thing for her to come thus every morning. But\nwhen he began telling her all about his voyage to Finmark, and the\nGan-Finn, and the Draugboat he had come home in at night, he perceived\nthat she only grinned and let him chatter. And all that day he talked\nabout it to his sister and his brothers and his mother, until he arrived\nat the conclusion that they thought him a little out of his wits. When\nhe mentioned the Draugboat they smiled amongst themselves, and evidently\nwent out of their way to humour him. But they might believe what they\nliked, if only he could carry out what he wanted to do, and be left to\nhimself in the out-of-the-way old boathouse.\n\n\"One should go with the stream,\" thought Jack; and if they thought him\ncrazy and out of his wits, he ought to behave so that they might beware\nof interfering with him, and disturbing him in his work.\n\nSo he took a bed of skins with him down to the boathouse, and slept\nthere at night; but in the daytime he perched himself on a pole on the\nroof, and bellowed out that now he was sailing. Sometimes he rode\nastraddle on the roof ridge, and dug his sheath-knife deep into the\nrafters, so that people might think he fancied himself at sea, holding\nfast on to the keel of a boat.\n\nWhenever folks passed by, he stood in the doorway, and turned up the\nwhites of his eyes so hideously, that every one who saw him was quite\nscared. As for the people at home, it was as much as they dared to stick\nhis meat-basket into the boathouse for him. So they sent it to him by\nhis youngest sister, merry little Malfri, who would sit and talk with\nhim, and thought it such fun when he made toys and playthings for her,\nand talked about the boat which should go like a bird, and sail as no\nother boat had ever sailed.\n\nIf any one chanced to come upon him unexpectedly, and tried to peep and\nsee what he was about in the boathouse there, he would creep up into the\ntimber-loft and bang and pitch the boards and planks about, so that they\ndidn't know exactly where to find him, and were glad enough to be off.\nBut one and all made haste to climb over the hill again when they heard\nhim fling himself down at full length and send peal after peal of\nlaughter after them.\n\nSo that was how Jack got folks to leave him at peace.\n\nHe worked best at night when the storm tore and tugged at the stones and\nbirchbark of the turf roof, and the sea-wrack came right up to the\nboathouse door.\n\nWhen it piped and whined through the fissured walls, and the fine\nsnowflakes flitted through the cracks, the model of the Draugboat stood\nplainest before him. The winter days were short, and the wick of the\ntrain-oil lamp, which hung over him as he worked, cast deep shadows, so\nthat the darkness came soon and lasted a long way into the morning, when\nhe sought sleep in his bed of skins with a heap of shavings for his\npillow.\n\nHe spared no pains or trouble. If there was a board which would not run\ninto the right groove with the others, though never so little, he would\ntake out a whole row of them and plane them all round again and again.\n\nNow, one night, just before Christmas, he had finished all but the\nuppermost planking and the gabs. He was working so hard to finish up\nthat he took no count of time.\n\nThe plane was sending the shavings flying their briskest when he came to\na dead stop at something black which was moving along the plank.\n\nIt was a large and hideous fly which was crawling about and feeling and\npoking all the planks in the boat. When it reached the lowest keel-board\nit whirred with its wings and buzzed. Then it rose and swept above it in\nthe air till, all at once, it swerved away into the darkness.\n\nJack's heart sank within him. Such doubt and anguish came upon him. He\nknew well enough that no good errand had brought the Gan-fly buzzing\nover the boat like that.\n\nSo he took the train-oil lamp and a wooden club, and began to test the\nprow and light up the boarding, and thump it well, and go over the\nplanks one by one. And in this way he went over every bit of the boat\nfrom stem to stern, both above and below. There was not a nail or a\nrivet that he really believed in now.\n\nBut now neither the shape nor the proportions of the boat pleased him\nany more. The prow was too big, and the whole cut of the boat all the\nway down the gunwale had something of a twist and a bend and a swerve\nabout it, so that it looked like the halves of two different boats put\ntogether, and the half in front didn't fit in with the half behind. As\nhe was about to look into the matter still further (and he felt the cold\nsweat bursting out of the roots of his hair), the train-oil lamp went\nout and left him in blank darkness.\n\nThen he could contain himself no longer. He lifted his club and burst\nopen the boathouse door, and, snatching up a big cow-bell, he began to\nswing it about him and ring and ring with it through the black night.\n\n\"Art chiming for me, Jack?\" something asked. There was a sound behind\nhim like the surf sucking at the shore, and a cold blast blew into the\nboathouse.\n\nThere on the keel-stick sat some one in a sloppy grey sea-jacket, and\nwith a print cap drawn down over its ears, so that its skull looked like\na low tassel.\n\nJack gave a great start. This was the very being he had been thinking of\nin his wild rage. Then he took the large baling can and flung it at the\nDraug.\n\nBut right through the Draug it went, and rattled against the wall\nbehind, and back again it came whizzing about Jack's ears, and if it had\nstruck him he would never have got up again.\n\nThe old fellow, however, only blinked his eyes a little savagely.\n\n\"Fie!\" cried Jack, and spat at the uncanny thing--and back into his face\nagain he got as good as he gave.\n\n\"There you have your wet clout back again!\" cried a laughing voice.\n\nBut the same instant Jack's eyes were opened and he saw a whole\nboat-building establishment on the sea-shore.\n\nAnd, there, ready and rigged out on the bright water, lay an\n_Ottring_,[13] so long and shapely and shining that his eyes could not\nfeast on it enough.\n\nThe old 'un blinked with satisfaction. His eyes became more and more\nglowing.\n\n\"If I could guide you back to Helgeland,\" said he, \"I could put you in\nthe way of gaining your bread too. But you must pay me a little tax for\nit. In every seventh boat you build 'tis _I_ who must put in the\nkeel-board.\"\n\nJack felt as if he were choking. He felt that the boat was dragging him\ninto the very jaws of an abomination.\n\n\"Or do you fancy you'll worm the trick out of me for nothing?\" said the\ngaping grinning Draug.\n\nThen there was a whirring sound, as if something heavy was hovering\nabout the boathouse, and there was a laugh: \"If you want the _seaman's_\nboat you must take the _dead man's_ boat along with it. If you knock\nthree times to-night on the keel-piece with the club, you shall have\nsuch help in building boats that the like of them will not be found in\nall Nordland.\"\n\nTwice did Jack raise his club that night, and twice he laid it aside\nagain.\n\nBut the Ottring lay and frisked and sported in the sea before his eyes,\njust as he had seen it, all bright and new with fresh tar, and with the\nropes and fishing gear just put in. He kicked and shook the fine slim\nboat with his foot just to see how light and high she could rise on the\nwaves above the water-line.\n\nAnd once, twice, thrice, the club smote against the keel-piece.\n\nSo that was how the first boat was built at Sj\u00f6holm.\n\nThick as birds together stood a countless number of people on the\nheadland in the autumn, watching Jack and his brothers putting out in\nthe new Ottring.\n\nIt glided through the strong current so that the foam was like a foss\nall round it.\n\nNow it was gone, and now it ducked up again like a sea-mew, and past\nskerries and capes it whizzed like a dart.\n\nOut in the fishing grounds the folks rested upon their oars and gaped.\nSuch a boat they had never seen before.\n\nBut if in the first year it was an Ottring, next year it was a broad\nheavy _Femb\u00f6ring_ for winter fishing which made the folks open their\neyes.\n\nAnd every boat that Jack turned out was lighter to row and swifter to\nsail than the one before it.\n\nBut the largest and finest of all was the last that stood on the stocks\non the shore.\n\nThis was the _seventh_.\n\nJack walked to and fro, and thought about it a good deal; but when he\ncame down to see it in the morning, it seemed to him, oddly enough, to\nhave grown in the night and, what is more, was such a wondrous beauty\nthat he was struck dumb with astonishment. There it lay ready at last,\nand folks were never tired of talking about it.\n\nNow, the Bailiff who ruled over all Helgeland in those days was an\nunjust man who laid heavy taxes upon the people, taking double weight\nand tale both of fish and of eider-down, nor was he less grasping with\nthe tithes and grain dues. Wherever his fellows came they fleeced and\nflayed. No sooner, then, did the rumour of the new boats reach him than\nhe sent his people out to see what truth was in it, for he himself used\nto go fishing in the fishing grounds with large crews. When thus his\nfellows came back and told him what they had seen, the Bailiff was so\ntaken with it that he drove straightway over to Sj\u00f6holm, and one fine\nday down he came swooping on Jack like a hawk. \"Neither tithe nor tax\nhast thou paid for thy livelihood, so now thou shalt be fined as many\nhalf-marks of silver as thou hast made boats,\" said he.\n\nEver louder and fiercer grew his rage. Jack should be put in chains and\nirons and be transported northwards to the fortress of Skraar, and be\nkept so close that he should never see sun or moon more.\n\nBut when the Bailiff had rowed round the _Femb\u00f6ring_, and feasted his\neyes upon it, and seen how smart and shapely it was, he agreed at last\nto let Mercy go before Justice, and was content to take the _Femb\u00f6ring_\nin lieu of a fine.\n\nThen Jack took off his cap and said that if there was one man more than\nanother to whom he would like to give the boat, it was his honour the\nBailiff.\n\nSo off the magistrate sailed with it.\n\nJack's mother and sister and brothers cried bitterly at the loss of the\nbeautiful _Femb\u00f6ring_; but Jack stood on the roof of the boat-house and\nlaughed fit to split.\n\nAnd towards autumn the news spread that the Bailiff with his eight men\nhad gone down with the _Femb\u00f6ring_ in the West-fjord.\n\nBut in those days there was quite a changing about of boats all over\nNordland, and Jack was unable to build a tenth part of the boats\nrequired of him. Folks from near and far hung about the walls of his\nboat-house, and it was quite a favour on his part to take orders, and\nagree to carry them out. A whole score of boats soon stood beneath the\npent-house on the strand.\n\nHe no longer troubled his head about every _seventh_ boat, or cared to\nknow which it was or what befell it. If a boat foundered now and then,\nso many the more got off and did well, so that, on the whole, he made a\nvery good thing indeed out of it. Besides, surely folks could pick and\nchoose their own boats, and take which they liked best.\n\nBut Jack got so great and mighty that it was not advisable for any one\nto thwart him, or interfere where he ruled and reigned.\n\nWhole rows of silver dollars stood in the barrels in the loft, and his\nboat-building establishment stretched over all the islands of Sj\u00f6holm.\n\nOne Sunday his brothers and merry little Malfri had gone to church in\nthe _Femb\u00f6ring_. When evening came, and they hadn't come home, the\nboatman came in and said that some one had better sail out and look\nafter them, as a gale was blowing up.\n\nJack was sitting with a plumb-line in his hand, taking the measurements\nof a new boat, which was to be bigger and statelier than any of the\nothers, so that it was not well to disturb him.\n\n\"Do you fancy they're gone out in a rotten old tub, then?\" bellowed he.\nAnd the boatman was driven out as quickly as he had come.\n\nBut at night Jack lay awake and listened. The wind whined outside and\nshook the walls, and there were cries from the sea far away. And just\nthen there came a knocking at the door, and some one called him by name.\n\n\"Go back whence you came,\" cried he, and nestled more snugly in his bed.\n\nShortly afterwards there came the fumbling and the scratching of tiny\nfingers at the door.\n\n\"Can't you leave me at peace o' nights?\" he bawled, \"or must I build me\nanother bedroom?\"\n\nBut the knocking and the fumbling for the latch outside continued, and\nthere was a sweeping sound at the door, as of some one who could not\nopen it. And there was a stretching of hands towards the latch ever\nhigher and higher.\n\nBut Jack only lay there and laughed. \"The _Femb\u00f6rings_ that are built at\nSj\u00f6holm don't go down before the first blast that blows,\" mocked he.\n\nThen the latch chopped and hopped till the door flew wide open, and in\nthe doorway stood pretty Malfri and her mother and brothers. The\nsea-fire shone about them, and they were dripping with water.\n\nTheir faces were pale and blue, and pinched about the corners of the\nmouth, as if they had just gone through their death agony. Malfri had\none stiff arm round her mother's neck; it was all torn and bleeding,\njust as when she had gripped her for the last time. She railed and\nlamented, and begged back her young life from him.\n\nSo now he knew what had befallen them.\n\nOut into the dark night and the darker weather he went straightway to\nsearch for them, with as many boats and folk as he could get together.\nThey sailed and searched in every direction, and it was in vain.\n\nBut towards day the _Femb\u00f6ring_ came drifting homewards bottom upwards,\nand with a large hole in the keel-board.\n\nThen he knew who had done the deed.\n\nBut since the night when the whole of Jack's family went down, things\nwere very different at Sj\u00f6holm.\n\nIn the daytime, so long as the hammering and the banging and the planing\nand the clinching rang about his ears, things went along swimmingly, and\nthe frames of boat after boat rose thick as sea fowl on an\n_\u00c6ggev\u00e6r_.[14]\n\nBut no sooner was it quiet of an evening than he had company. His mother\nbustled and banged about the house, and opened and shut drawers and\ncupboards, and the stairs creaked with the heavy tread of his brothers\ngoing up to their bedrooms.\n\nAt night no sleep visited his eyes, and sure enough pretty Malfri came\nto his door and sighed and groaned.\n\nThen he would lie awake there and think, and reckon up how many boats\nwith false keel-boards he might have sent to sea. And the longer he\nreckoned the more draug-boats he made of it.\n\nThen he would plump out of bed and creep through the dark night down to\nthe boathouse. There he held a light beneath the boats, and banged and\ntested all the keel-boards with a club to see if he couldn't hit upon\nthe _seventh_. But he neither heard nor felt a single board give way.\nOne was just like another. They were all hard and supple, and the wood,\nwhen he scraped off the tar, was white and fresh.\n\nOne night he was so tormented by an uneasiness about the new\n_Sekstring_,[15] which lay down by the bridge ready to set off next\nmorning, that he had no peace till he went down and tested its\nkeel-board with his club.\n\nBut while he sat in the boat, and was bending over the thwart with a\nlight, there was a gulping sound out at sea, and then came such a vile\nstench of rottenness. The same instant he heard a wading sound, as of\nmany people coming ashore, and then up over the headland he saw a boat's\ncrew coming along.\n\nThey were all crooked-looking creatures, and they all leaned right\nforward and stretched out their arms before them. Whatever came in their\nway, both stone and stour,[16] they went right through it, and there was\nneither sound nor shriek.\n\nBehind them came another boat's crew, big and little, grown men and\nlittle children, rattling and creaking.\n\nAnd crew after crew came ashore and took the path leading to the\nheadland.\n\nWhen the moon peeped forth Jack could see right into their skeletons.\nTheir faces glared, and their mouths gaped open with glistening teeth,\nas if they had been swallowing water. They came in heaps and shoals, one\nafter the other: the place quite swarmed with them.\n\nThen Jack perceived that here were all they whom he had tried to count\nand reckon up as he lay in bed, and a fit of fury came upon him.\n\nHe rose in the boat and spanked his leather breeches behind and cried:\n\"You would have been even more than you are already if Jack hadn't built\nhis boats!\"\n\nBut now like an icy whizzing blast they all came down upon him, staring\nat him with their hollow eyes.\n\nThey gnashed their teeth, and each one of them sighed and groaned for\nhis lost life.\n\nThen Jack, in his horror, put out from Sj\u00f6holm.\n\nBut the sail slackened, and he glided into dead water.[17] There, in the\nmidst of the still water, was a floating mass of rotten swollen planks.\nAll of them had once been shaped and fashioned together, but were now\nburst and sprung, and slime and green mould and filth and nastiness hung\nabout them.\n\nDead hands grabbed at the corners of them with their white knuckles and\ncouldn't grip fast. They stretched themselves across the water and sank\nagain.\n\nThen Jack let out all his clews and sailed and sailed and tacked\naccording as the wind blew.\n\nHe glared back at the rubbish behind him to see if those _things_ were\nafter him. Down in the sea all the dead hands were writhing, and tried\nto strike him with gaffs astern.\n\nThen there came a gust of wind whining and howling, and the boat drove\nalong betwixt white seething rollers.\n\nThe weather darkened, thick snowflakes filled the air, and the rubbish\naround him grew greener.\n\nIn the daytime he took the cormorants far away in the grey mist for his\nlandmarks, and at night they screeched about his ears.\n\nAnd the birds flitted and flitted continually, but Jack sat still and\nlooked out upon the hideous cormorants.\n\nAt last the sea-fog lifted a little, and the air began to be alive with\nbright, black, buzzing flies. The sun burned, and far away inland the\nsnowy plains blazed in its light.\n\nHe recognised very well the headland and shore where he was now able to\nlay to. The smoke came from the Gamme up on the snow-hill there. In the\ndoorway sat the Gan-Finn. He was lifting his pointed cap up and down, up\nand down, by means of a thread of sinew, which went right through him,\nso that his skin creaked.\n\nAnd up there also sure enough was Seimke.\n\nShe looked old and angular as she bent over the reindeer-skin that she\nwas spreading out in the sunny weather. But she peeped beneath her arm\nas quick and nimble as a cat with kittens, and the sun shone upon her,\nand lit up her face and pitch-black hair.\n\nShe leaped up so briskly, and shaded her eyes with her hand, and looked\ndown at him. Her dog barked, but she quieted it so that the Gan-Finn\nshould mark nothing.\n\nThen a strange longing came over him, and he put ashore.\n\nHe stood beside her, and she threw her arms over her head, and laughed\nand shook and nestled close up to him, and cried and pleaded, and didn't\nknow what to do with herself, and ducked down upon his bosom, and threw\nherself on his neck, and kissed and fondled him, and wouldn't let him\ngo.\n\nBut the Gan-Finn had noticed that there was something amiss, and sat all\nthe time in his furs, and mumbled and muttered to the Gan-flies, so that\nJack dare not get between him and the doorway.\n\nThe Finn was angry.\n\nSince there had been such a changing about of boats over all Nordland,\nand there was no more sale for his fair winds, he was quite ruined, he\ncomplained. He was now so poor that he would very soon have to go about\nand beg his bread. And of all his reindeer he had only a single doe\nleft, who went about there by the house.\n\nThen Seimke crept behind Jack, and whispered to him to bid for this doe.\nThen she put the reindeer-skin around her, and stood inside the Gamme\ndoor in the smoke, so that the Gan-Finn only saw the grey skin, and\nfancied it was the reindeer they were bringing in.\n\nThen Jack laid his hand upon Seimke's neck, and began to bid.\n\nThe pointed cap ducked and nodded, and the Finn spat in the warm air;\nbut sell his reindeer he would not.\n\nJack raised his price.\n\nBut the Finn heaved up the ashes all about him, and threatened and\nshrieked. The flies came as thick as snow-flakes; the Finn's furry\nwrappings were alive with them.\n\nJack bid and bid till it reached a whole bushel load of silver, and the\nFinn was ready to jump out of his skins.\n\nThen he stuck his head under his furs again, and mumbled and _j\u00f6jked_\ntill the amount rose to seven bushels of silver.\n\nThen the Gan-Finn laughed till he nearly split. He thought the reindeer\nwould cost the purchaser a pretty penny.\n\nBut Jack lifted Seimke up, and sprang down with her to his boat, and\nheld the reindeer-skin behind him, against the Gan-Finn.\n\nAnd they put off from land, and went to sea.\n\nSeimke was so happy, and smote her hands together, and took her turn at\nthe oars.\n\nThe northern light shot out like a comb, all greeny-red and fiery, and\nlicked and played upon her face. She talked to it, and fought it with\nher hands, and her eyes sparkled. She used both tongue and mouth and\nrapid gestures as she exchanged words with it.\n\nThen it grew dark, and she lay on his bosom, so that he could feel her\nwarm breath. Her black hair lay right over him, and she was as soft and\nwarm to the touch as a ptarmigan when it is frightened and its blood\nthrobs.\n\nJack put the reindeer-skin over Seimke, and the boat rocked them to and\nfro on the heavy sea as if it were a cradle.\n\nThey sailed on and on till night-fall; they sailed on and on till they\nsaw neither headland nor island nor sea-bird in the outer skerries more.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[1] This untranslatable word is a derivative of the Icelandic _Gandr_,\nand means magic of the black or malefic sort.\n\n[2] The northernmost province of Norway, right within the Arctic circle.\n\n[3] The huts peculiar to the Norwegian Finns.\n\n[4] To sing songs (here magic songs), as the Finns do. Possibly derived\nfrom the Finnish verb _joikun_, which means monotonous chanting.\n\n[5] The Norse _Kverva Syni_ is to delude the sight by magic spells.\n\n[6] I.e., the boat he (Jack) wanted to build.\n\n[7] A mountain between Sweden and Norway.\n\n[8] I.e., the boat he would be building.\n\n[9] Meaning that he would never have a chance of building the new sort\nof boat that his mind was bent on.\n\n[10] The Finn's hut.\n\n[11] _Tvinde Knuder_. When the Finn tied _one_ magic knot, he raised a\ngale, so two knots would give a tempest.\n\n[12] I.e., where the Gan-Finn let out the wind.\n\n[13] An eight-oared boat.\n\n[14] A place where sea-birds' eggs abound.\n\n[15] A contraction of _Sex\u00e6ring_, i.e., a boat with six oars.\n\n[16] Eng. dialect word (the Norse is _staur_) meaning impediments of any\nkind.\n\n[17] _Daudvatn_ (Dan. _D\u00f6dvand_), water in which there is no motion.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTUG OF WAR.\n\n[Illustration: TUG OF WAR.]\n\n\n\n\nTUG OF WAR\n\n\nFor the last two or three days the weather had been terrific; but on the\nthird day it so far cleared up that one of the men who belonged to the\nfishing station thought that they might manage to drag the nets a bit\nthat day. The others, however, were not inclined to venture out. Now it\nis the custom for the various crews to lend each other a hand in pushing\noff the boats, and so it happened now. When, however, they came to the\n_Femb\u00f6ring_, which was drawn up a good distance ashore, they found the\noars and the thwarts turned upside down in the boat, and, more than\nthat, despite all their exertions, it was impossible to move the boat\nfrom the spot. They tried once, twice, thrice; but it was of no use. But\nthen one of them, who was known to have second sight, said that, from\nwhat he saw, it would be best not to touch the boat at all that day; it\nwas too heavy for the might of man to move. One of the crew, however,\nwho belonged to the fishing-station (he was a smart lad of fourteen),\nwas amusing them all the time with all manner of pranks and tomfoolery.\nHe now caught up a heavy stone, and pitched it with all his might right\ninto the stern of the boat. Then, suddenly and plainly visible to them\nall, out of the boat rushed a Draug in seaman's clothes, but with a\nheavy crop of seaweed instead of a head. It had been weighing down the\nboat by sitting in the stern, and now dashed into the sea, so that the\nfoam spirted all over them. After that the _Femb\u00f6ring_ glided quite\nsmoothly into the water. Then the man with second sight looked at the\nboy, and said that he should not have done so. But the lad went on\nlaughing as before, and said he didn't believe in such stuff. When they\nhad come home in the evening, and the folks lay sleeping in the\nfishing-station, they heard, about twelve o'clock at night, the lad\nyelling for help; it even seemed to one of them, by the light of the\ntrain-oil lamp, as if a heavy hand were stretching forward from the door\nright up to the bench on which the lad lay. The lad, yelling and\nstruggling, had already been dragged as far as the door before the\nothers had so far come to their senses as to think of grasping him round\nthe body to prevent him from being dragged right out. And now, in mid\ndoorway, a hard fight began, the Draug dragging him by the legs, while\nthe whole crew tugged against him with the boy's arms and upper limbs.\nThus, amidst yelling and groaning, they swayed to and fro all through\nthe midnight hour, backwards and forwards, in the half-open door; and\nnow the Draug, and now the men, had the most of the boy on their side of\nthe doorway. All at once the Draug let go, so that the whole crew fell\nhiggledy-piggledy backwards on to the floor. Then they found that the\nboy was dead; it was only then that the Draug had let him go.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\"THE EARTH DRAWS\"\n\n[Illustration: \"THE EARTH DRAWS.\"]\n\n\n\n\n\"THE EARTH DRAWS\"\n\n\nThere was once a young salesman at the storekeeper's at S\u00f6rvaag.\n\nHe was fair, with curly hair, shrewd blue eyes, and so smart, and\nobliging, and handsome, that all the girls in the town got themselves\nsent on errands, and made pilgrimages to the shop on purpose to see him.\nMoreover, he was so smart and skilful in everything he put his hand to,\nthat the storekeeper never would part with him.\n\nNow it happened one day that he went out to a fishing station for his\nprincipal.\n\nThe current was dead against him, so he rode close in shore.\n\nAll at once he saw a little ring in the rocky wall a little above\nhigh-water mark. He thought it was the sort of ring which is used for\nfastening boats to, so he fancied it wouldn't do any harm to rest a bit\nand lay to ashore, and have a snack of something, for he had been\npulling at the oars from early morn.\n\nBut when he took hold of the ring to run his boatline through it, it\nfitted round his finger so tightly that he had to tug at it. He tugged,\nand out of the mountain side with a rush came a large drawer. It was\nbrimful of silk neckerchiefs and women's frippery.\n\nHe was amazed, and began pondering the matter over.\n\nThen he saw what looked like rusty flakes of iron in rows right over the\nwhole mountain side, exactly resembling the slit of his own drawer.\n\nHe had now got the ring on his finger, and must needs try if it would\nopen the other slits also. And out he drew drawer after drawer full of\ngold bracelets and silver bracelets, glass pearls, brooches and rings,\nbracelets and laced caps, yarn, night-caps and woollen drawers, coffee,\nsugar, groats, tobacco pipes, buttons, hooks and eyes, knives, axes, and\nscythes.\n\nHe drew out drawer after drawer; there was no end to the display they\nmade.\n\nBut all round about him he heard, as it were, the humming of a crowd and\nthe tramp of sea-boots. There was a hubbub, as if they were rolling\nhogsheads over a bridge and hoisting sails against the wind, and out\nfrom the sea sounded the stroke of oars and the bumping of boats putting\nashore.\n\nThen he began to have an inkling that he had laid to his boat at a\nmooring-ring belonging to the underground folk, and had lit right upon\ntheir landing-place where they deposited their wares.\n\nHe stood there looking into a drawer of meerschaum pipes. They were\nfiner than any he had thought it possible to find in the whole world.\n\nThen he felt, as it were, the blow of a heavy hand which tried to thrust\nhim aside; but, at the same time, some one laughed so merrily close by.\nThe same instant he saw a young woman in the fore-part of his boat. She\nwas leaning, with broad shoulders and hairy arms, over a meal-sack. Her\neyes laughed and shot forth sparks as from a smithy in the dark, but her\nface was oddly pale.\n\nThen she vanished altogether like a vision.\n\nHe was glad when he got down into his boat again, and pushed off and\nrode away.\n\nBut when he got out into the sound, and slackened speed a bit, he\nperceived that the ring still sat upon his finger.\n\nHis first thought was to tear it off and fling it into the sea; but then\nit sat tighter than ever.\n\nIt was so curiously wrought and fretted and engraved that he must needs\nexamine it more curiously; and the longer he looked at it the stranger\nthe gold whereof it was wrought gleamed and glistened. Turn it as he\nwould to examine its spirals, he could never make out where they began\nand where they ended.\n\nBut as he sat there and looked and looked at it, the black crackling and\nsparkling eyes of that pale face stood out more and more plainly before\nhis eyes. He didn't exactly know whether he thought her ugly or\nhandsome--the uncanny creature!\n\nThe ring he now meant to keep, come what might.\n\nAnd home he rowed, and said not a word to anybody of what had happened\nto him.\n\nBut from that day forth a strange restlessness came over him.\n\nWhen he was sweeping out the shop or measuring goods, he would suddenly\nstand there in a brown study, and fancy he was right away at the\nlanding-stage in the mountain-side, and the black woman was laughing at\nhim over the meal-sack.\n\nOut yonder he must needs venture once more, and put his ring to the\ntest, though it cost him his life.\n\nAnd in the course of the summer his boat lay over at the mountain-side\nin the self-same place as before.\n\nWhen he had opened the drawer with his gold ring, he caught sight of the\nbroad-shouldered woman. Her eyes sparkled, and had a wild look about\nthem, and she peered curiously at him.\n\nAnd, every time he came, he seemed to be more expected, and she was more\nand more gladsome. They became quite old acquaintances, and she was\nalways waiting for him there.\n\nBut at home he grew gloomy and silent. Yet, although he bethought him\nthat it was all sorcery, and her arms were hairy almost like a beast's,\nand although he determined and really tried to keep away, nevertheless\nhe could not help going thither, and whenever he had been away from her\na whole week, she grew quite unmanageable, and laughed and shrieked when\nshe saw him coming again.\n\nAnd he always heard the noise and the bustle of many people all about\nhim, but never could he see anything. It seemed to him, however, as if\nthey all lay a little way off and pulled their boat aside for him to\npass. His boat, too, was always nicely baled out, and the oars and sails\nrighted and trimmed. The cable, too, was fastened for him whenever he\ncame, and thrown to him whenever he went away.\n\nNow and then she so managed it that he caught a glimpse into their\nwarehouses and their bright halls in the mountain side, and at such\ntimes she seemed to be enticing him after her. And then, on his way\nhome, he would shudder. \"What,\" thought he, \"if the mountain wall were\nto shut to behind me?\" and every time he was right glad that he had been\nso far on his guard and had come off scot free.\n\nAnd now, towards autumn, he grew more at his ease. He really made up his\nmind to try to give up these journeys. He set to work in real earnest,\nso that he had no time for thought, and plunged into his business with\nfiery impetuosity.\n\nBut when Christmas-tide drew nigh with its snowflakes and darkness, such\nstrange fancies came over him.\n\nWhenever he went into the dark draughty nooks and corners, he saw the\nstrong, heavily built shape before him. She laughed and called to him,\nand shrieked and sent him messages by the blast. And then a strong\ndesire came upon him.\n\nAnd one day he was unable to hold out any longer, so off he went.\n\nHe fancied he caught a glimpse of her a long way off. She was casting\nhuge boulders aside so as to see and follow the course of the boat, and\nshe beckoned and greeted him through the drizzle and the mist. It was as\nthough the current was bearing him thither all the time.\n\nWhen he came up, the sea seethed and boiled for the crowds that were in\nit, though he saw them not. They waded out to him and drew his boat\nashore, and steps and a bridge lay there ready for his feet. But right\nat the top stood she, and her breath came heavily, and she leaned\ntowards him and drew him with those bold eyes of hers set in that face\nas pale as night. She went swiftly inland, looked behind her, and\nbeckoned him after her; and then she threw open the door of an old iron\nsafe in the midst of the wall.\n\nOn its shelves sparkled a bridal crown, and a shining girdle and\nbreastplate and a kirtle, and all manner of bridal finery.\n\nThere she stood, and her breath came straining hot and heavy through her\nwhite teeth, and she smiled and ogled him archly. He felt her take hold\nof him, and it was as though a darkness fell around him.\n\nThen all at once, as if in a gleam of twilight, he saw the whole\ntrading-place, vast and wealthy and splendid, all round about him with\nits haven, warehouses, and trading-ships. She stretched out her hands\nand pointed to it, as if she would say that he should be the lord and\nmaster of the whole of it.\n\nA cold shiver ran through him; he perceived that it led right into the\nmountain.\n\nAnd out he rushed.\n\nHe cut the cable through with his knife, and wrenched the ring from his\nfinger, and cast it into the sea, and off he rowed, so that the sea was\nlike a foaming foss around him.\n\nWhen he got home to his work again, and the bustle of the Christmas\nseason began, he felt as if he had awakened from a heavy nightmare or an\nevil dream. He felt so light of heart. He chatted gaily with customers\nover the counter, and his old life went on much the same as before. And\neverything he put his hand to went along as smooth as butter.\n\nBut the tradesman's daughter stuck her head into the shop not once nor\ntwice. She looked and smiled at him in shy admiration. Never had he\nremarked before what taking ways were hers, or noticed how bonnie and\nbright the lassie was, and how graceful and supple she looked as she\nstood in the doorway. And ever since the tradesman's daughter had looked\nso strangely at him, he had no thought for any one but her. He was\nalways thinking what a way she had of holding her head, and how slim she\nlooked when she walked about, and what quick and lively blue eyes she\nhad, just like merry twinkling stars.\n\nHe would lay awake o' nights, and reflect upon his grievous abominable\nsin in lowering himself to the level of an uncanny monster, and right\nglad was he that he had cast the ring away.\n\nBut on Christmas Eve, when the shop was shut and the house folks and\nservants were making ready for the festival in kitchen and parlour, the\nshopkeeper took him aside into his counting-house. If he liked his\ndaughter, said he, there was no impediment that he could see. Let him\ntake heart and woo her, for it hadn't escaped him how she was moping\nabout all love-sick on his account. He himself, said the shopkeeper, was\nold, and would like to retire from business.\n\nThe good-looking shopman did not wait to be asked twice. He wooed\nstraightway, and, before the Christmas cheer was on the table, he got\nyes for an answer.\n\nThen years and years passed over them, and they thrived and prospered in\nhouse and home.\n\nThey had pretty and clever children. He rejoiced in his wife; nothing\nwas good enough for her, and honour and ease were her portion, both at\nhome and abroad.\n\nBut in the seventh year, when it was drawing towards Yule-tide, such a\nstrange restlessness came over him. He wandered about all by himself,\nand could find peace nowhere.\n\nHis wife fretted and sorrowed over it. She knew not what it could be,\nand it seemed to her that he oddly avoided her. He would wander for\nhours together about the dark packhouse loft, among coffers and casks\nand barrels and sacks, and it was as though he didn't like folks to come\nthither when he was there.\n\nNow it chanced on the day before Little Christmas Eve[1] that one of the\nworkpeople had to fetch something from the loft.\n\nThere stood the master, deep in thought, by one of the meal sacks,\nstaring down on the ground before him.\n\n\"Don't you see the iron ring down in the floor there?\" he asked.\n\nBut the man saw no ring.\n\n\"I see it there--the earth draws,\" he sighed heavily.\n\nOn Little Christmas Eve he was nowhere to be found, nor on the day\nafter, though they searched for him high and low, and made inquiries\nabout him everywhere amidst the Yule-tide bustle and merriment.\n\nBut late on Christmas Eve, while they were all running about in the\nutmost anxiety, not knowing whether they should lay the table or not,\nall at once in he came through the door.\n\nHe longed so much for both meat and drink, he said, and he was so happy\nand merry and jovial the whole evening through, that they all clean\nforgot the fright they had been in.\n\nFor a whole year afterwards he was chatty and sociable as before, and he\nmade so much of his wife that it was quite absurd. He bore her in his\nhands, so to speak, and absolutely could not do enough for her.\n\nBut when it drew towards Yule-tide again, and the darkest time of the\nyear, the same sort of restlessness came over him. It was as though they\nonly saw his shadow amongst them, and he went moping about the packhouse\nloft again, and lingering there.\n\nOn Little Christmas Eve the same thing happened as before--he\ndisappeared.\n\nHis wife and the people of the house went about in a terrible way, and\nwere filled with astonishment and alarm.\n\nAnd on Christmas Eve he suddenly stepped into the room again, and was\nmerry and jovial, as he generally was. But when the lights had burnt\nout, and they all had gone to bed, his wife could hold her tongue no\nlonger: she burst into tears, and begged him to tell her where he had\nbeen.\n\nThen he thrust her roughly from him, and his eyes shot sparks, as if he\nwere downright crazy. He implored her, for their mutual happiness' sake,\nnever to ask him such a question again.\n\nTime went on, and the same thing happened every year.\n\nWhen the days grew dark, he moped about by himself, all gloomy and\nsilent, and seemed bent upon hiding himself away from people; and on\nLittle Christmas Eve he always disappeared, though nobody ever saw him\ngo. And punctually on Christmas Eve, at the very moment when they were\nabout to lay the table, he all at once came in at the door, happy and\ncontented with them all.\n\nBut just before every autumn, towards the dark days, always earlier than\nthe year before, this restlessness came over him, and he moped about\nwith it, moodier, and shyer of people than ever.\n\nHis wife never questioned him; but a load of sorrow lay upon her, and it\nseemed to her to grow heavier and more crushing, since she seemed no\nlonger able to take care of him, and he no longer seemed to belong to\nher.\n\nNow one year, when it was again drawing nigh to Yule-tide, he began\nroaming about as usual, heavy and cast down; and the day before Little\nChristmas Eve he took his wife along with him into the packhouse loft.\n\n\"Do you see anything there by the meal sack?\" he asked.\n\nBut she saw nothing.\n\nThen he gripped her by the hand, and begged and implored her to remain,\nand go with him there at night. As his life was dear to him, said he, he\nwould fain try and stay at home that day.\n\nIn the course of the night he tightly grasped her hand time after time,\nand sighed and groaned. She felt that he was holding on to her, and\nstriving hard, and with all his might, against _something_.\n\nWhen morning came, it was all over. He was happier and lighter of mood\nthan she had seen him for a long, long time, and he remained at home.\n\nOn that Christmas Eve there was such a hauling and a-carrying upstairs\nfrom both shop and cellar, and the candles shone till all the\nwindow-panes sparkled again. It was the first real festival he had ever\nspent in his own house, he said, and he meant to make a regular banquet\nof it.\n\nBut when, as the custom was, the people of the house came in one by one,\nand drank the healths of their master and mistress, he grew paler and\npaler and whiter and whiter, as if his blood were being sucked out of\nhim and drained away.\n\n\"The earth draws!\" he shrieked, and there was a look of horror in his\neyes.\n\nImmediately afterwards he sat there--dead!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[1] _Lille Jule-aften_, i.e., the day before Christmas Eve\n(_Jule-aften_).\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_THE CORMORANTS OF ANDV\u00c6R_\n\n[Illustration: _THE TWELVE CORMORANTS_.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE CORMORANTS OF ANDV\u00c6R\n\n\nOutside Andv\u00e6r lies an island, the haunt of wild birds, which no man can\nland upon, be the sea never so quiet; the sea-swell girds it round about\nwith sucking whirlpools and dashing breakers.\n\nOn fine summer days something sparkles there through the sea-foam like a\nlarge gold ring; and, time out of mind, folks have fancied there was a\ntreasure there left by some pirates of old.\n\nAt sunset, sometimes, there looms forth from thence a vessel with a\ncastle astern, and a glimpse is caught now and then of an old-fashioned\ngalley. There it lies as if in a tempest, and carves its way along\nthrough heavy white rollers.\n\nAlong the rocks sit the cormorants in a long black row, lying in wait\nfor dog-fish.\n\nBut there was a time when one knew the exact number of these birds.\nThere was never more nor less of them than twelve, while upon a stone,\nout in the sea-mist, sat the thirteenth, but it was only visible when it\nrose and flew right over the island.\n\nThe only persons who lived near the V\u00e6r[1] at winter time, long after\nthe fishing season was over, was a woman and a slip of a girl. Their\nbusiness was to guard the scaffolding poles for drying fish against the\nbirds of prey, who had such a villainous trick of hacking at the\ndrying-ropes.\n\nThe young girl had thick coal-black hair, and a pair of eyes that peeped\nat folk so oddly. One might almost have said that she was like the\ncormorants outside there, and she had never seen much else all her life.\nNobody knew who her father was.\n\nThus they lived till the girl had grown up.\n\nIt was found that, in the summer time, when the fishermen went out to\nthe V\u00e6r to fetch away the dried fish, that the young fellows began\nunderbidding each other, so as to be selected for that special errand.\n\nSome gave up their share of profits, and others their wages; and there\nwas a general complaint in all the villages round about that on such\noccasions no end of betrothals were broken off.\n\nBut the cause of it all was the girl out yonder with the odd eyes.\n\nFor all her rough and ready ways, she had something about her, said\nthose she chatted with, that there was no resisting. She turned the\nheads of all the young fellows; it seemed as if they couldn't live\nwithout her.\n\nThe first winter a lad wooed her who had both house and warehouse of his\nown.\n\n\"If you come again in the summer time, and give me the right gold ring I\nwill be wedded by, something may come of it,\" said she.\n\nAnd, sure enough, in the summer time the lad was there again.\n\nHe had a lot of fish to fetch away, and she might have had a gold ring\nas heavy and as bonnie as heart could wish for.\n\n\"The ring I must have lies beneath the wreckage, in the iron chest, over\nat the island yonder,\" said she; \"that is, if you love me enough to dare\nfetch it.\"\n\nBut then the lad grew pale.\n\nHe saw the sea-bore rise and fall out there like a white wall of foam on\nthe bright warm summer day, and on the island sat the cormorants\nsleeping in the sunshine.\n\n\"Dearly do I love thee,\" said he, \"but such a quest as that would mean\nmy burial, not my bridal.\"\n\nThe same instant the thirteenth cormorant rose from his stone in the\nmisty foam, and flew right over the island.\n\nNext winter the steersman of a yacht came a wooing. For two years he had\ngone about and hugged his misery for her sake, and he got the same\nanswer.\n\n\"If you come again in the summer time, and give me the right gold ring I\nwill be wedded with, something may come of it.\"\n\nOut to the V\u00e6r he came again on Midsummer Day.\n\nBut when he heard where the gold ring lay, he sat and wept the whole day\ntill evening, when the sun began to dance north-westward into the sea.\n\nThen the thirteenth cormorant arose, and flew right over the island.\n\nThere was nasty weather during the third winter.\n\nThere were manifold wrecks, and on the keel of a boat, which came\ndriving ashore, hung an exhausted young lad by his knife-belt.\n\nBut they couldn't get the life back into him, roll and rub him about in\nthe boat-house as they might.\n\nThen the girl came in.\n\n\"'Tis my bridegroom!\" said she.\n\nAnd she laid him in her bosom, and sat with him the whole night through,\nand put warmth into his heart.\n\nAnd when the morning came, his heart beat.\n\n\"Methought I lay betwixt the wings of a cormorant, and leaned my head\nagainst its downy breast,\" said he.\n\nThe lad was ruddy and handsome, with curly hair, and he couldn't take\nhis eyes away from the girl.\n\nHe took work upon the V\u00e6r.\n\nBut off he must needs be gadding and chatting with her, be it never so\nearly and never so late.\n\nSo it fared with him as it had fared with the others.\n\nIt seemed to him that he could not live without her, and on the day when\nhe was bound to depart, he wooed her.\n\n\"_Thee_ I will not fool,\" said she. \"Thou hast lain on my breast, and I\nwould give my life to save thee from sorrow. Thou shalt have me if thou\nwilt place the betrothal ring upon my finger; but longer than the day\nlasts thou canst not keep me. And now I will wait, and long after thee\nwith a horrible longing, till the summer comes.\"\n\nOn Midsummer Day the youth came thither in his boat all alone.\n\nThen she told him of the ring that he must fetch for her from among the\nskerries.\n\n\"If thou hast taken me off the keel of a boat, thou mayest cast me forth\nyonder again,\" said the lad. \"Live without thee I cannot.\"\n\nBut as he laid hold of the oars in order to row out, she stepped into\nthe boat with him and sat in the stern. Wondrous fair was she!\n\nIt was beautiful summer weather, and there was a swell upon the sea:\nwave followed upon wave in long bright rollers.\n\nThe lad sat there, lost in the sight of her, and he rowed and rowed till\nthe insucking breakers roared and thundered among the skerries; the\nground-swell was strong, and the frothing foam spurted up as high as\ntowers.\n\n\"If thy life is dear to thee, turn back now,\" said she.\n\n\"Thou art dearer to me than life itself,\" he made answer.\n\nBut just as it seemed to the lad as if the prow were going under, and\nthe jaws of death were gaping wide before him, it grew all at once as\nstill as a calm, and the boat could run ashore as if there was never a\nbillow there.\n\nOn the island lay a rusty old ship's anchor half out of the sea.\n\n\"In the iron chest which lies beneath the anchor is my dowry,\" said she;\n\"carry it up into thy boat, and put the ring that thou seest on my\nfinger. With this thou dost make me thy bride. So now I am thine till\nthe sun dances north-westwards into the sea.\"\n\nIt was a gold ring with a red stone in it, and he put it on her finger\nand kissed her.\n\nIn a cleft on the skerry was a patch of green grass. There they sat them\ndown, and they were ministered to in wondrous wise, how he knew not nor\ncared to know, so great was his joy.\n\n\"Midsummer Day is beauteous,\" said she, \"and I am young and thou art my\nbridegroom. And now we'll to our bridal bed.\"\n\nSo bonnie was she that he could not contain himself for love.\n\nBut when night drew nigh, and the sun began to dance out into the sea,\nshe kissed him and shed tears.\n\n\"Beauteous is the summer day,\" said she, \"and still more beauteous is\nthe summer evening; but now the dusk cometh.\"\n\nAnd all at once it seemed to him as if she were becoming older and older\nand fading right away.\n\nWhen the sun went below the sea-margin there lay before him on the\nskerry some mouldering linen rags and nought else.\n\nCalm was the sea, and in the clear Midsummer night there flew _twelve_\ncormorants out over the sea.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[1] A fishing-station, where fishermen assemble periodically.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_ISAAC AND THE PARSON OF BR\u00d6N\u00d6_\n\n\n[Illustration: _THE PARSON OF BR\u00d6N\u00d6. (Story of the Sea-Boot.)_]\n\n\n\n\nISAAC AND THE PARSON OF BR\u00d6N\u00d6\n\n\nIn Helgeland there was once a fisherman called Isaac. One day when he\nwas out halibut fishing he felt something heavy on the lines. He drew\nup, and, lo! there was a sea-boot.\n\n\"That _was_ a rum 'un! \" said he, and he sat there a long time looking\nat it.\n\nIt looked just as if it might be the boot of his brother who had gone\ndown in the great storm last winter on his way home from fishing.\n\nThere was still something _inside_ the boot too, but he durst not look\nto see what it was, nor did he exactly know what to do with the sea-boot\neither.\n\nHe didn't want to take it home and frighten his mother, nor did he quite\nfancy chucking it back into the sea again; so he made up his mind to go\nto the parson of Br\u00f6n\u00f6, and beg him to bury it in a Christian way.\n\n\"But I can't bury a sea-boot,\" quoth the parson.\n\nThe fellow scratched his head. \"Na, na!\" said he.\n\nThen he wanted to know how much there ought to be of a human body before\nit could have the benefit of Christian burial.\n\n\"That I cannot exactly tell you,\" said the parson; \"a tooth, or a\nfinger, or hair clippings is not enough to read the burial service over.\nAnyhow, there ought to be so much remaining that one can see that a soul\nhas been in it. But to read Holy Scripture over a toe or two in a\nsea-boot! Oh, no! that would never do!\"\n\nBut Isaac watched his opportunity, and managed to get the sea-boot into\nthe churchyard on the sly, all the same.\n\nAnd home he went.\n\nIt seemed to him that he had done the best he could. It was better,\nafter all, that _something_ of his brother should lie so near God's\nhouse than that he should have heaved the boot back into the black sea\nagain.\n\nBut, towards autumn, it so happened that, as he lay out among the\nskerries on the look-out for seals, and the ebb-tide drove masses of\ntangled seaweed towards him, he fished up a knife-belt and an empty\nsheath with his oar-blade.\n\nHe recognised them at once as his brother's.\n\nThe tarred wire covering of the sheath had been loosened and bleached by\nthe sea; and he remembered quite well how, when his brother had sat and\ncobbled away at this sheath, he had chatted and argued with him about\nthe leather for his belt which he had taken from an old horse which they\nhad lately killed.\n\nThey had bought the buckle together over at the storekeeper's on the\nSaturday, and mother had sold bilberries, and capercailzies, and three\npounds of wool. They had got a little tipsy, and had had such fun with\nthe old fishwife at the headland, who had used a bast-mat for a sail.\n\nSo he took the belt away with him, and said nothing about it. It was no\ngood giving pain to no purpose, thought he.\n\nBut the longer the winter lasted the more he bothered himself with odd\nnotions about what the parson had said. And he knew not what he should\ndo in case he came upon something else, such as another boot, or\nsomething that a squid, or a fish, or a crab, or a Greenland shark might\nhave bitten off. He began to be really afraid of rowing out in the sea\nthere among the skerries.\n\nAnd yet, for all that, it was as though he were constantly being drawn\nthither by the hope of finding, perhaps, so much of the remains as might\nshow the parson where the soul had been, and so move him to give them a\nChristian burial.\n\nHe took to walking about all by himself in a brown study.\n\nAnd then, too, he had such nasty dreams.\n\nHis door flew open in the middle of the night and let in a cold\nsea-blast, and it seemed to him as if his brother were limping about the\nroom, and yelling that he must have his foot again, the Draugs were\npulling and twisting him about so.\n\nFor hours and hours he stood over his work without laying a hand to it,\nand blankly staring at the fifth wall[1].\n\nAt last he felt as if he were really going out of his wits, because of\nthe great responsibility he had taken upon himself by burying the foot\nin the churchyard.\n\nHe didn't want to pitch it into the sea again, but it couldn't lie in\nthe churchyard either.\n\nIt was borne in upon him so clearly that his brother could not be among\nthe blessed, and he kept going about and thinking of all that might be\nlying and drifting and floating about among the skerries.\n\nSo he took it upon himself to dredge there, and lay out by the sea-shore\nwith ropes and dredging gear. But all that he dredged up was sea-wrack,\nand weeds, and star-fish, and like rubbish.\n\nOne evening as he sat out there by the rocks trying his luck at fishing,\nand the line with the stone and all the hooks upon it shot down over the\nboat's side, the last of the hooks caught in one of his eyes, and right\nto the bottom went the eye.\n\nThere was no use dredging for _that_, and he could see to row home very\nwell without it.\n\nIn the night he lay with a bandage over his eye, wakeful for pain, and\nhe thought and thought till things looked as black as they could be to\nhim. Was there ever any one in the world in such a hobble as he?\n\nAll at once such an odd thing happened.\n\nHe thought he was looking about him, deep down in the sea, and he saw\nthe fishes flitting and snapping about among the sea-wrack and seaweeds\nround about the fishing line. They bit at the bait, and wriggled and\ntried to slip off, first a cod, and then a ling, and then a dog-fish.\nLast of all, a haddock came and stood still there, and chewed the water\na little as if it were tasting before swallowing it.\n\nAnd he saw there what he couldn't take his eyes off. It looked like the\nback of a man in leather clothes, with one sleeve caught beneath the\ngrapnel of a _Femb\u00f6ring_.[2]\n\nThen a heavy white halibut came up and gulped down the hook, and it\nbecame pitch dark.\n\n\"You must let the big halibut slip off again when you pull up\nto-morrow,\" something said, \"the hook tears my mouth so. 'Tis of no use\nsearching except in the evening, when the tide in the sound is on the\nebb.\"\n\nNext day he went off, and took a piece of a tombstone from the\nchurchyard to dredge the bottom with; and in the evening, when the tide\nhad turned, he lay out in the sound again and searched.\n\nImmediately he hauled up the grapnel of a _Femb\u00f6ring_, the hooks of\nwhich were clinging to a leather fisherman's jacket, with the remains of\nan arm in it.\n\nThe fishes had got as much as they could of it out of the leather\njacket.\n\nOff to the parson he rowed straightway.\n\n\"What! read the service over a washed-out old leather jacket!\" cried the\nparson of Br\u00f6n\u00f6.\n\n\"I'll throw the sea-boot into the bargain,\" answered Isaac.\n\n\"Waifs and strays and sea salvage should be advertised in the church\nporch,\" thundered the parson.\n\nThen Isaac looked straight into the parson's face.\n\n\"The sea-boot has been heavy enough on my conscience,\" said he; \"and I'm\nsure I don't want to be saddled with the leather jacket as well.\"\n\n\"I tell you I don't mean to cast consecrated earth to the winds,\" said\nthe parson; he was getting wroth.\n\nIsaac scratched his head again. \"Na, na!\" said he.\n\nAnd with that he had to be content and go home.\n\nBut Isaac had neither rest nor repose, there lay such a grievous load\nupon him.\n\nIn the night time he again saw the big white halibut. It was going round\nand round so slowly and sadly in the selfsame circle at the bottom of\nthe sea. It was just as if some invisible sort of netting was all round\nit, and the whole time it was striving to slip through the meshes.\n\nIsaac lay there, and gazed and gazed till his blind eye ached again.\n\nNo sooner was he out dredging next day, and had let down the ropes, than\nan ugly heavy squid came up, and spouted up a black jet right in front\nof him.\n\nBut one evening he let the boat drive, as the current chose to take it,\noutside the skerries, but within the islands. At last it stopped at a\ncertain spot, as if it were moored fast, and there it grew wondrously\nstill; there was not a bird in the air or a sign of life in the sea.\n\nAll at once up came a big bubble right in front of the jib, and as it\nburst he heard a deep heavy sigh.\n\nBut Isaac had his own opinion about what he had seen.\n\n\"And the parson of Br\u00f6n\u00f6 shall see to the funeral too, or I'll know the\nreason why,\" said he.\n\nFrom henceforth it was bruited abroad that he had second sight, and saw\nmany things about him which were hid from other folks.\n\nHe could tell exactly where the fish were to be found thick together by\nthe sea-banks, and where they were not; and whenever they asked him\nabout such things, he would say--\n\n\"If I don't know it, my brother does.\"\n\nNow one day it chanced that the parson of Br\u00f6n\u00f6 had to go out along the\ncoast on a pious errand, and Isaac was one of them who had to row him\nthither.\n\nOff they went with a rattling good breeze.\n\nThe parson got quickly there, and was not very long about his business,\nfor next day he had to hold divine service in his own parish church.\n\n\"The firth seems to me a bit roughish,\" said he, \"and 'tis getting\ntowards evening; but as we have come hither, I should think we could get\nback again also.\"\n\nThey had not got very far on their homeward journey when the rising gale\nbegan to whistle and whine, so that they had to take in four clews[3].\n\nAnd away they went, with the sea-scud and the snow-flakes flying about\ntheir ears, while the waxing rollers rose big as houses.\n\nThe parson of Br\u00f6n\u00f6 had never been out in such weather before. They\nsailed right into the rollers, and they sailed out again.\n\nSoon it became black night.\n\nThe sea shone like mountain snow-fields, and the showers of snow and\nspray rather waxed than waned.\n\nIsaac had just taken in the fifth clew also when one of the planks\namidships gave way, so that the sea foamed in, and the parson of Br\u00f6n\u00f6\nand the crew leaped upon the upper deck, and bawled out that the boat\nwas going down.\n\n\"I don't think she'll founder this voyage,\" said Isaac; and he remained\nsitting where he was at the rudder.\n\nBut as the moon peeped forth from behind a hail-shower, they saw that a\nstrange foremastman was standing in the scuppers, and baling the water\nout of the boat as fast as it poured in.\n\n\"I didn't know that I had hired that fellow yonder,\" said the parson of\nBr\u00f6n\u00f6; \"he seems to me to be baling with a sea-boot; and it also seems\nto me as if he had neither breeches nor skin upon his legs, and the\nupper part of him is neither more nor less than an empty fluttering\nleather jacket.\"\n\n\"Parson has seen him before, I think,\" said Isaac.\n\nThen the parson of Br\u00f6n\u00f6 grew angry.\n\n\"By virtue of my sacred office,\" said he, \"I adjure him to depart from\namidships.\"\n\n\"Na, na!\" answered Isaac; \"and can parson also answer for the plank that\nhas burst?\"\n\nThen the parson bethought him of the evil case he was in.\n\n\"The man seems to me mortally strong, and we have great need of him,\"\nsaid he; \"nor is it any great sin, methinks, to help a servant of God's\nover the sea. But I should like to know what he wants in return.\"\n\nThe billows burst, and the blast howled around him.\n\n\"Only some two or three shovels of earth on a rotten sea-boot and a\nmouldy skin-jacket,\" said Isaac.\n\n\"If you're able to gad about again here below, I suppose there's nothing\nagainst your being able to enter into bliss again, for all that I know,\"\nbawled the parson of Br\u00f6n\u00f6; \"and you shall have your shovelfuls of earth\ninto the bargain.\"\n\nJust as he said this, the water within the skerries all at once became\nquite smooth, and the parson's boat drove high and dry upon the\nsandbank, so that the mast cracked.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[1] _I.e.,_ at nothing--a house having usually only four walls.\n\n[2] See \"The Fisherman and the Draug.\"\n\n[3] See \"The Fisherman and the Draug.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n_THE WIND-GNOME_\n\n\n[Illustration: _THE WIND-GNOME_.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE WIND-GNOME\n\n\nThere was once a skipper of Dyrevig called Bardun. He was so headstrong\nthat there was no doing anything with him. Whatever he set his mind\nupon, that should be done, he said, and done it always was.\n\nIf he promised to be at a dance, the girls could safely rely upon his\nbeing there, though it blew a tempest and rained cats and dogs.\n\nHe would come scudding along on a _F\u00e6ring_[1] to his father's house\nthrough storm and stress. Row upon row of girls would be waiting for him\nthere, and he spanked the floor with every one of them in turn, and left\ntheir gallants to cool their heels as best they might.\n\nCock-of-the-walk he always must be.\n\nHe would go shark-fishing too, and would venture with his fishing gaff\ninto seas where only large vessels were wont to go.\n\nIf there was anything nobody else dared do, Bardun was the man to do it.\nAnd, absurd and desperate as the venture might be, he always succeeded,\nso that folks were always talking about him.\n\nNow, right out at sea, beyond the skerries, lay a large rock, the lair\nof wild-fowl, whither the merchant who owned it came every year to bring\naway rich loads of eider-down. A long way down the side of this lofty\nrock was a cleft. Nobody could tell how far _into_ the rock it went, and\nso inaccessible was it there that its owner had said that whoever liked\nmight come and take eider-down from thence. It became quite a proverb to\nsay, when anything couldn't be done, that it was just as impossible as\ntaking eider-down from Dyrevig rock.\n\nBut Bardun passed by the rock, and peeped up at the cleft, and saw all\nthe hosts of the fowls of the air lighting upon it so many times that he\nfelt he needs must try his hand at it.\n\nHe lost no time about it, and the sun was shining brightly as he set\nout.\n\nHe took with him a long piece of rope, which he cast two or three times\nround a rocky crag, and lowered himself down till he was right opposite\nthe cleft. There he hung and swung over it backwards and forwards till\nhe had got a firm footing, and then he set about collecting eider-down\nand stuffing his sacks with it.\n\nHe went searching about for it so far into the rocky chasm that he saw\nno more than a gleam of sunlight outside the opening, and he couldn't\ntake a hundreth part of the eider-down that was there.\n\nIt was quite late in the evening before he gave up trying to gather it\nall. But when he came out again, the stone which he had placed on the\ntop of the rope and tied it to was gone. And now the rope hung loosely\nthere, and dangled over the side of the rock. The wind blew it in and\nout and hither and thither. The currents of air sported madly with it,\nso that it always kept sheer away from the rock and far out over the\nabyss.\n\nThere he stood then, and tried again and again to clutch hold of it till\nthe sun lay right down in the sea.\n\nWhen it began to dawn again, and the morning breeze rose up from the\nsea, he all at once heard something right over his head say--\n\n\"It blows away, it blows away!\"\n\nHe looked up, and there he saw a big woman holding the rope away from\nthe cliff side.\n\nEvery time he made a grip at it she wrenched and twisted it right away\nover the rocky wall, and there was a laughing and a grinning all down\nthe mountain side--\n\n\"It blows away, it blows away!\"\n\nAnd, again and again, the rope drove in and out and hither and thither.\n\n\"You had better take a spring at once, and not wait till you're tired,\"\nthought he.\n\nIt was a pretty long leap to take, but he went back a sufficient\ndistance, and then out he sprang.\n\nBardun was not the man to fall short of anything. He caught the rope and\nheld it tight.\n\nAnd, oddly enough, it seemed now to run up the cliff-side of its own\naccord, just as if some one were hoisting it.\n\nBut in front of the rocky crag to which he had fastened the rope, he\nheard a soughing and a sighing, and something said, \"I am the daughter\nof the Wind-Gnome, and now thou hast dominion over me! When the blast\nblows and whines about thee 'tis I who long for thee. And here thou hast\na rudder which will give thee luck and a fair wind whithersoever thou\nfarest. He who is with thee shall thrive, and he who is against thee\nshall suffer shipwreck and be lost. For 'tis I who am in the windy\ngusts.\"\n\nThen all at once everything was quite still; but down on the sea below\nthere swept a heavy squall.\n\nThere stood Bardun with the rudder in his hand, and he understood that\nit was not a thing to be lightly cast away.\n\nHomeward he steered with a racing breeze behind him, and he had not\nsailed far before he met a galeas which gave him the Bergen price for\nhis eider-down.\n\nBut Bardun was not content with only going thither once. He went just\nthe same as before, and he returned from the Dyrevig rock with a pile of\nsacks of eider-down on his boat right up to the mast.\n\nHe bought houses and ships; mightier and mightier he grew.\n\nAnd it was not long before he owned whole fishing-grounds, both\nnorthwards and southwards.\n\nThose who submitted to him, and did as he would have them do, increased\nand prospered, and saw good days; but all who stood in his way were\nwrecked on the sea and perished, for the Wind-Gnome was on his side.\n\nSo things quickly went from good to better with him. What was to him a\nfair wind was the ruin of all those who were in any way opposed to him.\nAt last he became so rich and mighty that he owned every blessed\ntrading-place and fishing-station in all Finmark, and sent vessels even\nas far as Spitzbergen.\n\nNobody durst sell fish up north without his leave, and his sloops sailed\nover to Bergen eighteen at a time.\n\nHe ruled and gave judgment as it seemed best to him.\n\nBut the magistrates thought that such authority was too much for one man\nto have, and they began to make inquiries, and receive complaints of how\nhe domineered the people.\n\nNext, the magistrates sent him a warning.\n\n\"But the right to rule lies in my rudder,\" thought Bardun to himself.\n\nThen the magistrates summoned him before the tribunal.\n\nBardun simply whistled contemptuously.\n\nAt last matters came to such a pitch that the magistrates sailed forth\nto seize him in the midst of a howling tempest, and down they went in\nthe Finmark seas.\n\nThen Bardun was made chief magistrate, till such time as the king should\nsend up another.\n\nBut the new man who came had not been very long in office there before\nit seemed to him as if it was not he but Bardun who held sway.\n\nSo the same thing happened over again.\n\nBardun was summoned in vain before the courts, and the magistrates came\nforth to seize him and perished at sea.\n\nBut when the next governor was sent up to Finmark, it was only the keel\nof the king's ship that came drifting in from the sea. At last nobody\nwould venture thither to certain ruin, and Bardun was left alone, and\nruled over all. Then so mighty was he in all Finmark that he reigned\nthere like the king himself.\n\nNow he had but one child, and that a daughter.\n\nBoel was her name, and she shot up so handsome and comely that her\nbeauty shone like the sun. No bridegroom was good enough for her,\nunless, perhaps, it were the king's son.\n\nWooers came from afar, and came in vain. She was to have a dower, they\nsaid, such as no girl in the North had ever had before.\n\nOne year quite a young officer came up thither with a letter from the\nking. His garments were stiff with gold, and shone and sparkled wherever\nhe went. Bardun received him well, and helped him to carry out the\nking's commands.\n\nBut since the day when he himself was young, and got the answer, \"Yes!\"\nfrom his bride, he had never been so happy as when Boel came to him one\nday and said that the young officer had wooed her, and she would throw\nherself into the sea straightway if she couldn't have him.\n\nIn this way, he argued, his race would always sit in the seat of\nauthority, and hold sway when he was gone.\n\nWhile the officer, in the course of the summer, was out on circuit,\nBardun set a hundred men to work to build a house for them.\n\nIt was to shine like a castle, and be bright with high halls and large\nreception-rooms, and windows in long rooms; and furs and cloth of gold\nand bright tiles were fetched from the far South.\n\nAnd in the autumn there was such a wedding that the whole land heard and\ntalked about it.\n\nBut it was not long before Bardun began to find that to be a fact which\nwas already a rumour, to wit, that the man who had got his daughter\nwould fain have his own way also.\n\nHe laid down the law, and gave judgment like Bardun himself; and he\nover-ruled Bardun, not once nor twice.\n\nThen Bardun went to Boel, and bade her take her husband to task, and\nlook sharp about it. He had never yet seen the man, said he, who\ncouldn't be set right by his bride in the days when they did nothing but\neat honey together.\n\nBut Boel said that she had wedded a man who, to her mind, was no less a\nman than her own father; and it was his office, besides, to uphold the\nlaw and jurisdiction of the king.\n\nYoung folks are easy to talk over, thought Bardun. One can do anything\nwith them when one only makes them fancy they are having their own way.\nAnd it is wonderful how far one can get if one only bides one's time,\nand makes the best of things. Whatever was out of gear he could very\neasily put right again, when once he got a firm grip of the reins.\n\nSo he praised everything his son-in-law did, and talked big about him,\nso that there was really no end to it. He was glad, he said, that such a\nwise and stately ruler was there, ready to stand in his shoes against\nthe day when he should grow old.\n\nAnd so he made himself small, and his voice quivered when he spoke, as\nif he were really a sick and broken-down man.\n\nBut it didn't escape Boel how he slammed to the doors, and struck the\nstones with his stick till the sparks flew.\n\nNext time the court met, Bardun was taxed to a full tenth of the value\nof all his property, according to the king's law and justice.\n\nThen only did he begin to foresee that it might fare with the\nmagistrates now as it had done formerly.\n\nBut all women like pomp and show, thought he, and Boel was in this\nrespect no different to other people. And she was no daughter of his\neither, if she couldn't keep the upper hand of her husband.\n\nSo he bought her gold and jewels, and other costly things. One day he\ncame with a bracelet, and another day with a chain; and now it was a\nbelt, and now a gold embroidered shoe. And every time he told her that\nhe brought her these gifts, because she was his dearest jewel. He knew\nof nothing in the world that was too precious for her.\n\nThen, in his most pleasant, most courtly style, he just hinted that she\nmight see to it, and talk her husband over to other ways.\n\nBut it booted him even less than before.\n\nAnd so things went on till autumn. The king's law was first, and his\nwill was only second.\n\nThen he began to dread what would be the end of it all. His eyes\nsparkled so fiercely that none dare come near him. But at night he would\npace up and down, and shriek and bellow at his daughter, and give her\nall sorts of vile names.\n\nNow one day he came in to Boel with a heavy gold crown full of the most\nprecious stones. She should be the Queen of Finmark and Spitzbergen,\nsaid he, if her husband would do according to his will.\n\nThen she looked him stiffly in the face, and said she would never seduce\nher husband into breaking the king's law.\n\nHe grew as pale as the wall behind him, and cast the gold crown on the\nfloor, so that there was a perfect shower of precious stones about them.\n\nShe must know, said he, that her father and none other was king here.\nAnd now the young officer should find out how it fared with them who sat\nin his seat.\n\nThen Boel washed her hands of her father altogether, but she advised her\nhusband to depart forthwith.\n\nAnd on the third day she had packed up all her bridal finery, and\ndeparted in the vessel with the young officer.\n\nThen Bardun smote his head against the wall, and that night he laughed,\nso that it was heard far away, but he wept for his daughter.\n\nAnd now there arose such a storm that the sea was white for a whole\nweek. And it was not long before the tidings came that the ship that\nBoel and her husband had sailed by had gone down, and the splinters lay\nand floated among the skerries.\n\nThen Bardun took the rudder he had got from the Wind-Gnome, and stuck it\ninto the stern of the largest yacht he had. He was God himself now, said\nhe, and could always get a fair wind to steer by, and could rule where\nhe would in the wide world. And southwards he sailed with a rattling\nbreeze, and the billows rolled after him like mounds and hillocks.\n\nHeavier and heavier grew the sea, till it rolled like white mountains as\nhigh as the rocky walls of Lofoten.\n\nIt couldn't well be less when he was to rule the whole world, cried he.\nAnd so he set his rudder dead southwards.\n\nHe never diminished his sail one bit, and worse and worse grew the\nstorm, and higher and higher rose the sea.\n\nFor now he was steering right into the sun.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[1] A small two-oared boat.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_THE HULDREFISH_\n\n\n[Illustration: _THE HULDREFISH_.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE HULDREFISH[1]\n\n\nIt was such an odd trout that Nona hauled in at the end of his\nfishing-line. Large and fat, red spotted and shiny, it sprawled and\nsquirmed, with its dirty yellow belly above the water, to wriggle off\nthe hook. And when he got it into the boat, and took it off the hook, he\nsaw that it had only two small slits where the eyes should have been.\n\nIt must be a huldrefish, thought one of the boatmen, for rumour had it\nthat that lake was one of those which had a double bottom.\n\nBut Nona didn't trouble his head very much about what sort of a fish it\nwas, so long as it was a big one. He was ravenously hungry, and bawled\nto them to row as rapidly as possible ashore so as to get it cooked.\n\nHe had been sitting the whole afternoon with empty lines out in the\nmountain lake there; but as for the trout, it was only an hour ago since\nit had been steering its way through the water with its rudder of a\ntail, and allowed itself to be fooled by a hook, and already it lay\ncooked red there on the dish.\n\nBut now Nona recollected about the strange eyes, and felt for them, and\npricked away at its head with his fork. There was nothing but slits\noutside, and yet there was a sort of hard eyeball inside. The head was\nstrangely shaped, and looked very peculiar in many respects.\n\nHe was vexed that he had not examined it more closely before it was\ncooked; it was not so easy now to make out what it really was. It had\ntasted first-rate, however, and that was something.\n\nBut at night there was, as it were, a gleam of bright water before his\neyes, and he lay half asleep, thinking of the odd fish he had pulled up.\n\nHe was in his boat again, he thought, and it seemed to him as if his\nhands felt the fish wriggling and sprawling for its life, and shooting\nits snout backwards and forwards to get off the hook.\n\nAll at once it grew so heavy and strong that it drew the boat after it\nby the line.\n\nIt went along at a frightful speed, while the lake gradually diminished,\nas it were, and dried up.\n\nThere was an irresistible sucking of the water in the direction the fish\nwent, which was towards a hole at the bottom of the lake like a funnel,\nand right into this hole went the boat.\n\nIt glided for a long time in a sort of twilight along a subterranean\nriver, which dashed and splashed about him. The air that met him was, at\nfirst, chilly and cellar-like; gradually, however, it grew milder and\nmilder, and warmer and warmer.\n\nThe stream now flowed along calmly and quietly, and broadened out\ncontinually till it fell into a large lake.\n\nBeyond the borders of this lake, but only half visible in the gloom,\nstretched swamps and morasses, where he heard sounds as of huge beasts\nwading and trampling. Serpent like they rose and writhed with a crashing\nand splashing and snorting amidst the tepid mud and mire.\n\nBy the phosphorescent gleams he saw various fishes close to his boat,\nbut all of them lacked eyes.\n\nAnd he caught glimpses of the outlines of gigantic sea-serpents\nstretching far away into the darkness. He now understood that it was\nfrom down here that they pop up their heads off the coast in the dog\ndays when the sea is warm.\n\nThe lindworm, with its flat head and duck's beak, darted after fish, and\ncrept up to the surface of the earth through the slimy ways of mire and\nmarsh.\n\nThrough the warm and choking gloom there came, from time to time, a\ncooling chilling blast from the cold curves and winds of the slimy and\nslippery greenish lichworm,[2] which bores its way through the earth and\neats away the coffins that are rotting in the churchyards.\n\nHorrible shapeless monsters, with streaming manes, such as are said to\nsometimes appear in mountain tarns, writhed and wallowed and seized\ntheir prey in the fens and marshes.\n\nAnd he caught glimpses of all sorts of humanlike creatures, such as\nfishermen and sailors meet and marvel at on the sea, and landsmen see\noutside the elfin mounds.\n\nAnd, besides, that there was a soft whizzing and an endless hovering and\nswarming of beings, whose shapes were nevertheless invisible to the eye\nof man.\n\nThen the boat glided into miry pulpy water, where her course tended\ndownwards, and where the earth-vault above darkened as it sank lower and\nlower.\n\nAll at once a blinding strip of light shot down from a bright blue slit\nhigh, high, above him.\n\nA stuffy vapour stood round about him. The water was as yellow and\nturbid as that which comes out of steam boilers.\n\nAnd he called to mind the peculiar tepid undrinkable water which bubbles\nup by the side of artesian wells. It was quite hot. Up there they were\nboring down to a world of warm watercourses and liquid strata beneath\nthe earth's crust.\n\nHeat as from an oven rose up from the huge abysses and dizzying clefts,\nwhilst mighty steaming waterfalls roared and shook the ground.\n\nAll at once he felt as if his body were breaking loose, freeing itself,\nand rising in the air. He had a feeling of infinite lightness, of a\nwondrous capability for floating in higher atmospheres and recovering\nequilibrium.\n\nAnd, before he knew how it was, he found himself up on the earth again.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[1] _Hulder, huldre_, a name for anything elfin or gnomish. Compare\n_Icel. Hulda_, a hiding, covering. It implies the invisibility of the\nelfin race.\n\n[2] _Ligorm_, serpent that eats the dead. If we have Lichfield and\nlichgate, we may have lichworm too.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_FINN BLOOD_\n\n\n[Illustration: _FINN BLOOD._]\n\n\n\n\nFINN BLOOD\n\n\nIn Svartfjord, north of Senje, dwelt a lad called Eilert. His neighbours\nwere seafaring Finns, and among their children was a pale little girl,\nremarkable for her long black hair and her large eyes. They dwelt behind\nthe crag on the other side of the promontory, and fished for a\nlivelihood, as also did Eilert's parents; wherefore there was no\nparticular goodwill between the families, for the nearest fishing ground\nwas but a small one, and each would have liked to have rowed there\nalone.\n\nNevertheless, though his parents didn't like it at all, and even forbade\nit, Eilert used to sneak regularly down to the Finns. There they had\nalways strange tales to tell, and he heard wondrous things about the\nrecesses of the mountains, where the original home of the Finns was, and\nwhere, in the olden time, dwelt the Finn Kings, who were masters among\nthe magicians. There, too, he heard tell of all that was beneath the\nsea, where the Mermen and the Draugs hold sway. The latter are gloomy\nevil powers, and many a time his blood stood still in his veins as he\nsat and listened. They told him that the Draug usually showed himself on\nthe strand in the moonlight on those spots which were covered with\nsea-wrack; that he had a bunch of seaweed instead of a head, but shaped\nso peculiarly that whoever came across him absolutely couldn't help\ngazing into his pale and horrible face. They themselves had seen him\nmany a time, and once they had driven him, thwart by thwart, out of the\nboat where he had sat one morning, and turned the oars upside down. When\nEilert hastened homewards in the darkness round the headland, along the\nstrand, over heaps of seaweed, he dare scarcely look around him, and\nmany a time the sweat absolutely streamed from his forehead.\n\nIn proportion as hostility increased among the old people, they had a\ngood deal of fault to find with one another, and Eilert heard no end of\nevil things spoken about the Finns at home. Now it was this, and now it\nwas that. They didn't even row like honest folk, for, after the Finnish\nfashion, they took high and swift strokes, as if they were womenkind,\nand they all talked together, and made a noise while they rowed, instead\nof being \"silent in the boat.\" But what impressed Eilert most of all was\nthe fact that, in the Finnwoman's family, they practised sorcery and\nidolatry, or so folks said. He also heard tell of something beyond all\nquestion, and that was the shame of having Finn blood in one's veins,\nwhich also was the reason why the Finns were not as good as other honest\nfolk, so that the magistrates gave them their own distinct burial-ground\nin the churchyard, and their own separate \"Finn-pens\" in church. Eilert\nhad seen this with his own eyes in the church at Berg.\n\nAll this made him very angry, for he could not help liking the Finn\nfolks down yonder, and especially little Zilla. They two were always\ntogether: she knew such a lot about the Merman. Henceforth his\nconscience always plagued him when he played with her; and whenever she\nstared at him with her large black eyes while she told him tales, he\nused to begin to feel a little bit afraid, for at such times he\nreflected that she and her people belonged to the Damned, and that was\nwhy they knew so much about such things. But, on the other hand, the\nthought of it made him so bitterly angry, especially on her account.\nShe, too, was frequently taken aback by his odd behaviour towards her,\nwhich she couldn't understand at all; and then, as was her wont, she\nwould begin laughing at and teasing him by making him run after her,\nwhile she went and hid herself.\n\nOne day he found her sitting on a boulder by the sea-shore. She had in\nher lap an eider duck which had been shot, and could only have died\nquite recently, for it was still warm, and she wept bitterly over it. It\nwas, she sobbed, the same bird which made its nest every year beneath\nthe shelter of their outhouse--she knew it quite well, and she showed\nhim a red-coloured feather in its white breast. It had been struck dead\nby a single shot, and only a single red drop had come out of it; it had\ntried to reach its nest, but had died on its way on the strand. She wept\nas if her heart would break, and dried her face with her hair in\nimpetuous Finnish fashion. Eilert laughed at her as boys will, but he\noverdid it, and was very pale the whole time. He dared not tell her that\nthat very day he had taken a random shot with his father's gun from\nbehind the headland at a bird a long way off which was swimming ashore.\n\nOne autumn Eilert's father was downright desperate. Day after day on the\nfishing grounds his lines caught next to nothing, while he was forced to\nlook on and see the Finn pull up one rich catch after another. He was\nsure, too, that he had noticed malicious gestures over in the Finn's\nboat. After that his whole house nourished a double bitterness against\nthem; and when they talked it over in the evening, it was agreed, as a\nthing beyond all question, that Finnish sorcery had something to do with\nit. Against this there was only one remedy, and that was to rub\ncorpse-mould on the lines; but one must beware of doing so, lest one\nshould thereby offend the dead, and expose oneself to their vengeance,\nwhile the sea-folk would gain power over one at the same time.\n\nEilert bothered his head a good deal over all this; it almost seemed to\nhim as if he had had a share in the deed, because he was on such a good\nfooting with the Finn folks.\n\nOn the following Sunday both he and the Finn folks were at Berg church,\nand he secretly abstracted a handful of mould from one of the Finn\ngraves, and put it in his pocket. The same evening, when they came home,\nhe strewed the mould over his father's lines unobserved. And, oddly\nenough, the very next time his father cast his lines, as many fish were\ncaught as in the good old times. But after this Eilert's anxiety became\nindescribable. He was especially cautions while they were working of an\nevening round the fireside, and it was dark in the distant corners of\nthe room. He sat there with a piece of steel in his pocket. To beg\n\"forgiveness\" of the dead is the only helpful means against the\nconsequences of such deeds as his, otherwise one will be dragged off at\nnight, by an invisible hand, to the churchyard, though one were lashed\nfast to the bed by a ship's hawser.\n\nWhen Eilert, on the following \"Preaching Sunday,\" went to church, he\ntook very good care to go to the grave, and beg forgiveness of the dead.\n\nAs Eilert grew older, he got to understand that the Finn folks must,\nafter all, be pretty much the same sort of people as his own folks at\nhome; but, on the other hand, another thought was now uppermost in his\nmind, the thought, namely, that the Finns must be of an inferior stock,\nwith a taint of disgrace about them. Nevertheless, he could not very\nwell do without Zilla's society, and they were very much together as\nbefore, especially at the time of their confirmation.\n\nBut when Eilert became a man, and mixed more with the people of the\nparish, he began to fancy that this old companionship lowered him\nsomewhat in the eyes of his neighbours. There was nobody who did not\nbelieve as a matter of course that there was something shameful about\nFinn blood, and he, therefore, always tried to avoid her in company.\n\nThe girl understood it all well enough, for latterly she took care to\nkeep out of his way. Nevertheless, one day she came, as had been her\nwont from childhood, down to their house, and begged for leave to go in\ntheir boat when they rowed to church next day. There were lots of\nstrangers present from the village, and so Eilert, lest folks should\nthink that he and she were engaged, answered mockingly, so that every\none could hear him, \"that church-cleansing was perhaps a very good thing\nfor Finnish sorcery,\" but she must find some one else to ferry her\nacross.\n\nAfter that she never spoke to him at all, but Eilert was anything but\nhappy in consequence.\n\nNow it happened one winter that Eilert was out all alone fishing for\nGreenland shark. A shark suddenly bit. The boat was small, and the fish\nwas very big; but Eilert would not give in, and the end of the business\nwas that his boat capsized.\n\nAll night long he lay on the top of it in the mist and a cruel sea. As\nnow he sat there almost fainting for drowsiness, and dimly conscious\nthat the end was not far off, and the sooner it came the better, he\nsuddenly saw a man in seaman's clothes sitting astride the other end of\nthe boat's bottom, and glaring savagely at him with a pair of dull\nreddish eyes. He was so heavy that the boat's bottom began to slowly\nsink down at end where he sat. Then he suddenly vanished, but it seemed\nto Eilert as if the sea-fog lifted a bit; the sea had all at once grown\nquite calm (at least, there was now only a gentle swell); and right in\nfront of him lay a little low grey island, towards which the boat was\nslowly drifting.\n\nThe skerry was wet, as if the sea had only recently been flowing over\nit, and on it he saw a pale girl with such lovely eyes. She wore a green\nkirtle, and round her body a broad silver girdle with figures upon it,\nsuch as the Finns use. Her bodice was of tar-brown skin, and beneath her\nstay-laces, which seemed to be of green sea-grass, was a foam-white\nchemise, like the feathery breast of a sea-bird.\n\nWhen the boat came drifting on to the island, she came down to him and\nsaid, as if she knew him quite well, \"So you're come at last, Eilert;\nI've been waiting for you so long!\"\n\nIt seemed to Eilert as if an icy cold shudder ran through his body when\nhe took the hand which helped him ashore; but it was only for the\nmoment, and he forgot it instantly.\n\nIn the midst of the island there was an opening with a brazen flight of\nsteps leading down to a splendid cabin. Whilst he stood there thinking\nthings over a bit, he saw two heavy dog-fish swimming close by--they\nwere, at least, twelve to fourteen ells long.\n\nAs they descended, the dog-fish sank down too, each on one side of the\nbrazen steps. Oddly enough, it looked as if the island was transparent.\nWhen the girl perceived that he was frightened, she told him that they\nwere only two of her father's bodyguard, and shortly afterwards they\ndisappeared. She then said that she wanted to take him to her father,\nwho was waiting for them. She added that, if he didn't find the old\ngentleman precisely as handsome as he might expect, he had,\nnevertheless, no need to be frightened, nor was he to be astonished too\nmuch at what he saw.\n\nHe now perceived that he was under water, but, for all that, there was\nno sign of moisture. He was on a white sandy bottom, covered with\nchalk-white, red, blue, and silvery-bright shells. He saw meadows of\nsea-grass, mountains thick with woods of bushy seaweed and sea-wrack,\nand the fishes darted about on every side just as the birds swarm about\nthe rocks that sea-fowl haunt.\n\nAs they two were thus walking along together she explained many things\nto him. High up he saw something which looked like a black cloud with a\nwhite lining, and beneath it moved backwards and forwards a shape\nresembling one of the dog-fish.\n\n\"What you see there is a vessel,\" said she; \"there's nasty weather up\nthere now, and beneath the boat goes he who was sitting along with you\non the bottom of the boat just now. If it is wrecked, it will belong to\nus, and then you will not be able to speak to father to-day.\" As she\nsaid this there was a wild rapacious gleam in her eyes, but it was gone\nagain immediately.\n\nAnd, in point of fact, it was no easy matter to make out the meaning of\nher eyes. As a rule, they were unfathomably dark with the lustre of a\nnight-billow through which the sea-fire sparkles; but, occasionally,\nwhen she laughed, they took a bright sea-green glitter, as when the sun\nshines deep down into the sea.\n\nNow and again they passed by a boat or a vessel half buried in the sand,\nout and in of the cabin doors and windows of which fishes swam to and\nfro. Close by the wrecks wandered human shapes which seemed to consist\nof nothing but blue smoke. His conductress explained to him that these\nwere the spirits of drowned men who had not had Christian burial--one\nmust beware of them, for dead ones of this sort are malignant. They\nalways know when one of their own race is about to be wrecked, and at\nsuch times they howl the death-warning of the Draug through the wintry\nnights.\n\nThen they went further on their way right across a deep dark valley. In\nthe rocky walls above him he saw a row of four-cornered white doors,\nfrom which a sort of glimmer, as from the northern lights, shot\ndownwards through the darkness. This valley stretched in a\nnorth-eastwardly direction right under Finmark, she said, and inside the\nwhite doors dwelt the old Finn Kings who had perished on the sea. Then\nshe went and opened the nearest of these doors--here, down in the salt\nocean, was the last of the kings, who had capsized in the very breeze\nthat he himself had conjured forth, but could not afterwards quell.\nThere, on a block of stone, sat a wrinkled yellow Finn with running eyes\nand a polished dark-red crown. His large head rocked backwards and\nforwards on his withered neck, as if it were in the swirl of an ocean\ncurrent. Beside him, on the same block, sat a still more shrivelled and\nyellow little woman, who also had a crown on, and her garments were\ncovered with all sorts of coloured stones; she was stirring up a brew\nwith a stick. If she only had fire beneath it, the girl told Eilert, she\nand her husband would very soon have dominion again over the salt sea,\nfor the thing she was stirring about was magic stuff.\n\nIn the middle of a plain, which opened right before them at a turn of\nthe road, stood a few houses together like a little town, and, a little\nfurther on, Eilert saw a church turned upside down, looking, with its\nlong pointed tower, as if it were mirrored in the water. The girl\nexplained to him that her father dwelt in these houses, and the church\nwas one of the seven that stood in his realm, which extended all over\nHelgoland and Finmark. No service was held in them yet, but it would be\nheld when the drowned bishop, who sat outside in a brown study, could\nonly hit upon the name of the Lord that was to be served, and then all\nthe Draugs would go to church. The bishop, she said, had been sitting\nand pondering the matter over these eight hundred years, so he would no\ndoubt very soon get to the bottom of it. A hundred years ago the bishop\nhad advised them to send up one of the Draugs to R\u00f6d\u00f6 church to find out\nall about it; but every time the word he wanted was mentioned he\ncouldn't catch the sound of it. In the mountain \"Kunnan\" King Olaf had\nhung a church-bell of pure gold, and it is guarded by the first priest\nwho ever came to Nordland, who stands there in a white chasuble.\n\nOn the day the priest rings the bell, Kunnan will become a big stone\nchurch, to which all Nordland, both above and below the sea, will\nresort. But time flies, and therefore all who come down here below are\nasked by the bishop if they can tell him that name.\n\nAt this Eilert felt very queer indeed, and he felt queerer still when he\nbegan reflecting and found, to his horror, that he also had forgotten\nthat name.\n\nWhile he stood there in thought, the girl looked at him so anxiously. It\nwas almost as if she wanted to help him to find it and couldn't, and\nwith that she all at once grew deadly pale.\n\nThe Draug's house, to which they now came, was built of boat's keels and\nlarge pieces of wreckage, in the interstices of which grew all sorts of\nsea-grass and slimy green stuff. Three monstrously heavy green posts,\ncovered with shell-fish, formed the entrance, and the door consisted of\nplanks which had sunk to the bottom and were full of clincher-nails. In\nthe middle of it, like a knocker, was a heavy rusty iron mooring-ring,\nwith the worn-away stump of a ship's hawser hanging to it. When they\ncame up to it, a large black arm stretched out and opened the door.\n\nThey were now in a vaulted chamber, with fine shell-sand on the floor.\nIn the corners lay all sorts of ropes, yarn, and boating-gear, and among\nthem casks and barrels and various ship's inventories. On a heap of\nyarn, covered by an old red-patched sail, Eilert saw the Draug, a\nbroad-shouldered, strongly built fellow, with a glazed hat shoved back\non to the top of his head, with dark-red tangled hair and beard, small\ntearful dog-fish eyes, and a broad mouth, round which there lay for the\nmoment a good-natured seaman's grin. The shape of his head reminded one\nsomewhat of the big sort of seal which is called Klakkekal--his skin\nabout the neck looked dark and shaggy, and the tops of his fingers grew\ntogether. He sat there with turned-down sea-boots on, and his thick grey\nwoollen stockings reached right up to his thigh. He wore besides, plain\nfreize clothes with bright glass buttons on his waistcoat. His spacious\nskin jacket was open, and round his neck he had a cheap red woollen\nscarf.\n\nWhen Eilert came up, he made as if he would rise, and said good\nnaturedly, \"Good day, Eilert--you've certainly had a hard time of it\nto-day! Now you can sit down, if you like, and take a little grub. You\nwant it, I'm sure;\" and with that he squirted out a jet of tobacco juice\nlike the spouting of a whale. With one foot, which for that special\npurpose all at once grew extraordinarily long, he fished out of a\ncorner, in true Nordland style, the skull of a whale to serve as a chair\nfor Eilert, and shoved forward with his hand a long ship's drawer full\nof first-rate fare. There was boiled groats with sirup, cured fish,\noatcakes with butter, a large stack of flatcakes, and a multitude of the\nbest hotel dishes besides.\n\nThe Merman bade him fall to and eat his fill, and ordered his daughter\nto bring out the last keg of Thronhjem _aqua vit\u00e6_. \"Of that sort the\nlast is always the best,\" said he. When she came with it, Eilert thought\nhe knew it again: it was his father's, and he himself, only a couple of\ndays before, had bought the brandy from the wholesale dealer at Kv\u00e6ford;\nbut he didn't say anything about that now. The quid of tobacco, too,\nwhich the Draug turned somewhat impatiently in his mouth before he\ndrank, also seemed to him wonderfully like the lead on his own line. At\nfirst it seemed to him as if he didn't quite know how to manage with the\nkeg--his mouth was so sore; but afterwards things went along smoothly\nenough.\n\nSo they sat for some time pretty silently, and drank glass after glass,\ntill Eilert began to think that they had had quite enough. So, when it\ncame to his turn again, he said no, he would rather not; whereupon the\nMerman put the keg to his own mouth and drained it to the very dregs.\nThen he stretched his long arm up to the shelf, and took down another.\nHe was now in a better humour, and began to talk of all sorts of things.\nBut every time he laughed, Eilert felt queer, for the Draug's mouth\ngaped ominously wide, and showed a greenish pointed row of teeth, with a\nlong interval between each tooth, so that they resembled a row of boat\nstakes.\n\nThe Merman drained keg after keg, and with every keg he grew more\ncommunicative. With an air as if he were thinking in his own mind of\nsomething very funny, he looked at Eilert for a while and blinked his\neyes. Eilert didn't like his expression at all, for it seemed to him to\nsay: \"Now, my lad, whom I have fished up so nicely, look out for a\nchange!\" But instead of that he said, \"You had a rough time of it last\nnight, Eilert, my boy, but it wouldn't have gone so hard with you if you\nhadn't streaked the lines with corpse-mould, and refused to take my\ndaughter to church\"--here he suddenly broke off, as if he had said too\nmuch, and to prevent himself from completing the sentence, he put the\nbrandy-keg to his mouth once more. But the same instant Eilert caught\nhis glance, and it was so full of deadly hatred that it sent a shiver\nright down his back.\n\nWhen, after a long, long draught, he again took the keg from his mouth,\nthe Merman was again in a good humour, and told tale after tale. He\nstretched himself more and more heavily out on the sail, and laughed and\ngrinned complacently at his own narrations, the humour of which was\nalways a wreck or a drowning. From time to time Eilert felt the breath\nof his laughter, and it was like a cold blast. If folks would only give\nup their boats, he said, he had no very great desire for the crews. It\nwas driftwood and ship-timber that he was after, and he really couldn't\nget on without them. When his stock ran out, boat or ship he _must_\nhave, and surely nobody could blame him for it either.\n\nWith that he put the keg down empty, and became somewhat more gloomy\nagain. He began to talk about what bad times they were for him and her.\nIt was not as it used to be, he said. He stared blankly before him for a\ntime, as if buried in deep thought. Then he stretched himself out\nbackwards at full length, with feet extending right across the floor,\nand gasped so dreadfully that his upper and lower jaws resembled two\nboats' keels facing each other. Then he dozed right off with his neck\nturned towards the sail.\n\nThen the girl again stood by Eilert's side, and bade him follow her.\n\nThey now went the same way back, and again ascended up to the skerry.\nThen she confided to him that the reason why her father had been so\nbitter against him was because he had mocked her with the taunt about\nchurch-cleansing when she had wanted to go to church--the name the folks\ndown below wanted to know might, the Merman thought, be treasured up in\nEilert's memory; but during their conversation on their way down to her\nfather, she had perceived that he also had forgotten it. And now he must\nlook to his life.\n\nIt would be a good deal later on in the day before the old fellow would\nbegin inquiring about him. Till then he, Eilert, must sleep so as to\nhave sufficient strength for his flight--she would watch over him.\n\nThe girl flung her long dark hair about him like a curtain, and it\nseemed to him that he knew those eyes so well. He felt as if his cheek\nwere resting against the breast of a white sea-bird, it was so warm and\nsleep-giving--a single reddish feather in the middle of it recalled a\ndark memory. Gradually he sank off into a doze, and heard her singing a\nlullaby, which reminded him of the swell of the billows when it ripples\nup and down along the beach on a fine sunny day. It was all about how\nthey had once been playmates together, and how later on he would have\nnothing to say to her. Of all she sang, however, he could only recollect\nthe last words, which were these--\n\n     \"Oh, thousands of times have we played on the shore,\n     And caught little fishes--dost mind it no more?\n     We raced with the surf as it rolled at our feet,\n     And the lurking old Merman we always did cheat.\n\n     \"Yes, much shalt thou think of at my lullaby,\n     Whilst the billows do rock and the breezes do sigh.\n     Who sits now and weeps o'er thy cheeks? It is she\n     Who gave thee her soul, and whose soul lived in thee.\n\n     \"But once as an eider-duck homeward I came\n     Thou didst lie 'neath a rock, with thy rifle didst aim;\n     In my breast thou didst strike me; the blood thou dost see\n     Is the mark that I bear, oh! beloved one, of thee.\"\n\nThen it seemed to Eilert as if she sat and wept over him, and that, from\ntime to time, a drop like a splash of sea-water fell upon his cheek. He\nfelt now that he loved her so dearly.\n\nThe next moment he again became uneasy. He fancied that right up to the\nskerry came a whale, which said that he, Eilert, must now make haste;\nand when he stood on its back he stuck the shaft of an oar down its\nnostril, to prevent it from shooting beneath the sea again. He perceived\nthat in this way the whale could be steered accordingly as he turned the\noar to the right or left; and now they coasted the whole land of Finmark\nat such a rate that the huge mountain islands shot by them like little\nrocks. Behind him he saw the Draug in his half-boat, and he was going so\nswiftly that the foam stood mid-mast high. Shortly afterwards he was\nagain lying on the skerry, and the lass smiled so blithely; she bent\nover him and said, \"It is I, Eilert.\"\n\nWith that he awoke, and saw that the sunbeams were running over the wet\nskerry, and the Mermaid was still sitting by his side. But presently the\nwhole thing changed before his eyes. It was the sun shining through the\nwindow-panes, on a bed in the Finn's hut, and by his side sat the Finn\ngirl supporting his back, for they thought he was about to die. He had\nlain there delirious for six weeks, ever since the Finn had rescued him\nafter capsizing, and this was his first moment of consciousness.\n\nAfter that it seemed to him that he had never heard anything so absurd\nand presumptuous as the twaddle that would fix a stigma of shame or\ncontempt on Finn blood, and the same spring he and the Finn girl Zilla\nwere betrothed, and in the autumn they were married.\n\nThere were Finns in the bridal procession, and perhaps many said a\nlittle more about that than they need have done; but every one at the\nwedding agreed that the fiddler, who was also a Finn, was the best\nfiddler in the whole parish, and the bride the prettiest girl.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_THE HOMESTEAD WESTWARD IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS_\n\n\n[Illustration: HOMESTEAD WESTWARD IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE HOMESTEAD WESTWARD IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS\n\n\nThere was once a farmer's son who was off to Moen for the annual\nmanoeuvres. He was to be the drummer, and his way lay right across the\nmountains. There he could practise his drumming at his ease, and beat\nhis tattoos again and again without making folks laugh, or having a\nparcel of small boys dangling about him like so many midges.\n\nEvery time he passed a mountain homestead he beat his rat-tat-tat to\nbring the girls out, and they stood and hung about and gaped after him\nat all the farmhouses.\n\nIt was in the midst of the hottest summer weather. He had been\npractising his drumming from early in the morning, till he had grown\nquite sick and tired of it. And now he was toiling up a steep cliff, and\nhad slung his drum over his shoulder, and stuck his drumsticks in his\nbandoleer.\n\nThe sun baked and broiled upon the hills; but in the clefts there was a\ncoolness as of a rushing roaring waterfall. The little knolls swarmed\nwith bilberries the whole way along, and he felt he must stoop down and\npluck whole handfuls at a time, so that it took a long time to get to\nthe top.\n\nThen he came to a hilly slope where the ferns stood high, and there were\nlots of birch bushes. It was so nice and shady there, he thought, and so\nhe couldn't for the life of him help taking a rest.\n\nHis drum he took off, his jacket he put beneath his head, and his cap\nover his face, and off he went to sleep.\n\nBut as he lay dozing there, he dreamt that some one was tickling him\nunder the nose with a straw so that he could get no peace; and the\ninstant he awoke, he fancied he heard laughing and giggling.\n\nThe sun had by this time begun to cast oblique shadows, and far down\nbelow, towards the valleys, lay the warm steaming vapours, creeping\nupwards in long drawn-out gossamer bands and ribands of mist.\n\nAs he reached behind him for his jacket, he saw a snake, which lay and\nlooked at him with such shrewd quick eyes. But when he threw a stone at\nit, it caught its tail in its mouth, and trundled away like a wheel.\n\nAgain there was a giggling and a sniggering among the bushes.\n\nAnd now he heard it among some birch trees which stood in such a\nwonderful sunlight, for they were filled with the rain and fine drizzle\nof a waterfall. The water-drops glistened and sparkled so that he really\ncouldn't see the trees properly.\n\nBut it was as though something were moving about in them, and he could\nhave sworn that he had caught a glimpse of a fine bright slim damsel,\nwho was laughing and making fun of him. She peeped at him from beneath\nher hand, because of the sun, and her sleeves were tucked up.\n\nA little while afterwards a dark-blue blouse appeared above the\nbrushwood.\n\nHe was after it in an instant.\n\nHe ran and ran till he had half a mind to give up, but then a frock and\na bare shoulder gleamed betwixt an opening in the leaves.\n\nAnd off again he pelted as hard as he could, till he began to think that\nit must have all been imagination.\n\nThen he saw her right in a corner of the green bushes. Her hair had been\ntorn out of its plaits from the speed with which she had flown through\nthe bushes. She stood still, and looked back as if she were terribly\nfrightened.\n\nBut the lad thought to himself that if she had run away with his\ndrumsticks, she should pay for it.\n\nAnd off they ran again, she in front, and he behind.\n\nNow and again she turned round and laughed and gibed, and gave a toss\nand a twist, so that it looked as if her long wavy hair were writhing\nand wriggling and twisting like a serpent's tail.\n\nAt last she turned round on the top of the hill, laughed, and held out\nhis drumsticks towards him.\n\nBut now he was determined to catch her. He was so near that he made grab\nafter grab at her; but just as he was about to lay hold of her hard by a\nfence, she was over it, while he tumbled after her into the enclosure of\na homestead.\n\nThen she cried and shouted up to the house, \"Randi, and Brandi, and\nGyri, and Gunna!\"\n\nAnd four girls came rushing down over the sward.\n\nBut the last of them, who had a fine ruddy complexion and heavy\ngolden-red hair, stood and greeted him so graciously with her downcast\neyes, as if she was quite distressed that they should play such wanton\npranks with a strange young man.\n\nShe stood there abashed and uncertain, poor thing! just like a child,\nwho knows not whether it should say something or not; but all the while\nshe sidled up nearer and nearer to him. Then, when she was so close to\nhim that her hair almost touched him, she opened her blue eyes wide, and\nlooked straight at him.\n\nBut she had a frightfully sharp look in those eyes of hers.\n\n\"Rather come with me, and thou shalt have dancing--or art thou tired, my\nlad?\" cried a girl with blue-black hair, and a wild dark fire in her\neyes. She tripped up and down, and clapped her hands. She had white\nteeth and hot breath, and would have dragged him off with her.\n\n\"Tie thyself up behind first, black Gyri!\" giggled the others.\n\nAnd immediately she let the lad go, and wobbled and twisted, and went\nbackwards so oddly.\n\nHe couldn't help staring after the black lassie, who stood and writhed\nand twisted so uncomfortably, as if she were concealing something behind\nher, and had, all at once, become so meek.\n\nBut the fine bright girl with the slim slender waist, who had rushed on\nbefore him, and who seemed to him the loveliest of them all, began to\nlaugh at him again and tease him.\n\nRun as he might, he shouldn't catch her, she jibed and jeered; never\nshould he find his drumsticks again, she said.\n\nBut then her mood shifted right round, and she flung herself down\nheadlong, and began to cry. She had followed his drumming the whole day,\nshe said, and never had she heard any fellow who could beat rat-tat-tat\nso well; nor had she ever seen a lad who was so handsome while he was\nasleep. \"I kissed thee then,\" said she, and smiled up at him so\nsorrowfully.\n\n\"Beware of the serpent's tongue, lest it bite thee, swain! Tis worst of\nall when it licks thee first,\" whispered the bashful one with the\ngolden-red hair. She would fain have stolen between them so softly.\n\nAnd all at once the swain recollected the snake, which was as slender,\nand supple, and quick, and sparkling as the girl who lay there on the\nhill-side, and wept and made fun at the same time and looked oddly alert\nand wary.\n\nBut a stooping, somewhat clumsy little thing now stuck her head quickly\nin between, and smiled shamefacedly at him, as if she knew and could\ntell him so much. Her eyes sparkled a long way inwards, and across her\nface there passed a sort of pale golden gleam, as when the last sunbeam\nslowly draws away from the grassy mountain slope.\n\n\"At my place,\" said she, \"thou shalt hear such _Langelejk_[1] as none\nelse has ever heard. I will play for thee, and thou shalt listen to\nthings unknown to others. Thou shalt hear all that sings, and laughs,\nand cries in the roots of trees, and in the mountains, and in all things\nthat grow, so that thou wilt never trouble thy head about anything else\nin the world.\"\n\nThen there was a scornful laugh; and up on a rock he saw a tall strongly\nbuilt girl, with a gold band in her hair and a huge wand in her hand.\n\nShe lifted a long wooden trumpet with such splendid powerful arms, threw\nback her neck with such a proud and resolute air, and stood firm and\nfast as a rock while she blew.\n\nAnd it sounded far and wide through the summer evening, and rang back\nagain across the hills.\n\nBut she, the prettiest and daintiest of them all, who had cast herself\non the ground, stuck her fingers in her ears, and mimicked her and\nlaughed and jeered.\n\nThen she glanced up at him with her blue eyes peeping through her\nashen-yellow hair, and whispered---\n\n\"If thou dost want me, swain, thou must pick me up.\"\n\n\"She has a strong firm grip for a gentle maiden,\" thought he to himself,\nas he raised her from the ground.\n\n\"But thou must catch me first,\" cried she.\n\nAnd right towards the house they ran--she first, and he after her.\n\nSuddenly she stopped short, and putting both arms akimbo, looked\nstraight into his eyes: \"Dost like me?\" she asked.\n\nThe swain couldn't say no to that. He had now got hold of her, and would\nhave put his arm round her.\n\n\"'Tis for thee to have a word in the matter, father,\" she shouted all at\nonce in the direction of the house; \"this swain here would fain wed me.\"\n\nAnd she drew him hastily towards the hut door.\n\nThere sat a little grey-clad old fellow, with a cap like a milk-can on\nhis head, staring at the livestock on the mountain-side. He had a large\nsilver jug in front of him.\n\n\"'Tis the homestead westward in the Blue Mountains that he's after, I\nknow,\" said the old man, nodding his head, with a sly look in his eyes.\n\n\"Haw, haw! That's what they're after, is it?\" thought the swain. But\naloud he said, \"'Tis a great offer, I know; but methinks 'tis a little\nhasty too. Down our way 'tis the custom to send two go-betweens first of\nall to arrange matters properly.\"\n\n\"Thou _didst_ send two before thee, and here they be,\" quoth she\nsmartly, and produced his drumsticks.\n\n\"And 'tis usual with us, moreover, to have a look over the property\nfirst; though the lass herself have wit enough and to spare,\" added he.\n\nThen she all at once grew so small, and there was a nasty green glitter\nin her eyes---\n\n\"Hast thou not run after me the livelong day, and wooed me right down in\nthe enclosure there, so that my father both heard and saw it all?\" cried\nshe.\n\n\"Pretty lasses are wont to hold back a bit,\" said the swain, in a\nwheedling sort of way. He perceived that he must be a little subtle\nhere; it was not all love in this wooing.\n\nThen she seemed to bend her body backwards into a complete curve, and\nshot forward her head and neck, and her eyes sparkled.\n\nBut the old fellow lifted his stick from his knee, and she stood there\nagain as blithe and sportive as ever.\n\nShe stretched herself out tall and stiff, with her hands in her silver\ngirdle; and she looked right into his eyes and laughed, and asked him if\nhe was one of those fellows who were afraid of the girls. If he wanted\nher he might perchance be run off his legs again, said she.\n\nThen she began tripping up and down, and curtseying and making fun of\nhim again.\n\nBut all at once he saw on the sward behind her what looked like the\nshadow of something that whisked and frisked and writhed round and\nround, and twisted in and out according as she practised her wheedling\nways upon him.\n\n\"That is a very curious long sort of riband,\" thought the drummer to\nhimself in his amazement. They were in a great hurry, too, to get him\nunder the yoke, he thought; but they should find that a soldier on his\nway to the manoeuvres is not to be betrothed and married offhand.\n\nSo he told them bluntly that he had come hither for his drumsticks, and\nnot to woo maidens, and he would thank them to let him have his\nproperty.\n\n\"But have a look about you a bit first, young man,\" said the old fellow,\nand he pointed with his stick.\n\nAnd all at once the drummer saw large dun cows grazing all along the\nmountain pastures, and the cow-bells rang out their merry peals. Buckets\nand vats of the brightest copper shone all about, and never had he seen\nsuch shapely and nicely dressed milkmaids. There must needs be great\nwealth here.\n\n\"Perchance thou dost think 'tis but a beggarly inheritance I have here\nin the Blue Mountains,\" said she, and sitting down on a haycock, she\nbegan chatting with him. \"But we've four such _s\u00e6tar[2]_ as this, and\nwhat I inherit from my mother is twelve times as large.\"\n\nBut the drummer had seen what he had seen. They were rather too anxious\nto settle the property upon him, thought he. So he declared that in so\nserious a matter he must crave a little time for consideration.\n\nThen the lass began to cry and take on, and asked him if he meant to\nbefool a poor innocent, ignorant, young thing, and pursue her and drive\nher out of her very wits. She had put all her hope and trust in him, she\nsaid, and with that she fell a-howling.\n\nShe sat there quite inconsolable, and rocked herself to and fro with all\nher hair over her eyes, till at last the drummer began to feel quite\nsorry for her and almost angry with himself. She was certainly most\nsimple-minded and confiding.\n\nAll at once she twisted round and threw herself petulantly down from the\nhaycock. Her eyes spied all about, and seemed quite tiny and piercing as\nshe looked up at him, and laughed and jested.\n\nHe started back. It was exactly as if he again saw the snake beneath the\nbirch tree down there when it trundled away.\n\nAnd now he wanted to be off as quickly as possible; he cared no longer\nabout being civil.\n\nThen she reared up with a hissing sound. She quite forgot herself, and a\nlong tail hung down and whisked about from behind her kirtle.\n\nHe shouldn't escape her in that way, she shrieked. He should first of\nall have a taste of public penance and public opinion from parish to\nparish. And then she called her father.\n\nThen the drummer felt a grip on his jacket, and he was lifted right off\nhis legs.\n\nHe was chucked into an empty cow-house, and the door was shut behind\nhim.\n\nThere he stood and had nothing to look at but an old billy-goat through\na crack in the door, who had odd, yellow eyes, and was very much like\nthe old fellow, and a sunbeam through a little hole, which sunbeam crept\nhigher and higher up the blank stable wall till late in the evening,\nwhen it went out altogether.\n\nBut towards night a voice outside said softly, \"Swain! swain!\" and in\nthe moonlight he saw a shadow cross the little hole.\n\n\"Hist! hist! the old man is sleeping at the other side of the wall,\" it\nsounded.\n\nHe knew by the voice that it was she, the golden-red one, who had\nbehaved so prettily and been so bashful the moment he had come upon the\nscene.\n\n\"Thou need'st but say that thou dost know that serpent-eye has had a\nlover before, or they wouldn't be in such a hurry to get her off their\nhands with a dowry. Thou must know that the homestead westwards in the\nBlue Mountains is mine. And answer the old man that it was me, Brandi,\nthat thou didst run after all the time. Hist! hist! here comes the old\nman,\" she whispered, and whisked away.\n\nBut a shadow again fell across the little hole in the moonlight, and the\nduck-necked one stuck her head in and peeped at him.\n\n\"Swain, swain, art thou awake?\"\n\n\"That serpent-eye will make thee the laughingstock of the neighbourhood.\nShe's spiteful, and she stings. But the homestead westward in the Blue\nMountains is mine, and when I play there the gates beneath the high\nmountains fly open, and through them lies the road to the nameless\npowers of nature. Do but say that 'twas me, Randi, thou wert running\nafter, because she plays so prettily on the _Langelijk_.--\"Hist, hist!\nthe old man is stirring about by the wall!\"--she beckoned to him and was\ngone.\n\nA little afterwards nearly every bit of the hole was darkened, and he\nrecognised the Black one by her voice.\n\n\"Swain, swain!\" she hissed.\n\n\"I had to bind up my kirtle to-day behind,\" said she, \"so we couldn't go\ndancing the _Halling-fling_[3] together on the green sward. But the\nhomestead in the Blue Mountains is my lawful property, and tell the old\nman that it was madcap Gyri thou wast running after to-day, because thou\nart so madly fond of dancing jigs and _hallings_.\"\n\nThen she clapped her hands aloud, and straightway was full of fear lest\nshe should have awakened the old man.\n\nAnd she was gone.\n\nBut the lad sat inside there, and thought it all over, and looked up at\nthe thin pale summer moon, and he thought that never in his whole life\nhad he been in such evil case.\n\nFrom time to time he heard something moving, scraping, and snorting\nagainst the wall outside. It was the old fellow who lay there and kept\nwatch over him.\n\n\"Thou, swain, thou,\" said another voice at the peep-hole.\n\nIt was she who had planted herself so firmly on the rock with such\nsturdy hips and such a masterful voice.\n\n\"For these three hundred years have I been blowing the _langelur[4]_\nhere in the summer evenings far and wide, but never has it drawn any one\nwestward hither into the Blue Mountains. And let me tell thee that we\nare all homeless and houseless, and all thou seest here is but glitter\nand glamour. Many a man has been befooled hither time out of mind. But I\nwon't have the other lasses married before me. And rather than that any\none of them should get thee, I'll free thee from the mountains. Mark me,\nnow! When the sun is hot and high the old man will get frightened and\ncrawl into his corner. Then look to thyself. Shove hard against the door\nof the hayloft, and hasten to get thee over the fence, and thou wilt be\nrid of us.\"\n\nThe drummer was not slow to follow this counsel. He crept out the moment\nthe sun began to burn, and cleared the fence with one good bound.\n\nIn less than no time he was down in the valley again.\n\nAnd far, far away towards sunrise in the mountains, he heard the sound\nof her _langelur_.\n\nHe threw his drum across his shoulder, and hied him off to the\nmanoeuvres at Moen.\n\nBut never would he play rat-tat-tat and beat the tattoo before the\nlasses again, lest he should find himself westwards in the Blue\nMountains before he was well aware of it.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[1] A long slow dance, and the music to it.\n\n[2] A _S\u00e6ter_ (Swed. _s\u00e4ter_) is a remote pasturage with huts upon it,\nwhere the cows are tended and dairy produce prepared for market and home\nuse during the summer.\n\n[3] A country dance of a boisterous jig-like sort.\n\n[4] A long wooden trumpet.\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"_IT'S ME_.\"\n\n\n[Illustration: \"IT'S ME.\"]\n\n\n\n\n\"IT'S ME\"\n\n\nThey had chatted so long about the lasses down in the valley; and what a\nfine time they had of it there, that Gygra's[1] daughter grew sick and\ntired of it all, and began to heave rocks against the mountain side. She\nwas bent upon taking service in the valley below, said she.\n\n\n\"Then go down to the ground gnome first, and grind thy nose down, and\ntidy thyself up a bit, and stick a comb in thy hair instead of an iron\nrake,\" said the dwellers in the mountains.\n\nSo Gygra's daughter tramped along in the middle of the river, till the\nfoss steamed and the storm whirled round about her. Down she went to the\nground gnome, and was scoured and scrubbed and combed out finely.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOne evening a large-limbed coarse-grained wench stepped into the\ngeneral-dealer's kitchen, and asked if she could be taken into service.\n\n\"You must be cook, then,\" said Madame[2]. It seemed to her that the\nwench was one who would stir the porridge finely, and would make no\nbones about a little extra wood-chopping and tub-washing. So they took\nher on.\n\nShe was a roughish colt, and her ways were roughish too. The first time\nshe carried in a load of wood, she shoved so violently against the\nkitchen door that she burst its hinges. And however many times the\ncarpenter might mend the door, it always remained hingeless, for she\nburst it open with her foot every time she brought in wood.\n\nWhen she washed up, too, heaps and heaps of pots and pans were piled up\nhiggledy-piggledy from meal to meal, so that the kitchen shelves and\ntables could hold no more, and bustle about as she might, they never\nseemed to grow less.\n\nNor had her mistress a much better opinion of her scouring.\n\nWhen Toad, for so they called her, set to work with the sand-brush, and\nscrubbed with all her might, the wooden, tin, and pewter vessels would\nno doubt have looked downright bonny if they hadn't broken to bits\nbeneath her hands. And when her mistress tried to show her how it ought\nto be done, she only gasped and gaped.\n\nSuch sets of cracked cups, and such rows of chipped and handleless jugs\nand dishes, had never before been seen in that kitchen.\n\nAnd then, too, she ate as much as all the other servants put together.\n\nSo her mistress complained to her master, and said that the sooner they\nwere well quit of her the better.\n\nOut into the kitchen went the general dealer straightway. He was quite\nred in the face, and flung open the kitchen-door till it creaked again.\nHe would let her know, he said, that she was not there to only stand\nwith her back to the fire and warm her dirty self.\n\nNow when he saw the lazy sluttish beast lounging over the kitchen bench\nand doing nothing but gape through the window-panes at his boats, which\nlay down by the bridge laden with train-oil, he was downright furious.\n\"Pack yourself off this instant!\" said he.\n\nBut Toad showed her teeth, and grinned and blinked up at him, and said\nthat as master himself had come into the kitchen, he should see that she\ndid not eat his bread for nothing.\n\nThen she slouched down to the boats, and snorted back at him with her\narm before her face. Before any one could guess what she was after, she\nhad one of the heavy hogsheads of train-oil on her back.\n\nAnd back she came through the kitchen door, all smirking and smiling,\nand begged father to be so good as to tell her where she was to put it.\n\nHe simply stood and gaped at her. Such a thing he had never seen before.\n\nAnd hogshead after hogshead she carried from the boat right up into the\nshop.\n\nThe general dealer laughed till he quite gasped for breath, and slapped\nhis thighs so far as his big belly would let him reach them.\n\nNor was he sparing of compliments.\n\nAnd into the dwelling-room he rushed almost as quickly as he had rushed\nout of it.\n\n\"Mother has no idea what a capital wench she has got,\" said he.\n\nBut, ever after that, she put her hand to nothing, nay, not so much as\nto drive a wooden peg into the wall, and if some one else hadn't warmed\nup a thing or two now and then, there would have been very little to eat\nin the house. It was as much as they could do to get her away from the\nfireside at meal times.\n\nWhen her mistress complained about it, her master said that she oughtn't\nto expect too much. The lass surely required a little rest now and\nagain, after carrying such drayman's loads as she did.\n\nBut Toad always had an ogle and a grin ready at such times as the\ngeneral dealer came through the door from the shop. Then she grew quick\nand lively enough, and went on all sorts of errands, whether it was with\nthe bucket to the spring or to the storehouse for bread. And when she\nsaw that her mistress was out of the way, she took it upon herself to do\nexactly as she liked, both in this and in that.\n\nNo sooner was the pot hung on the pot-hook, than she would slip away\nwith a big saucer and fetch sirup from the shop. And she would flounce\ndown before the porridge dish and gobble to her heart's content. If any\nof her fellow-servants claimed an equal share, she would simply answer,\n\"It's me!\"\n\nThey dared not rebel. Since the day she had taken up the hogsheads of\ntrain-oil, they knew that she had master on her side.\n\nBut her mistress was not slow to mark the diminishing both of the\nsirup-pot and the powdered sugar, and she perceived also in which\ndirection the gingerbreads and all the butter and bacon went. For out\nthe wench would come, munching rye cakes and licking the sirup from her\nfingers.\n\nAnd she grew as round and thick and fat as if she would burst.\n\nWhen her mistress took away and kept the key, Toad would poke her head\ninto the parlour door, and ogle and writhe at the general dealer, and\nask if there was anything to carry up to the store-room. And then he\nwould go to the window and watch her as she lifted and carried kegs of\nfish and casks of sugar and sacks of meal.\n\nHe laughed till he coughed again, and, wiping the sweat from his\nforehead, would bellow all over the place--\"Can any one of my labouring\nmen carry loads like Toad can?\"\n\nAnd when her master came home, dripping wet and benumbed with cold, from\nhis first autumn voyage, it was Toad who was first and foremost to meet\nhim and unbutton his oil-skin jacket for him, and undo his sou'wester,\nand help him off with his long sea-boots.\n\nHe shivered and shook; but she was not slow to wring out his wet\nstockings for him, and fetch no end of birch bark and huge logs. Then\nshe made up a regular bonfire in the fireplace, and placed him cosily in\nthe chimney corner.\n\nMadame came to give her husband some warm ale posset; but she was so\nannoyed to see the wench whisking and bustling about him, that she went\nup into the parlour and howled with rage.\n\nEarly in the morning, the general dealer bawled and shouted downstairs\nfor his long worsted stockings. They could hear that he was peevish and\ncross because he had to put on his sea-jacket and cramped water-boots,\nand go out again into the foul weather.\n\nHe tore open the kitchen door, and asked them furiously how much longer\nthey were going to keep him waiting.\n\nBut now his mouth grew as wide open as the door-way he stood in, and his\nface quite lit up with satisfaction.\n\nRound about the walls, and in the warmth of the chimney corner, hung his\nsou'wester, and his oil-skin jacket, and his trousers, and every blessed\nbit of clothes he was to put on, as dry as tinder. And in the middle of\nthe kitchen bench he saw his large sea-boots standing there, so snug,\nand so nicely greased, that the grease ran right down the shafts and\nover the straps.\n\nSuch a servant for looking after him and taking care of him he had not\nbelieved it possible to get for love or money, cried the general dealer.\n\nBut now his wife could contain herself no longer. She showed him that\nthe clothes were both scorched and burned, and that the whole of one\nside of the oilskin jacket was crumpled up with heat, and cracked if one\npulled it never so lightly.\n\nAnd in she dragged the big butter-keg, that he might see for himself how\nthe wench had stuck both his boots in it and used it to grease them\nwith.\n\nBut the general dealer stood there quite dumfoundered, and glanced now\nat the boots and now at the butter-tub.\n\nHe snapped his fingers, and his face twitched, and then he began to wipe\naway his tears.\n\nHe hastened to go in that they might not see that he was weeping.\n\n\"Mother does not know how kindly the wench has meant it all,\" he sobbed.\nGood heavens! what if she _had_ used butter for his boots, if she had\nonly _meant_ well. Never would he turn such a lass out of the house.\n\nThen the wife gave it up altogether, and let the big kitchen wench rule\nas best she might. And it was not very long either before Toad let the\nkey of the store-room remain in the door from morn till eve. When any\none bawled out to her, \"Who's inside there?\" she would simply answer,\n\"It's me!\"\n\nAnd she didn't budge from the gingerbread-box, as she sat there and ate,\neven for Madame herself. But she always had an eye upon her master the\ngeneral dealer.\n\nBut he only jested with her, and asked her if she got food enough, and\nsaid that he was afraid he would, one day, find her starved to death.\n\nTowards Christmas time, when folks were making ready to go a-fishing,\nMadame was busy betimes and bustled about as usual, and got the great\ncaldron taken down into the working-room for washing and wool-stamping.\n\nThe cooks hired for the occasion rolled out the _lefser_,[3] and baked\nand frizzled on the flat oven-pans. And they brought in herring kegs\nfrom the shop, and meal and meat, both cured and fresh, and weighed and\nmeasured, and laid in stores of provisions.\n\nBut then it seemed to Toad as if she hadn't a moment's peace for prying\ninto pots and pans. Her mistress was going backwards and forwards\ncontinually, between store-room and pantry, after meal, or sugar, or\nbutter, or sirup for the _lefser_. The store-room door was ajar for her\nall day long.\n\nSo at last Toad grew downright wild. She was determined to put an end to\nall this racket. So she took it upon her to well smear the threshold of\nthe store-room with green soap.\n\nNext morning her mistress came bustling along first thing with butter\nand a wooden ladle in a bowl, and she slipped and fell in the opening\nbetween the stairs and the store-house door.\n\nThere she lay till Toad dragged her up.\n\nShe carried her in to her husband with such a crying and yelling that it\nwas heard all over the dep\u00f4t. Madame had been regularly worrying herself\nto death with all this bustle, said she, and now the poor soul had\nfallen and broken her leg.\n\nBut the one who cried the most, and didn't know what to do with himself\nwhen he heard such weeping and wailing over his wife, was the general\ndealer.\n\nNone knew the real worth of that kitchen wench, said he.\n\nAnd so it was Toad who now superintended everything, and both dispensed\nthe stores and made provision for the household.\n\nShe drove all the hired cooks and pancake rollers out of the house--they\nwere only eating her master out of house and home, she said.\n\nThe _lefser_ were laid together without any sirup between them, and she\ngave out fat instead of butter. She distributed it herself, and packed\nit up in their _Nistebommers_[4].\n\nNever had the general dealer known the heavy household business disposed\nof so quickly as it was that year. He was quite astonished.\n\nAnd he was really dumfoundered when Toad took him up into the\nstore-room, and showed him how little had been consumed, and how the\ncured shoulders of mutton and the hams hung down from the rafters in\nrows and rows.\n\n\"So long as things went on as they were going now,\" said he, \"she should\nhave the control of the household like mother herself,\" for his wife was\nnow bedridden in her room upstairs.\n\nAnd at Yule-tide Toad baked and roasted, and cut things down so finely\nthat her fellow-servants were almost driven to chew their wooden spoons\nand gnaw bones.\n\nBut such fat calves, and such ribs of pork, and such _lefser_ filled\nwith both sirup and butter, and such _m\u00f6lje_[5] and splendid fare for\nthe guests that came to his house at Christmas-time the general dealer\nhad never seen before.\n\nThen the general dealer took her by the arm, and right down into the\nshop they both went together.\n\nShe might take what she would, said he, both of kirtles and neckerchiefs\nand other finery, so that she might dress and go in and out as if she\nwere mother herself; and she might provide herself with beads and silk\nas much as she liked. There was nothing that she might not have.\n\nBut when the bailiff and the sexton sat at cards, and Toad came in to\nlay the table-cloth, they were like to have rolled off their chairs.\nSuch a sight they had never seen before. Toad had rigged herself up with\nall manner of parti-coloured 'kerchiefs, and trimmed her hairy poll with\nblue and yellow and green ribbons till it looked like a cart-horse's\ntail. But they said nothing, for the sake of the general dealer, who\nthought she looked so smart, and was calling her in continually.\n\nAnd they were forced to confess that the wench spared neither meat nor\nale nor brandy. And on the third evening, when they got so drunk that\nthey lay there like logs, she carried them off to bed as if they were\nsucking babes.\n\nAnd so it went on, with feasting and entertaining, right up to the\ntwentieth day after Christmas Day, and beyond it.\n\nAnd that wench Toad used to smirk and stare about the room; and whenever\nthey didn't laugh or jest enough with her, she would plant herself right\nin the middle of the floor, and turn herself about in all her finery to\nattract notice, and say, \"It's me!\"\n\nAnd when the guests left the house they must needs admit that the\ngeneral dealer was right when he said that such serving-maids were not\nto be picked up every day.\n\nBut those folks who went a-fishing for the general dealer, and had their\nprovisions put up for them beforehand, were not slow to mark that Toad\nhad the control of the shop and stores likewise.\n\nSo it happened as might only have been expected. Their provisions ran\nshort, and they had to return home just as the cod was biting best,\nwhile all the other fishermen sailed further out and made first-rate\nhauls.\n\nThe general dealer was like to have had apoplexy on the day that he saw\nhis boats lying empty by the bridge in the height of the fishing season.\nHis men came up in a body to the shop, headed by their eldest foreman,\nand laid a complaint before him.\n\nThe food that had been packed into their boxes and baskets, they said,\ncouldn't be called human food at all. The _lefser_ were so hard, they\nsaid, that it was munch munch all day; there was only rancid fat on\nthem, with scarcely a glimpse of bacon; and as for the cured shoulders\nof mutton, one had scarcely shaved off a thin slice when one scraped\nagainst the bare bone.\n\nUp into the store-room went the general dealer like a shot.\n\nBut as for Toad, she smote her hands above her head, and said that it\nwas as much as he, the general dealer, could manage, to meet the heavy\nexpenses for fish-hooks and fish-baskets, and nets and lines, without\nhaving to provide his fishermen with salt herring and bacon, and fresh\nbutter and _lefser_ and ground coffee into the bargain. They had no need\nto starve when they had all the fish of the sea right under their noses,\nsaid she.\n\nAnd then she handed him, as a specimen, one of his own _lefser_, which\nshe had filled with butter and sirup herself, and let him taste it. And\nhe tasted it, and ate and ate till the sirup ran down both corners of\nhis mouth. Such good greasy _lefser_ he had never tasted before.\n\nThen the general dealer gave them a bit of his mind.\n\nHe was as red as a turkey-cock; and out of the shop-door they went head\nfirst--some three yards and some four, according as he got a good grip\nof them; and old Thore, who had steered the big _femb\u00f6ring_, both for\nhim and his father, was discharged.\n\nBut Kjel, the herdsman, had hid himself out of the way up on the\nthreshing-floor whilst the row was going on, and the general dealer was\nshrieking and bellowing his worst in the yard below. And he stood there\nand peeped through the little window. Then he saw his mistress, who\nhadn't been out of bed for nine weeks, hobble forward and stare out of\nher bedroom window.\n\nShe took on terribly, and cried and wrung her thin hands when she saw\ntheir old foreman told to go to the devil, and shamble off with his cap\nin his hand as if he were deranged.\n\nBut she dared not so much as shout a word of comfort after him, for\nthere stood Toad, big and broad, in the store-house door, with a platter\nof _m\u00f6lje_ in her hand, and shook her fist after him.\n\nThen Kjel was like to have wept too.... That stout Toad should not\ngrease herself shiny with _m\u00f6lje_ fat much longer in _their_ house, or\nhe'd know the reason why, thought Kjel.\n\nAnd from thenceforth Kjel kept a strict watch upon her. There were lots\nof things going on that he couldn't make out at all.\n\nTowards spring-time, when they put the mast into the large new yacht\nwhich was to take the first trading voyage to Bergen, the general dealer\nwas so glad that he was running up and down from the bridge to the house\nthe whole day. He had never imagined that the yacht would have turned\nout so fine and stately.\n\nAnd when they had the tackle and the shrouds all ready, and were\nhoisting away at the yards, he spun round on his heel and snapped his\nfingers--\"That lass Toad should go with him to Bergen,\" said he.... \"She\nhad never seen the town, poor thing! while as for mother, she had been\nthere three times already.\"\n\nBut it seemed to Kjel that he saw more in this than other people saw.\n\nAs for Toad, when she heard she was to go to Bergen, she regularly\nturned the house upside down. There was nothing good enough for her in\nthe whole shop; there was not a shelf that she didn't ransack to find\nthe finery and frippery that glittered most.\n\nAnd in the evening, when the others had lain them down to rest, she\nstrolled over to the storehouse with a light.\n\nBut Kjel, who was a very light sleeper, was up and after her in an\ninstant, and peeped at her through the crack in the door.\n\nThere he saw her cutting up the victuals and putting one tit-bit aside\nafter the other, _lefser_ and sweet-cakes and bacon and collared-beef,\ninto the large chest which she had hidden behind the herring barrels.\nAnd on this, the last evening before their departure for Bergen, she had\nfilled her provision-chest so full that she had to sit upon it, with all\nher huge heavy weight, to press it down.\n\nBut the lock wouldn't catch; she had filled the chest too full, so she\nhad to get up and stamp backwards on the lid till it regularly\nthundered; and sure enough she forced it down at last.\n\nBut the heel she stamped down upon it with was much more like the hoof\nof a horse than the foot of a human being, thought Kjel.\n\nThen she carried the chest to the waggon that it might be smuggled on\nboard without any one seeing it. After that she went into the stable and\nunloosed the horse. But then there was a pretty to do in the stable!\n\nThe horse knew that there was witchcraft afoot, and would not allow\nitself to be inspanned. Toad dragged and dragged, and the horse shied\nand kicked. At last the wench used her back-legs, just as a mare does.\n\nSuch sport as that no human eye should have ever seen.\n\nAnd straight off to the general dealer rushed Kjel, and got him to come\nout with him.\n\nThere in the moonshine that wench, Toad, and the dun horse were flinging\nout at each other as if for a wager, so that their hoofs dashed against\nthe framework of the stable-door. Their long legs flew in turn over the\nstable walls, and the sparks scattered about in showers.\n\nThen the general dealer grew all of a shiver and staggered about. Blood\nflew from his nose, and Kjel had to help him into the kitchen and duck\nhis head in the sink. That night the general dealer didn't go to bed at\nall; but he walked up and down and stamped till the floor regularly\nthundered. And it was scarcely light next morning when he sent off Kjel\nwith a dollar in his fist to old Thore the foreman. And he sent in the\nsame way to all the boat people down by the shore.\n\nThore was told to put on his holiday clothes and get out the\n_femb\u00f6ring_, and row Madame herself to the yacht with the last lading.\nShe should go with him to Bergen. There she should get both a silk dress\nand a shawl, and a gold watch and chain into the bargain, and engage a\nBergen serving-wench.\n\nIt was still early in the day when the yacht lay in the bay with her\nflag flying, all ready to start.\n\nWhen they had hoisted the sail, that wench Toad, heavy and stout, came,\npuffing and blowing, across the bridge, in full parade, with rings on\nall her sprawling fingers, and her body covered with all the yellow and\ngreen and red ribbons she could possibly find room for on her ample\nperson.\n\nThere she stood waiting for them to come back in the stately _femb\u00f6ring_\nand take her on board.\n\nAnd when they began to raise the anchor, and the general dealer appeared\non deck with his large meerschaum pipe and his telescope, she smirked\nand minced and wriggled and twisted, and cried aloud, \"It's me!\"\n\nShe thought he wanted to peep at her splendour through his spyglass.\n\nAll at once she saw Madame standing by his side in full travelling\ncostume, and understood that they were going away without her.\n\nThen she kicked out so that the planks of the bridge groaned and creaked\nbeneath her. Eight into the sea she plunged, and caught hold of the\nanchor, and tugged and held the ship back till the cable broke.\n\nThen head over heels she went with both her hoofs in the air.\n\nBut the yacht glided away under full sail, and the general dealer stood\nthere and laughed till he nearly fell overboard.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[1] A giantess, the wife of the mountain gnome, who rules in the\nDovrefeld.\n\n[2] _I.e.,_ the general dealer's wife.\n\n[3] Thin cakes that can be doubled in two and eaten with sirup.\n\n[4] Boxes containing provisions for voyages or journeys.\n\n[5] Flat cakes broken up with butter.\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTHE END.","title":"Weird Tales from Northern Seas","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":35227}