There was a stone outside my hut, a tall grey stone. It looked as if it
had a sort of friendly feeling towards me; as if it noticed me when I
came by, and knew me again. I liked to go round that way past the
stone, when I went out in the morning; it was like leaving a good friend
there, who I knew would be still waiting for me when I came back.
Then up in the woods hunting, sometimes finding game, sometimes none...
Out beyond the islands, the sea lay heavily calm. Many a time I have
stood and looked at it from the hills, far up above. On a calm day, the
ships seemed hardly to move at all; I could see the same sail for three
days, small and white, like a gull on the water. Then, perhaps, if the
wind veered round, the peaks in the distance would almost disappear, and
there came a storm, the south-westerly gale; a play for me to stand and
watch. All things in a seething mist. Earth and sky mingled together,
the sea flung up into fantastic dancing figures of men and horses and
fluttering banners on the air. I stood in the shelter of an overhanging
rock, thinking many things; my soul was tense. Heaven knows, I thought
to myself, what it is I am watching here, and why the sea should open
before my eyes. Maybe I am seeing now the inner brain of earth, how
things are at work there, boiling and foaming. Æsop was restless; now
and again he would thrust up his muzzle and sniff, in a troubled way,
with legs quivering uneasily; when I took no notice, he lay down between
my feet and stared out to sea as I was doing. And never a cry, never a
word of human voice to be heard anywhere; nothing; only the heavy rush
of the wind about my head. There was a reef of rocks far out, lying all
apart; when the sea raged up over it the water towered like a crazy
screw; nay, like a sea-god rising wet in the air, and snorting, till
hair and beard stood out like a wheel about his head. Then he plunged
down into the breakers once more.
And in the midst of the storm, a little coal-black steamer fighting its
way in...
When I went down to the quay in the afternoon, the little coal-black
steamer had come in; it was the mail-packet. Many people had gathered on
the quayside to see the rare visitor; I noticed that all without
exception had blue eyes, however different they might be in other ways.
A young girl with a white woolen kerchief over her head stood a little
apart; she had very dark hair, and the white kerchief showed up
strangely against it. She looked at me curiously, at my leather suit, my
gun; when I spoke to her, she was embarrassed, and turned her head away.
I said:
“You should always wear a white kerchief like that; it suits you well.”
Just then a burly man in an Iceland jersey came up and joined her; he
called her Eva. Evidently she was his daughter. I knew the burly man; he
was the local smith, the blacksmith. Only a few days back he had mended
the nipple of one of my guns...
And rain and wind did their work, and thawed away the snow. For some
days a cheerless cold hovered over the earth; rotten branches snapped,
and the crows gathered in flocks, complaining. But it was not for long;
the sun was near, and one day it rose up behind the forest.
It sends a strip of sweetness through me from head to foot when the sun
comes up; I shoulder my gun with quiet delight.