just as he had seen it, all bright and new with fresh tar, and with the
ropes and fishing gear just put in. He kicked and shook the fine slim
boat with his foot just to see how light and high she could rise on the
waves above the water-line.
And once, twice, thrice, the club smote against the keel-piece.
So that was how the first boat was built at Sjöholm.
Thick as birds together stood a countless number of people on the
headland in the autumn, watching Jack and his brothers putting out in
the new Ottring.
It glided through the strong current so that the foam was like a foss
all round it.
Now it was gone, and now it ducked up again like a sea-mew, and past
skerries and capes it whizzed like a dart.
Out in the fishing grounds the folks rested upon their oars and gaped.
Such a boat they had never seen before.
But if in the first year it was an Ottring, next year it was a broad
heavy _Femböring_ for winter fishing which made the folks open their
eyes.
And every boat that Jack turned out was lighter to row and swifter to
sail than the one before it.
But the largest and finest of all was the last that stood on the stocks
on the shore.
This was the _seventh_.
Jack walked to and fro, and thought about it a good deal; but when he
came down to see it in the morning, it seemed to him, oddly enough, to
have grown in the night and, what is more, was such a wondrous beauty
that he was struck dumb with astonishment. There it lay ready at last,
and folks were never tired of talking about it.
Now, the Bailiff who ruled over all Helgeland in those days was an
unjust man who laid heavy taxes upon the people, taking double weight
and tale both of fish and of eider-down, nor was he less grasping with
the tithes and grain dues. Wherever his fellows came they fleeced and
flayed. No sooner, then, did the rumour of the new boats reach him than
he sent his people out to see what truth was in it, for he himself used
to go fishing in the fishing grounds with large crews. When thus his
fellows came back and told him what they had seen, the Bailiff was so
taken with it that he drove straightway over to Sjöholm, and one fine
day down he came swooping on Jack like a hawk. "Neither tithe nor tax
hast thou paid for thy livelihood, so now thou shalt be fined as many
half-marks of silver as thou hast made boats," said he.
Ever louder and fiercer grew his rage. Jack should be put in chains and
irons and be transported northwards to the fortress of Skraar, and be
kept so close that he should never see sun or moon more.
But when the Bailiff had rowed round the _Femböring_, and feasted his
eyes upon it, and seen how smart and shapely it was, he agreed at last
to let Mercy go before Justice, and was content to take the _Femböring_
in lieu of a fine.
Then Jack took off his cap and said that if there was one man more than
another to whom he would like to give the boat, it was his honour the
Bailiff.
So off the magistrate sailed with it.
Jack's mother and sister and brothers cried bitterly at the loss of the
beautiful _Femböring_; but Jack stood on the roof of the boat-house and
laughed fit to split.
And towards autumn the news spread that the Bailiff with his eight men
had gone down with the _Femböring_ in the West-fjord.
But in those days there was quite a changing about of boats all over
Nordland, and Jack was unable to build a tenth part of the boats
required of him. Folks from near and far hung about the walls of his
boat-house, and it was quite a favour on his part to take orders, and
agree to carry them out. A whole score of boats soon stood beneath the
pent-house on the strand.
He no longer troubled his head about every _seventh_ boat, or cared to
know which it was or what befell it. If a boat foundered now and then,
so many the more got off and did well, so that, on the whole, he made a
very good thing indeed out of it. Besides, surely folks could pick and
choose their own boats, and take which they liked best.
But Jack got so great and mighty that it was not advisable for any one
to thwart him, or interfere where he ruled and reigned.
Whole rows of silver dollars stood in the barrels in the loft, and his
boat-building establishment stretched over all the islands of Sjöholm.
One Sunday his brothers and merry little Malfri had gone to church in
the _Femböring_. When evening came, and they hadn't come home, the
boatman came in and said that some one had better sail out and look
after them, as a gale was blowing up.
Jack was sitting with a plumb-line in his hand, taking the measurements
of a new boat, which was to be bigger and statelier than any of the
others, so that it was not well to disturb him.
"Do you fancy they're gone out in a rotten old tub, then?" bellowed he.
And the boatman was driven out as quickly as he had come.
But at night Jack lay awake and listened. The wind whined outside and
shook the walls, and there were cries from the sea far away. And just
then there came a knocking at the door, and some one called him by name.
"Go back whence you came," cried he, and nestled more snugly in his bed.
Shortly afterwards there came the fumbling and the scratching of tiny
fingers at the door.
"Can't you leave me at peace o' nights?" he bawled, "or must I build me
another bedroom?"
But the knocking and the fumbling for the latch outside continued, and
there was a sweeping sound at the door, as of some one who could not
open it. And there was a stretching of hands towards the latch ever
higher and higher.
But Jack only lay there and laughed. "The _Fembörings_ that are built at
Sjöholm don't go down before the first blast that blows," mocked he.
Then the latch chopped and hopped till the door flew wide open, and in
the doorway stood pretty Malfri and her mother and brothers. The
sea-fire shone about them, and they were dripping with water.
Their faces were pale and blue, and pinched about the corners of the
mouth, as if they had just gone through their death agony. Malfri had
one stiff arm round her mother's neck; it was all torn and bleeding,
just as when she had gripped her for the last time. She railed and
lamented, and begged back her young life from him.
So now he knew what had befallen them.
Out into the dark night and the darker weather he went straightway to
search for them, with as many boats and folk as he could get together.
They sailed and searched in every direction, and it was in vain.
But towards day the _Femböring_ came drifting homewards bottom upwards,
and with a large hole in the keel-board.
Then he knew who had done the deed.
But since the night when the whole of Jack's family went down, things
were very different at Sjöholm.
In the daytime, so long as the hammering and the banging and the planing
and the clinching rang about his ears, things went along swimmingly, and
the frames of boat after boat rose thick as sea fowl on an
_Æggevær_.[14]
But no sooner was it quiet of an evening than he had company. His mother
bustled and banged about the house, and opened and shut drawers and
cupboards, and the stairs creaked with the heavy tread of his brothers
going up to their bedrooms.
At night no sleep visited his eyes, and sure enough pretty Malfri came
to his door and sighed and groaned.
Then he would lie awake there and think, and reckon up how many boats
with false keel-boards he might have sent to sea. And the longer he
reckoned the more draug-boats he made of it.
Then he would plump out of bed and creep through the dark night down to
the boathouse. There he held a light beneath the boats, and banged and
tested all the keel-boards with a club to see if he couldn't hit upon
the _seventh_. But he neither heard nor felt a single board give way.
One was just like another. They were all hard and supple, and the wood,
when he scraped off the tar, was white and fresh.
One night he was so tormented by an uneasiness about the new
_Sekstring_,[15] which lay down by the bridge ready to set off next
morning, that he had no peace till he went down and tested its
keel-board with his club.
But while he sat in the boat, and was bending over the thwart with a
light, there was a gulping sound out at sea, and then came such a vile
stench of rottenness. The same instant he heard a wading sound, as of
many people coming ashore, and then up over the headland he saw a boat's
crew coming along.
They were all crooked-looking creatures, and they all leaned right
forward and stretched out their arms before them. Whatever came in their
way, both stone and stour,[16] they went right through it, and there was
neither sound nor shriek.
Behind them came another boat's crew, big and little, grown men and
little children, rattling and creaking.
And crew after crew came ashore and took the path leading to the
headland.
When the moon peeped forth Jack could see right into their skeletons.
Their faces glared, and their mouths gaped open with glistening teeth,
as if they had been swallowing water. They came in heaps and shoals, one
after the other: the place quite swarmed with them.
Then Jack perceived that here were all they whom he had tried to count
and reckon up as he lay in bed, and a fit of fury came upon him.
He rose in the boat and spanked his leather breeches behind and cried:
"You would have been even more than you are already if Jack hadn't built
his boats!"
But now like an icy whizzing blast they all came down upon him, staring
at him with their hollow eyes.
They gnashed their teeth, and each one of them sighed and groaned for
his lost life.
Then Jack, in his horror, put out from Sjöholm.
But the sail slackened, and he glided into dead water.[17] There, in the
midst of the still water, was a floating mass of rotten swollen planks.
All of them had once been shaped and fashioned together, but were now
burst and sprung, and slime and green mould and filth and nastiness hung
about them.
Dead hands grabbed at the corners of them with their white knuckles and
couldn't grip fast. They stretched themselves across the water and sank
again.
Then Jack let out all his clews and sailed and sailed and tacked
according as the wind blew.
He glared back at the rubbish behind him to see if those _things_ were
after him. Down in the sea all the dead hands were writhing, and tried
to strike him with gaffs astern.
Then there came a gust of wind whining and howling, and the boat drove
along betwixt white seething rollers.
The weather darkened, thick snowflakes filled the air, and the rubbish
around him grew greener.
In the daytime he took the cormorants far away in the grey mist for his
landmarks, and at night they screeched about his ears.
And the birds flitted and flitted continually, but Jack sat still and
looked out upon the hideous cormorants.
At last the sea-fog lifted a little, and the air began to be alive with
bright, black, buzzing flies. The sun burned, and far away inland the
snowy plains blazed in its light.
He recognised very well the headland and shore where he was now able to
lay to. The smoke came from the Gamme up on the snow-hill there. In the
doorway sat the Gan-Finn. He was lifting his pointed cap up and down, up
and down, by means of a thread of sinew, which went right through him,
so that his skin creaked.
And up there also sure enough was Seimke.
She looked old and angular as she bent over the reindeer-skin that she
was spreading out in the sunny weather. But she peeped beneath her arm
as quick and nimble as a cat with kittens, and the sun shone upon her,
and lit up her face and pitch-black hair.
She leaped up so briskly, and shaded her eyes with her hand, and looked
down at him. Her dog barked, but she quieted it so that the Gan-Finn
should mark nothing.
Then a strange longing came over him, and he put ashore.
He stood beside her, and she threw her arms over her head, and laughed
and shook and nestled close up to him, and cried and pleaded, and didn't
know what to do with herself, and ducked down upon his bosom, and threw
herself on his neck, and kissed and fondled him, and wouldn't let him
go.
But the Gan-Finn had noticed that there was something amiss, and sat all
the time in his furs, and mumbled and muttered to the Gan-flies, so that
Jack dare not get between him and the doorway.
The Finn was angry.
Since there had been such a changing about of boats over all Nordland,
and there was no more sale for his fair winds, he was quite ruined, he
complained. He was now so poor that he would very soon have to go about
and beg his bread. And of all his reindeer he had only a single doe
left, who went about there by the house.
Then Seimke crept behind Jack, and whispered to him to bid for this doe.
Then she put the reindeer-skin around her, and stood inside the Gamme
door in the smoke, so that the Gan-Finn only saw the grey skin, and
fancied it was the reindeer they were bringing in.
Then Jack laid his hand upon Seimke's neck, and began to bid.
The pointed cap ducked and nodded, and the Finn spat in the warm air;
but sell his reindeer he would not.
Jack raised his price.
But the Finn heaved up the ashes all about him, and threatened and
shrieked. The flies came as thick as snow-flakes; the Finn's furry
wrappings were alive with them.
Jack bid and bid till it reached a whole bushel load of silver, and the
Finn was ready to jump out of his skins.
Then he stuck his head under his furs again, and mumbled and _jöjked_
till the amount rose to seven bushels of silver.
Then the Gan-Finn laughed till he nearly split. He thought the reindeer
would cost the purchaser a pretty penny.
But Jack lifted Seimke up, and sprang down with her to his boat, and
held the reindeer-skin behind him, against the Gan-Finn.
And they put off from land, and went to sea.
Seimke was so happy, and smote her hands together, and took her turn at
the oars.
The northern light shot out like a comb, all greeny-red and fiery, and
licked and played upon her face. She talked to it, and fought it with
her hands, and her eyes sparkled. She used both tongue and mouth and
rapid gestures as she exchanged words with it.
Then it grew dark, and she lay on his bosom, so that he could feel her
warm breath. Her black hair lay right over him, and she was as soft and
warm to the touch as a ptarmigan when it is frightened and its blood
throbs.
Jack put the reindeer-skin over Seimke, and the boat rocked them to and
fro on the heavy sea as if it were a cradle.
They sailed on and on till night-fall; they sailed on and on till they
saw neither headland nor island nor sea-bird in the outer skerries more.
* * * * *
[1] This untranslatable word is a derivative of the Icelandic _Gandr_,
and means magic of the black or malefic sort.
[2] The northernmost province of Norway, right within the Arctic circle.
[3] The huts peculiar to the Norwegian Finns.
[4] To sing songs (here magic songs), as the Finns do. Possibly derived
from the Finnish verb _joikun_, which means monotonous chanting.
[5] The Norse _Kverva Syni_ is to delude the sight by magic spells.
[6] I.e., the boat he (Jack) wanted to build.
[7] A mountain between Sweden and Norway.
[8] I.e., the boat he would be building.
[9] Meaning that he would never have a chance of building the new sort
of boat that his mind was bent on.
[10] The Finn's hut.
[11] _Tvinde Knuder_. When the Finn tied _one_ magic knot, he raised a
gale, so two knots would give a tempest.
[12] I.e., where the Gan-Finn let out the wind.
[13] An eight-oared boat.
[14] A place where sea-birds' eggs abound.
[15] A contraction of _Sexæring_, i.e., a boat with six oars.
[16] Eng. dialect word (the Norse is _staur_) meaning impediments of any
kind.
[17] _Daudvatn_ (Dan. _Dödvand_), water in which there is no motion.
* * * * *
TUG OF WAR.
[Illustration: TUG OF WAR.]
TUG OF WAR
For the last two or three days the weather had been terrific; but on the
third day it so far cleared up that one of the men who belonged to the
fishing station thought that they might manage to drag the nets a bit
that day. The others, however, were not inclined to venture out. Now it
is the custom for the various crews to lend each other a hand in pushing
off the boats, and so it happened now. When, however, they came to the
_Femböring_, which was drawn up a good distance ashore, they found the
oars and the thwarts turned upside down in the boat, and, more than
that, despite all their exertions, it was impossible to move the boat
from the spot. They tried once, twice, thrice; but it was of no use. But
then one of them, who was known to have second sight, said that, from
what he saw, it would be best not to touch the boat at all that day; it
was too heavy for the might of man to move. One of the crew, however,
who belonged to the fishing-station (he was a smart lad of fourteen),
was amusing them all the time with all manner of pranks and tomfoolery.
He now caught up a heavy stone, and pitched it with all his might right
into the stern of the boat. Then, suddenly and plainly visible to them
all, out of the boat rushed a Draug in seaman's clothes, but with a
heavy crop of seaweed instead of a head. It had been weighing down the
boat by sitting in the stern, and now dashed into the sea, so that the
foam spirted all over them. After that the _Femböring_ glided quite
smoothly into the water. Then the man with second sight looked at the
boy, and said that he should not have done so. But the lad went on
laughing as before, and said he didn't believe in such stuff. When they
had come home in the evening, and the folks lay sleeping in the
fishing-station, they heard, about twelve o'clock at night, the lad
yelling for help; it even seemed to one of them, by the light of the
train-oil lamp, as if a heavy hand were stretching forward from the door
right up to the bench on which the lad lay. The lad, yelling and
struggling, had already been dragged as far as the door before the
others had so far come to their senses as to think of grasping him round
the body to prevent him from being dragged right out. And now, in mid
doorway, a hard fight began, the Draug dragging him by the legs, while
the whole crew tugged against him with the boy's arms and upper limbs.
Thus, amidst yelling and groaning, they swayed to and fro all through
the midnight hour, backwards and forwards, in the half-open door; and
now the Draug, and now the men, had the most of the boy on their side of
the doorway. All at once the Draug let go, so that the whole crew fell
higgledy-piggledy backwards on to the floor. Then they found that the
boy was dead; it was only then that the Draug had let him go.
* * * * *
"THE EARTH DRAWS"
[Illustration: "THE EARTH DRAWS."]
"THE EARTH DRAWS"
There was once a young salesman at the storekeeper's at Sörvaag.
He was fair, with curly hair, shrewd blue eyes, and so smart, and
obliging, and handsome, that all the girls in the town got themselves
sent on errands, and made pilgrimages to the shop on purpose to see him.
Moreover, he was so smart and skilful in everything he put his hand to,
that the storekeeper never would part with him.
Now it happened one day that he went out to a fishing station for his
principal.
The current was dead against him, so he rode close in shore.
All at once he saw a little ring in the rocky wall a little above
high-water mark. He thought it was the sort of ring which is used for
fastening boats to, so he fancied it wouldn't do any harm to rest a bit
and lay to ashore, and have a snack of something, for he had been
pulling at the oars from early morn.
But when he took hold of the ring to run his boatline through it, it
fitted round his finger so tightly that he had to tug at it. He tugged,
and out of the mountain side with a rush came a large drawer. It was
brimful of silk neckerchiefs and women's frippery.
He was amazed, and began pondering the matter over.
Then he saw what looked like rusty flakes of iron in rows right over the
whole mountain side, exactly resembling the slit of his own drawer.
He had now got the ring on his finger, and must needs try if it would
open the other slits also. And out he drew drawer after drawer full of
gold bracelets and silver bracelets, glass pearls, brooches and rings,
bracelets and laced caps, yarn, night-caps and woollen drawers, coffee,
sugar, groats, tobacco pipes, buttons, hooks and eyes, knives, axes, and
scythes.
He drew out drawer after drawer; there was no end to the display they
made.
But all round about him he heard, as it were, the humming of a crowd and
the tramp of sea-boots. There was a hubbub, as if they were rolling
hogsheads over a bridge and hoisting sails against the wind, and out
from the sea sounded the stroke of oars and the bumping of boats putting
ashore.
Then he began to have an inkling that he had laid to his boat at a
mooring-ring belonging to the underground folk, and had lit right upon
their landing-place where they deposited their wares.
He stood there looking into a drawer of meerschaum pipes. They were
finer than any he had thought it possible to find in the whole world.
Then he felt, as it were, the blow of a heavy hand which tried to thrust
him aside; but, at the same time, some one laughed so merrily close by.
The same instant he saw a young woman in the fore-part of his boat. She
was leaning, with broad shoulders and hairy arms, over a meal-sack. Her
eyes laughed and shot forth sparks as from a smithy in the dark, but her
face was oddly pale.
Then she vanished altogether like a vision.
He was glad when he got down into his boat again, and pushed off and
rode away.
But when he got out into the sound, and slackened speed a bit, he
perceived that the ring still sat upon his finger.
His first thought was to tear it off and fling it into the sea; but then
it sat tighter than ever.
It was so curiously wrought and fretted and engraved that he must needs
examine it more curiously; and the longer he looked at it the stranger
the gold whereof it was wrought gleamed and glistened. Turn it as he
would to examine its spirals, he could never make out where they began
and where they ended.
But as he sat there and looked and looked at it, the black crackling and
sparkling eyes of that pale face stood out more and more plainly before
his eyes. He didn't exactly know whether he thought her ugly or
handsome--the uncanny creature!
The ring he now meant to keep, come what might.
And home he rowed, and said not a word to anybody of what had happened
to him.
But from that day forth a strange restlessness came over him.
When he was sweeping out the shop or measuring goods, he would suddenly
stand there in a brown study, and fancy he was right away at the
landing-stage in the mountain-side, and the black woman was laughing at
him over the meal-sack.
Out yonder he must needs venture once more, and put his ring to the
test, though it cost him his life.
And in the course of the summer his boat lay over at the mountain-side
in the self-same place as before.
When he had opened the drawer with his gold ring, he caught sight of the
broad-shouldered woman. Her eyes sparkled, and had a wild look about
them, and she peered curiously at him.
And, every time he came, he seemed to be more expected, and she was more
and more gladsome. They became quite old acquaintances, and she was
always waiting for him there.
But at home he grew gloomy and silent. Yet, although he bethought him
that it was all sorcery, and her arms were hairy almost like a beast's,
and although he determined and really tried to keep away, nevertheless
he could not help going thither, and whenever he had been away from her
a whole week, she grew quite unmanageable, and laughed and shrieked when
she saw him coming again.
And he always heard the noise and the bustle of many people all about
him, but never could he see anything. It seemed to him, however, as if
they all lay a little way off and pulled their boat aside for him to
pass. His boat, too, was always nicely baled out, and the oars and sails
righted and trimmed. The cable, too, was fastened for him whenever he
came, and thrown to him whenever he went away.
Now and then she so managed it that he caught a glimpse into their
warehouses and their bright halls in the mountain side, and at such
times she seemed to be enticing him after her. And then, on his way
home, he would shudder. "What," thought he, "if the mountain wall were
to shut to behind me?" and every time he was right glad that he had been
so far on his guard and had come off scot free.
And now, towards autumn, he grew more at his ease. He really made up his
mind to try to give up these journeys. He set to work in real earnest,
so that he had no time for thought, and plunged into his business with
fiery impetuosity.