Tord came face to face with his brother:
“South America? Because you have a badge on your cap? By your snobbish order? You just get aboard. Access to this island is forbidden by Tord Selamb!”
Tord planted the muzzle of his rifle in Stellan’s stomach and forced him, with his fingers on the trigger, to retire on board. After which he took his curved knife and cut the moorings.
“Back,” he commanded again, and the man at the wheel obeyed.
The big red mahogany boat glided quickly out of the harbour.
Dagmar still clung to the mast and stared shivering at the lonely grey man out on the pier:
“The key of the larder lies under my pillow,” she called. And there was suddenly a tremulous note of pity in her voice at the sight of his terrible loneliness.
Then she crept down in the machine room.
They were already in the open. The gale had increased and the motor boat rolled and pitched in the high seas in Järnö bay. Laura got out some dry things for Dagmar. She looked up with a grimace at Stellan:
“Why the devil had you to go out to Järnö? There was more fun at Brauner’s!”
Stellan shrugged his shoulders.
“It might be as well to have her with us. Tord will soon follow and then we will deport them.”
Tord did not see the motor boat for a long while from the pier. It was hidden by a tongue of land. “I won’t go up the hill,” he thought. “What the deuce have I to do on the hill?” But soon after he was up there all the same. The boat was visible far out in the channel. It looked like a dark spot on the grey waters. Sometimes there was a flash of light as it dashed through a big sea. It got smaller and smaller. He had to fasten his gaze upon it intently if the water was not to appear absolutely deserted. Then the boat disappeared far, far away beneath a grey headland.
Tord started. When his hand moved on to the rifle barrel the steel was so cold that it burnt. Somebody had drawn a deep, moaning sigh. It must have been himself.
He was alone now. It was ghastly how everything suddenly grew in the loneliness, how everything grew big and heavy and terrible, the trees, the clouds, the wind, the sea.
Quickly, as if pursued by an enemy, he dived into his house. The fire had gone out. The pine branch still beat against the window: knock! knock! knock! He went up to the wall and tried with his hand the draught from a chink between the logs, then he suddenly rushed out into the kitchen and swallowed some remains of food. It was the first food he had tasted that day. A drop of wine was left in a glass. He poured it into him. Then he spat it out again feeling nauseated. And then he was in the bedroom by Dagmar’s bed. The pillow was still pressed down after her head. He raised his clenched fist for a blow but suddenly stopped and raised the rifle that he still trailed with him. The shot went straight into the pillow so that the feathers whirled about. Afterwards it became horribly quiet. Tord shivered. Why make a noise and shoot? There was nobody to hear him, nobody. Then the pine branch began to beat against the window again. Knock! knock! No, he could not stay here!
Tord went down to the little reed-grown bay. He half ran but stopped now and then like a child that stops crying for a moment to feel its pain. Down there the old yacht lay riding at anchor. For days and weeks its deckhouse had been his last refuge when everything else was disgusting and hateful. The punt lay beneath the alder trees. Tord got it afloat and rowed out through the scattered, rustling reeds. On board the yacht the deck was covered with withered leaves. The water had risen up into the cockpit. Water is never so unpleasant as when, brown with rust from the ballast, it rises up in an old boat. Tord pumped. With difficulty he opened the swollen doors of the cabin. Down below it smelt of rotting oak, rotten ropes, mildew and damp. He pushed away a lot of rubbish and lay down on a cushion. Flap, flap! went the eternal waves as they splashed against the stem. Rat-tat! the foresail halyard beat against the mast as the wind swept in. And the alders and the hill swung to and fro through the little window, to and fro, to and fro!
The chill rose out of the cold, stinking cushion so that Tord could no longer lie on it. He climbed up on deck and began mechanically to hoist sail. The stiff grey hemp creaked in his hands. Out of the wet, mildewed folds of the sail crawled swarms of earwigs. The sheets were full of kinks and doublings. The boom suddenly knocked him down on the deck, but he rose groaning, pulled in the shiny, green anchor chain and hauled up the anchor, which was a mass of mire and mud. Then he sprang to the helm.
As by magic the yacht found its way out through the narrow, difficult channel. Now it lay in Järnö bay, under the lee of the familiar hill. Black, gusty squalls puffed in all directions over the leaden grey water. At first the old hull did not seem to know what it wanted to do. The sails filled, shivered and went over. The mainsheet struck off Tord’s fur cap. He did not care. He sat huddled up by the helm looking at a feather that had fastened on his sleeve. He stared at the soft, white down that trembled at each puff. The memories of past kisses, caresses and embraces softly, wonderfully softly, flattered his soul. There to starboard was the course to town,
