how it had now revenged itself upon him, and certainly would not forbear till it was “quits with him.”
It was towards nine o’clock in the morning when the grey dawn began to appear. Then Elias gave to Bernt, who sat alongside him, his silver watch with the brass chain, which he had snapped in two in order to drag it from beneath his closely buttoned jacket. He held on for a little time longer, but, as it got lighter, Bernt saw that his father’s face was deadly pale, his hair too had parted here and there, as often happens when death is at hand, and his skin was chafed off his hands from holding on to the keel. The son understood now that his father was nearly at the last gasp, and tried, so far as the pitching and tossing would allow it, to hold him up; but when Elias marked it, he said, “Nay, look to thyself, Bernt, and hold on fast. I go to mother—in Jesus’ Name!” and with that he cast himself down headlong from the top of the boat.
Everyone who has sat on the keel of a boat long enough knows that when the sea has got its own it grows much calmer, though not immediately. Bernt now found it easier to hold on, and still more of hope came to him with the brightening day. The storm abated, and, when it got quite light, it seemed to him that he knew where he was, and that it was outside his own homestead, Kvalholm, that he lay driving.
He now began again to cry for help, but his chief hope was in a current which he knew bore landwards at a place where a headland broke in upon the surge, and there the water was calmer. And he did, in fact, drive closer and closer in, and came at last so near to one of the rocks that the mast, which was floating by the side of the boat all the time, surged up and down in the swell against the sloping cliff. Stiff as he now was in all his limbs from sitting and holding on, he nevertheless succeeded, after a great effort, in clambering up the cliff, where he hauled the mast ashore, and made the Fembøring fast.
The Finn girl, who was alone in the house, had been thinking, for the last two hours, that she had heard cries for help from time to time, and as they kept on she mounted the hill to see what it was. There she saw Bernt up on the cliff, and the overturned Fembøring bobbing up and down against it. She immediately dashed down to the boat-place, got out the old rowing-boat, and rowed along the shore and round the island right out to him.
Bernt lay sick under her care the whole winter through, and didn’t go a fishing all that year. Ever after this, too, it seemed to folks as if the lad were a little bit daft.
On the open sea he never would go again, for he had got the sea-scare. He wedded the Finn girl, and moved over to Malang, where he got him a clearing in the forest, and he lives there now, and is doing well, they say.
Jack of Sjöholm and the Gan14-Finn
In the days of our forefathers, when there was nothing but wretched boats up in Nordland, and folks must needs buy fair winds by the sackful from the Gan-Finn, it was not safe to tack about in the open sea in wintry weather. In those days a fisherman never grew old. It was mostly womenfolk and children, and the lame and halt, who were buried ashore.
Now there was once a boat’s crew from Thjöttö in Helgeland, which had put to sea, and worked its way right up to the East Lofotens.
But that winter the fish would not bite.
They lay to and waited week after week, till the month was out, and there was nothing for it but to turn home again with their fishing gear and empty boats.
But Jack of Sjöholm, who was with them, only laughed aloud, and said that, if there were no fish there, fish would certainly be found higher northwards. Surely they hadn’t rowed out all this distance only to eat up all their victuals, said he.
He was quite a young chap, who had never been out fishing before. But there was some sense in what he said for all that, thought the head-fisherman.
And so they set their sails northwards.
On the next fishing-ground they fared no better than before, but they toiled away so long as their food held out.
And now they all insisted on giving it up and turning back.
“If there’s none here, there’s sure to be some still higher up towards the north,” opined Jack; “and if they had gone so far, they might surely go a little further still,” quoth he.
So they tempted fortune from fishing-ground to fishing-ground, till they had ventured right up to Finmark.15 But there a storm met them, and, try as they might to find shelter under the headlands, they were obliged at last to put out into the open sea again.
There they fared worse than ever. They had a hard time of it. Again and again the prow of the boat went under the heavy rollers, instead of over them, and later on in the day the boat foundered.
There they all sat helplessly on the keel in the midst of the raging sea, and they all complained bitterly against that fellow Jack, who had tempted them on, and led them into destruction. What would now become of their wives and children? They would starve now that they had none to care for them.
When it grew dark, their hands began to stiffen, and they were carried off by the sea one by one.
And Jack heard and saw everything, down to the last shriek and the last clutch; and to
