One night he was so tormented by an uneasiness about the new Sekstring,28 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,29 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.30 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
