by Jonas Lie
Jack’s heart sank within him. Such doubt and anguish came upon him. He knew well enough that no good errand had brought the Gan-fly buzzing over the boat like that.
So he took the train-oil lamp and a wooden club, and began to test the prow and light up the boarding, and thump it well, and go over the planks one by one. And in this way he went over every bit of the boat from stem to stern, both above and below. There was not a nail or a rivet that he really believed in now.
But now neither the shape nor the proportions of the boat pleased him any more. The prow was too big, and the whole cut of the boat all the way down the gunwale had something of a twist and a bend and a swerve about it, so that it looked like the halves of two different boats put together, and the half in front didn’t fit in with the half behind. As he was about to look into the matter still further (and he felt the cold sweat bursting out of the roots of his hair), the train-oil lamp went out and left him in blank darkness.
Then he could contain himself no longer. He lifted his club and burst open the boathouse door, and, snatching up a big cow-bell, he began to swing it about him and ring and ring with it through the black night.
“Art chiming for me, Jack?” something asked. There was a sound behind him like the surf sucking at the shore, and a cold blast blew into the boathouse.
There on the keel-stick sat some one in a sloppy grey sea-jacket, and with a print cap drawn down over its ears, so that its skull looked like a low tassel.
Jack gave a great start. This was the very being he had been thinking of in his wild rage. Then he took the large baling can and flung it at the Draug.
But right through the Draug it went, and rattled against the wall behind, and back again it came whizzing about Jack’s ears, and if it had struck him he would never have got up again.
The old fellow, however, only blinked his eyes a little savagely.
“Fie!” cried Jack, and spat at the uncanny thing—and back into his face again he got as good as he gave.
“There you have your wet clout back again!” cried a laughing voice.
But the same instant Jack’s eyes were opened and he saw a whole boat-building establishment on the sea-shore.
And, there, ready and rigged out on the bright water, lay an Ottring,[13] so long and shapely and shining that his eyes could not feast on it enough.
The old ’un blinked with satisfaction. His eyes became more and more glowing.
“If I could guide you back to Helgeland,” said he, “I could put you in the way of gaining your bread too. But you must pay me a little tax for it. In every seventh boat you build ’tis I who must put in the keel-board.”
Jack felt as if he were choking. He felt that the boat was dragging him into the very jaws of an abomination.
“Or do you fancy you’ll worm the trick out of me for nothing?” said the gaping grinning Draug.
Then there was a whirring sound, as if something heavy was hovering about the boathouse, and there was a laugh: “If you want the seaman’s boat you must take the dead man’s boat along with it. If you knock three times to-night on the keel-piece with the club, you shall have such help in building boats that the like of them will not be found in all Nordland.”
Twice did Jack raise his club that night, and twice he laid it aside again.
But the Ottring lay and frisked and sported in the sea before his eyes, 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 boa
t, 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.