by Jonas Lie
His wife never questioned him; but a load of sorrow lay upon her, and it seemed to her to grow heavier and more crushing, since she seemed no longer able to take care of him, and he no longer seemed to belong to her.
Now one year, when it was again drawing nigh to Yule-tide, he began roaming about as usual, heavy and cast down; and the day before Little Christmas Eve he took his wife along with him into the packhouse loft.
“Do you see anything there by the meal sack?” he asked.
But she saw nothing.
Then he gripped her by the hand, and begged and implored her to remain, and go with him there at night. As his life was dear to him, said he, he would fain try and stay at home that day.
In the course of the night he tightly grasped her hand time after time, and sighed and groaned. She felt that he was holding on to her, and striving hard, and with all his might, against something.
When morning came, it was all over. He was happier and lighter of mood than she had seen him for a long, long time, and he remained at home.
On that Christmas Eve there was such a hauling and a-carrying upstairs from both shop and cellar, and the candles shone till all the window-panes sparkled again. It was the first real festival he had ever spent in his own house, he said, and he meant to make a regular banquet of it.
But when, as the custom was, the people of the house came in one by one, and drank the healths of their master and mistress, he grew paler and paler and whiter and whiter, as if his blood were being sucked out of him and drained away.
“The earth draws!” he shrieked, and there was a look of horror in his eyes.
Immediately afterwards he sat there—dead!
[1] Lille Jule-aften, i.e., the day before Christmas Eve (Jule-aften).
THE CORMORANTS OF ANDVÆR
Outside Andvær lies an island, the haunt of wild birds, which no man can land upon, be the sea never so quiet; the sea-swell girds it round about with sucking whirlpools and dashing breakers.
On fine summer days something sparkles there through the sea-foam like a large gold ring; and, time out of mind, folks have fancied there was a treasure there left by some pirates of old.
At sunset, sometimes, there looms forth from thence a vessel with a castle astern, and a glimpse is caught now and then of an old-fashioned galley. There it lies as if in a tempest, and carves its way along through heavy white rollers.
Along the rocks sit the cormorants in a long black row, lying in wait for dog-fish.
But there was a time when one knew the exact number of these birds. There was never more nor less of them than twelve, while upon a stone, out in the sea-mist, sat the thirteenth, but it was only visible when it rose and flew right over the island.
The only persons who lived near the Vær[1] at winter time, long after the fishing season was over, was a woman and a slip of a girl. Their business was to guard the scaffolding poles for drying fish against the birds of prey, who had such a villainous trick of hacking at the drying-ropes.
The young girl had thick coal-black hair, and a pair of eyes that peeped at folk so oddly. One might almost have said that she was like the cormorants outside there, and she had never seen much else all her life. Nobody knew who her father was.
Thus they lived till the girl had grown up.
It was found that, in the summer time, when the fishermen went out to the Vær to fetch away the dried fish, that the young fellows began underbidding each other, so as to be selected for that special errand.
Some gave up their share of profits, and others their wages; and there was a general complaint in all the villages round about that on such occasions no end of betrothals were broken off.
But the cause of it all was the girl out yonder with the odd eyes.
For all her rough and ready ways, she had something about her, said those she chatted with, that there was no resisting. She turned the heads of all the young fellows; it seemed as if they couldn’t live without her.
The first winter a lad wooed her who had both house and warehouse of his own.
“If you come again in the summer time, and give me the right gold ring I will be wedded by, something may come of it,” said she.
And, sure enough, in the summer time the lad was there again.
He had a lot of fish to fetch away, and she might have had a gold ring as heavy and as bonnie as heart could wish for.
“The ring I must have lies beneath the wreckage, in the iron chest, over at the island yonder,” said she; “that is, if you love me enough to dare fetch it.”
But then the lad grew pale.
He saw the sea-bore rise and fall out there like a white wall of foam on the bright warm summer day, and on the island sat the cormorants sleeping in the sunshine.
“Dearly do I love thee,” said he, “but such a quest as that would mean my burial, not my bridal.”
The same instant the thirteenth cormorant rose from his stone in the misty foam, and flew right over the island.
Next winter the steersman of a yacht came a wooing. For two years he had gone about and hugged his misery for her sake, and he got the same answer.
“If you come again in the summer time, and give me the right gold ring I will be wedded with, something may come of it.”
Out to the Vær he came again on Midsummer Day.
But when he heard where the gold ring lay, he sat and wept the whole day till evening, when the sun began to dance north-westward into the sea.
Then the thirteenth cormorant arose, and flew right over the island.
There was nasty weather during the third winter.
There were manifold wrecks, and on the keel of a boat, which came driving ashore, hung an exhausted young lad by his knife-belt.
But they couldn’t get the life back into him, roll and rub him about in the boat-house as they might.
Then the girl came in.
“’Tis my bridegroom!” said she.
And she laid him in her bosom, and sat with him the whole night through, and put warmth into his heart.
And when the morning came, his heart beat.
“Methought I lay betwixt the wings of a cormorant, and leaned my head against its downy breast,” said he.
The lad was ruddy and handsome, with curly hair, and he couldn’t take his eyes away from the girl.
He took work upon the Vær.
But off he must needs be gadding and chatting with her, be it never so early and never so late.
So it fared with him as it had fared with the others.
It seemed to him that he could not live without her, and on the day when he was bound to depart, he wooed her.
“Thee I will not fool,” said she. “Thou hast lain on my breast, and I would give my life to save thee from sorrow. Thou shalt have me if thou wilt place the betrothal ring upon my finger; but longer than the day lasts thou canst not keep me. And now I will wait, and long after thee with a horrible longing, till the summer comes.”
On Midsummer Day the youth came thither in his boat all alone.
Then she told him of the ring that he must fetch for her from among the skerries.
“If thou hast taken me off the keel of a boat, thou mayest cast me forth yonder again,” said the lad. “Live without thee I cannot.”
But as he laid hold of the oars in order to row out, she stepped into the boat with him and sat in the stern. Wondrous fair was she!
It was beautiful summer weather, and there was a swell upon the sea: wave followed upon wave in long bright rollers.
The lad sat there, lost in the sight of her, and he rowed and rowed till the insucking breakers roared and thundered among the skerries; the ground-swell was strong, and the frothing foam spurted up as high as towers.
“If thy life is d
ear to thee, turn back now,” said she.
“Thou art dearer to me than life itself,” he made answer.
But just as it seemed to the lad as if the prow were going under, and the jaws of death were gaping wide before him, it grew all at once as still as a calm, and the boat could run ashore as if there was never a billow there.
On the island lay a rusty old ship’s anchor half out of the sea.
“In the iron chest which lies beneath the anchor is my dowry,” said she; “carry it up into thy boat, and put the ring that thou seest on my finger. With this thou dost make me thy bride. So now I am thine till the sun dances north-westwards into the sea.”
It was a gold ring with a red stone in it, and he put it on her finger and kissed her.
In a cleft on the skerry was a patch of green grass. There they sat them down, and they were ministered to in wondrous wise, how he knew not nor cared to know, so great was his joy.
“Midsummer Day is beauteous,” said she, “and I am young and thou art my bridegroom. And now we’ll to our bridal bed.”
So bonnie was she that he could not contain himself for love.
But when night drew nigh, and the sun began to dance out into the sea, she kissed him and shed tears.
“Beauteous is the summer day,” said she, “and still more beauteous is the summer evening; but now the dusk cometh.”
And all at once it seemed to him as if she were becoming older and older and fading right away.
When the sun went below the sea-margin there lay before him on the skerry some mouldering linen rags and nought else.
Calm was the sea, and in the clear Midsummer night there flew twelve cormorants out over the sea.
[1] A fishing-station, where fishermen assemble periodically.
ISAAC AND THE PARSON OF BRÖNÖ
In Helgeland there was once a fisherman called Isaac. One day when he was out halibut fishing he felt something heavy on the lines. He drew up, and, lo! there was a sea-boot.
“That was a rum ’un! “ said he, and he sat there a long time looking at it.
It looked just as if it might be the boot of his brother who had gone down in the great storm last winter on his way home from fishing.
There was still something inside the boot too, but he durst not look to see what it was, nor did he exactly know what to do with the sea-boot either.
He didn’t want to take it home and frighten his mother, nor did he quite fancy chucking it back into the sea again; so he made up his mind to go to the parson of Brönö, and beg him to bury it in a Christian way.
“But I can’t bury a sea-boot,” quoth the parson.
The fellow scratched his head. “Na, na!” said he.
Then he wanted to know how much there ought to be of a human body before it could have the benefit of Christian burial.
“That I cannot exactly tell you,” said the parson; “a tooth, or a finger, or hair clippings is not enough to read the burial service over. Anyhow, there ought to be so much remaining that one can see that a soul has been in it. But to read Holy Scripture over a toe or two in a sea-boot! Oh, no! that would never do!”
But Isaac watched his opportunity, and managed to get the sea-boot into the churchyard on the sly, all the same.
And home he went.
It seemed to him that he had done the best he could. It was better, after all, that something of his brother should lie so near God’s house than that he should have heaved the boot back into the black sea again.
But, towards autumn, it so happened that, as he lay out among the skerries on the look-out for seals, and the ebb-tide drove masses of tangled seaweed towards him, he fished up a knife-belt and an empty sheath with his oar-blade.
He recognised them at once as his brother’s.
The tarred wire covering of the sheath had been loosened and bleached by the sea; and he remembered quite well how, when his brother had sat and cobbled away at this sheath, he had chatted and argued with him about the leather for his belt which he had taken from an old horse which they had lately killed.
They had bought the buckle together over at the storekeeper’s on the Saturday, and mother had sold bilberries, and capercailzies, and three pounds of wool. They had got a little tipsy, and had had such fun with the old fishwife at the headland, who had used a bast-mat for a sail.
So he took the belt away with him, and said nothing about it. It was no good giving pain to no purpose, thought he.
But the longer the winter lasted the more he bothered himself with odd notions about what the parson had said. And he knew not what he should do in case he came upon something else, such as another boot, or something that a squid, or a fish, or a crab, or a Greenland shark might have bitten off. He began to be really afraid of rowing out in the sea there among the skerries.
And yet, for all that, it was as though he were constantly being drawn thither by the hope of finding, perhaps, so much of the remains as might show the parson where the soul had been, and so move him to give them a Christian burial.
He took to walking about all by himself in a brown study.
And then, too, he had such nasty dreams.
His door flew open in the middle of the night and let in a cold sea-blast, and it seemed to him as if his brother were limping about the room, and yelling that he must have his foot again, the Draugs were pulling and twisting him about so.
For hours and hours he stood over his work without laying a hand to it, and blankly staring at the fifth wall.[1]
At last he felt as if he were really going out of his wits, because of the great responsibility he had taken upon himself by burying the foot in the churchyard.
He didn’t want to pitch it into the sea again, but it couldn’t lie in the churchyard either.
It was borne in upon him so clearly that his brother could not be among the blessed, and he kept going about and thinking of all that might be lying and drifting and floating about among the skerries.
So he took it upon himself to dredge there, and lay out by the sea-shore with ropes and dredging gear. But all that he dredged up was sea-wrack, and weeds, and star-fish, and like rubbish.
One evening as he sat out there by the rocks trying his luck at fishing, and the line with the stone and all the hooks upon it shot down over the boat’s side, the last of the hooks caught in one of his eyes, and right to the bottom went the eye.
There was no use dredging for that, and he could see to row home very well without it.
In the night he lay with a bandage over his eye, wakeful for pain, and he thought and thought till things looked as black as they could be to him. Was there ever any one in the world in such a hobble as he?
All at once such an odd thing happened.
He thought he was looking about him, deep down in the sea, and he saw the fishes flitting and snapping about among the sea-wrack and seaweeds round about the fishing line. They bit at the bait, and wriggled and tried to slip off, first a cod, and then a ling, and then a dog-fish. Last of all, a haddock came and stood still there, and chewed the water a little as if it were tasting before swallowing it.
And he saw there what he couldn’t take his eyes off. It looked like the back of a man in leather clothes, with one sleeve caught beneath the grapnel of a Femböring.[2]
Then a heavy white halibut came up and gulped down the hook, and it became pitch dark.
“You must let the big halibut slip off again when you pull up tomorrow,” something said, “the hook tears my mouth so. ’Tis of no use searching except in the evening, when the tide in the sound is on the ebb.”
Next day he went off, and took a piece of a tombstone from the churchyard to dredge the bottom with; and in the evening, when the tide had turned, he lay out in the sound again and searched.
Immediately he
hauled up the grapnel of a Femböring, the hooks of which were clinging to a leather fisherman’s jacket, with the remains of an arm in it.
The fishes had got as much as they could of it out of the leather jacket.
Off to the parson he rowed straightway.
“What! read the service over a washed-out old leather jacket!” cried the parson of Brönö.
“I’ll throw the sea-boot into the bargain,” answered Isaac.
“Waifs and strays and sea salvage should be advertised in the church porch,” thundered the parson.
Then Isaac looked straight into the parson’s face.
“The sea-boot has been heavy enough on my conscience,” said he; “and I’m sure I don’t want to be saddled with the leather jacket as well.”
“I tell you I don’t mean to cast consecrated earth to the winds,” said the parson; he was getting wroth.
Isaac scratched his head again. “Na, na!” said he.
And with that he had to be content and go home.
But Isaac had neither rest nor repose, there lay such a grievous load upon him.
In the night time he again saw the big white halibut. It was going round and round so slowly and sadly in the selfsame circle at the bottom of the sea. It was just as if some invisible sort of netting was all round it, and the whole time it was striving to slip through the meshes.
Isaac lay there, and gazed and gazed till his blind eye ached again.
No sooner was he out dredging next day, and had let down the ropes, than an ugly heavy squid came up, and spouted up a black jet right in front of him.
But one evening he let the boat drive, as the current chose to take it, outside the skerries, but within the islands. At last it stopped at a certain spot, as if it were moored fast, and there it grew wondrously still; there was not a bird in the air or a sign of life in the sea.
All at once up came a big bubble right in front of the jib, and as it burst he heard a deep heavy sigh.