JACK OF SJOEHOLM AND THE GAN[1]-FINN
In the days of our forefathers, when there was nothing but wretchedboats up in Nordland, and folks must needs buy fair winds by the sackfulfrom the Gan-Finn, it was not safe to tack about in the open sea inwintry weather. In those days a fisherman never grew old. It was mostlywomenfolk and children, and the lame and halt, who were buried ashore.
Now there was once a boat's crew from Thjoettoe in Helgeland, which hadput 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, andthere was nothing for it but to turn home again with their fishing gearand empty boats.
But Jack of Sjoeholm, who was with them, only laughed aloud, and saidthat, if there were no fish there, fish would certainly be found highernorthwards. Surely they hadn't rowed out all this distance only to eatup all their victuals, said he.
He was quite a young chap, who had never been out fishing before. Butthere was some sense in what he said for all that, thought thehead-fisherman.
And so they set their sails northwards.
On the next fishing-ground they fared no better than before, but theytoiled 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 towardsthe north," opined Jack; "and if they had gone so far, they might surelygo a little further still," quoth he.
So they tempted fortune from fishing-ground to fishing-ground, till theyhad ventured right up to Finmark.[2] But there a storm met them, and,try as they might to find shelter under the headlands, they were obligedat last to put out into the open sea again.
There they fared worse than ever. They had a hard time of it. Again andagain the prow of the boat went under the heavy rollers, instead of overthem, and later on in the day the boat foundered.
There they all sat helplessly on the keel in the midst of the ragingsea, and they all complained bitterly against that fellow Jack, who hadtempted them on, and led them into destruction. What would now become oftheir wives and children? They would starve now that they had none tocare for them.
When it grew dark, their hands began to stiffen, and they were carriedoff by the sea one by one.
And Jack heard and saw everything, down to the last shriek and the lastclutch; and to the very end they never ceased reproaching him forbringing them into such misery, and bewailing their sad lot.
"I must hold on tight now," said Jack to himself, for he was better evenwhere he was than in the sea.
And so he tightened his knees on the keel, and held on fast till he hadno feeling left in either hand or foot.
In the coal-black gusty night he fancied he heard yells from one orother of the remaining boats' crews.
"They, too, have wives and children," thought he. "I wonder whether theyhave also a Jack to lay the blame upon!"
Now while he thus lay there and drifted and drifted, and it seemed tohim to be drawing towards dawn, he suddenly felt that the boat was inthe grip of a strong shoreward current; and, sure enough, Jack got atlast ashore. But whichever way he looked, he saw nothing but black seaand white snow.
Now as he stood there, speering and spying about him, he saw, far away,the smoke of a Finn Gamme,[3] which stood beneath a cliff, and hemanaged to scramble right up to it.
The Finn was so old that he could scarcely move. He was sitting in themidst of the warm ashes, and mumbling into a big sack, and neither spokenor answered. Large yellow humble-bees were humming about all over thesnow, as if it were Midsummer; and there was only a young lass there tokeep the fire alight, and give the old man his food. His grandsons andgrand-daughters were with the reindeer, far far away on the _Fjeld_.
Here Jack got his clothes well dried, and the rest he so much wanted.The Finn girl, Seimke, couldn't make too much of him; she fed him withreindeer milk and marrow-bones, and he lay down to sleep on silverfox-skins.
Cosy and comfortable it was in the smoke there. But as he thus laythere, 'twixt sleep and wake, it seemed to him as if many odd thingswere going on round about him.
There stood the Finn in the doorway talking to his reindeer, althoughthey were far away in the mountains. He barred the wolf's way, andthreatened the bear with spells; and then he opened his skin sack, sothat the storm howled and piped, and there was a swirl of ashes into thehut. And when all grew quiet again, the air was thick with yellowhumble-bees, which settled inside his furs, whilst he gabbled andmumbled and wagged his skull-like head.
But Jack had something else to think about besides marvelling at the oldFinn. No sooner did the heaviness of slumber quit his eyes than hestrolled down to his boat.
There it lay stuck fast on the beach and tilted right over like atrough, while the sea rubbed and rippled against its keel. He drew itfar enough ashore to be beyond the reach of the sea-wash.
But the longer he walked around and examined it, the more it seemed tohim as if folks built boats rather for the sake of letting the sea inthan for the sake of keeping the sea out. The prow was little betterthan a hog's snout for burrowing under the water, and the planking bythe keel-piece was as flat as the bottom of a chest. Everything, hethought, must be arranged very differently if boats were to be reallyseaworthy. The prow must be raised one or two planks higher at the veryleast, and made both sharp and supple, so as to bend before and cutthrough the waves at the same time, and then a fellow would have achance of steering a boat smartly.
He thought of this day and night. The only relaxation he had was a chatwith the Finn girl of an evening.
He couldn't help remarking that this Seimke had fallen in love with him.She strolled after him wherever he went, and her eyes always became somournful when he went down towards the sea; she understood well enoughthat all his thoughts were bent upon going away.
And the Finn sat and mumbled among the ashes till his fur jacketregularly steamed and smoked.
But Seimke coaxed and wheedled Jack with her brown eyes, and gave himhoneyed words as fast as her tongue could wag, till she drew him rightinto the smoke where the old Finn couldn't hear them.
The Gan-Finn turned his head right round.
"My eyes are stupid, and the smoke makes 'em run," said he; "what hasJack got hold of there?"
"Say it is the white ptarmigan you caught in the snare," whispered she.
And Jack felt that she was huddling up against him and trembling allover.
Then she told him so softly that he thought it was his own thoughtsspeaking to him, that the Finn was angry and muttering mischief, and_joejking_,[4] against the boat which Jack wanted to build. If Jack wereto complete it, said she, the Gan-Finn would no longer have any sale forhis fair-winds in all Nordland. And then she warned him to look tohimself and never get between the Finn and the Gan-flies.
Then Jack felt that his boat might be the undoing of him. But the worsethings looked, the more he tried to make the best of them.
In the grey dawn, before the Finn was up, he made his way towards thesea-shore.
But there was something very odd about the snow-hills. They were so manyand so long that there was really no end to them, and he kept ontrampling in deep and deeper snow and never got to the sea-shore at all.Never before had he seen the northern lights last so long into the day.They blazed and sparkled, and long tongues of fire licked and hissedafter him. He was unable to find either the beach or the boat, nor hadhe the least idea in the world where he really was.
At last he discovered that he had gone quite astray inland instead ofdown to the sea. But now, when he turned round, the sea-fog came closeup against him, so dense and grey that he could see neither hand norfoot before him.
By the evening he was well-nigh worn out with weariness, and was at hiswits' end what to do.
Night fell, and the snowdrifts increased.
As now he sat him down on a stone and fell a brooding and pondering howhe should
escape with his life, a pair of snow-shoes came gliding sosmoothly towards him out of the sea-fog and stood still just in front ofhis feet.
"As you have found me, you may as well find the way back also," said he.
So he put them on, and let the snow-shoes go their own way over hillsideand steep cliff. He let not his own eyes guide him or his own feet carryhim, and the swifter he went the denser the snowflakes and the drivingsea-spray came up against him, and the blast very nearly blew him offthe snow-shoes.
Up hill and down dale he went over all the places where he had faredduring the daytime, and it sometimes seemed as if he had nothing solidbeneath him at all, but was flying in the air.
Suddenly the snow-shoes stood stock still, and he was standing justoutside the entrance of the Gan-Finn's hut.
There stood Seimke. She was looking for him.
"I sent my snow-shoes after thee," said she, "for I marked that the Finnhad bewitched the land so that thou should'st not find the boat. Thy_life_ is safe, for he has given thee shelter in his house, but it werenot well for thee to see him this evening."
Then she smuggled him in, so that the Finn did not perceive it in thethick smoke, and she gave him meat and a place to rest upon.
But when he awoke in the night, he heard an odd sound, and there was abuzzing and a singing far away in the air:
"The Finn the boat can never bind, The Fly the boatman cannot find, But round in aimless whirls doth wind."
The Finn was sitting among the ashes and _joejking_, and muttering tillthe ground quite shook, while Seimke lay with her forehead to the floorand her hands clasped tightly round the back of her neck, prayingagainst him to the Finn God. Then Jack understood that the Gan-Finn wasstill seeking after him amidst the snowflakes and sea-fog, and that hislife was in danger from magic spells.
So he dressed himself before it was light, went out, and came trampingin again all covered with snow, and said he had been after bears intheir winter retreats. But never had he been in such a sea-fog before;he had groped about far and wide before he found his way back into thehut again, though he stood just outside it.
The Finn sat there with his skin-wrappings as full of yellow flies as abeehive. He had sent them out searching in every direction, but backthey had all come, and were humming and buzzing about him.
When he saw Jack in the doorway, and perceived that the flies hadpointed truly, he grew somewhat milder, and laughed till he regularlyshook within his skin-wrappings, and mumbled, "The bear we'll bind fastbeneath the scullery-sink, and his eyes I've turned all awry,[5] so thathe can't see his boat,[6] and I'll stick a sleeping-peg in front of himtill springtime."
But the same day the Finn stood in the doorway, and was busy makingmagic signs and strange strokes in the air.
Then he sent forth two hideous Gan-flies, which flitted off on theirerrands, and scorched black patches beneath them in the snow whereverthey went. They were to bring pain and sickness to a cottage down in theswamps, and spread abroad the Finn disease, which was to strike down ayoung bride at Bodoe with consumption.
But Jack thought of nothing else night and day but how he could get thebetter of the Gan-Finn.
The lass Seimke wheedled him and wept and begged him, as he valued hislife, not to try to get down to his boat again. At last, however, shesaw it was no use--he had made up his mind to be off.
Then she kissed his hands and wept bitterly. At least he must promise towait till the Gan-Finn had gone right away to Jokmok[7] in Sweden.
On the day of his departure, the Finn went all round his hut with atorch and took stock.
Far away as they were, there stood the mountain pastures, with thereindeer and the dogs, and the Finn's people all drew near. The Finntook the tale of the beasts, and bade his grandsons not let the reindeerstray too far while he was away, and could not guard them from wolvesand bears. Then he took a sleeping potion and began to dance and turnround and round till his breath quite failed him, and he sank moaning tothe ground. His furs were all that remained behind of him. His spirithad gone--gone all the way over to Jokmok.
There the magicians were all sitting together in the dark sea-fogbeneath the shelter of the high mountain, and whispering about allmanner of secret and hidden things, and blowing spirits into the novicesof the black art.
But the Gan-flies, humming and buzzing, went round and round the emptyfurs of the Gan-Finn like a yellow ring and kept watch.
In the night Jack was awakened by something pulling and tugging at himas if from far away. There was as it were a current of air, andsomething threatened and called to him from the midst of the snowflakesoutside--
"Until thou canst swim like the duck or the drake, The egg[8] thou'dst be hatching no progress shall make; The Finn shall ne'er let thee go southwards with sail, For he'll screw off the wind and imprison the gale."
At the end of it the Gan-Finn was standing there, and bending right overhim. The skin of his face hung down long and loose, and full ofwrinkles, like an old reindeer skin, and there was a dizzying smoke inhis eyes. Then Jack began to shiver and stiffen in all his limbs, and heknew that the Finn was bent upon bewitching him.
Then he set his face rigidly against it, so that the magic spells shouldnot get at him; and thus they struggled with one another till theGan-Finn grew green in the face, and was very near choking.
After that the sorcerers of Jokmok sent magic shots after Jack, andclouded his wits. He felt so odd; and whenever he was busy with hisboat, and had put something to rights in it, something else wouldimmediately go wrong, till at last he felt as if his head were full ofpins and needles.
Then deep sorrow fell upon him. Try as he would, he couldn't put hisboat together as he would have it; and it looked very much as if hewould never be able to cross the sea again.
But in the summer time Jack and Seimke sat together on the headland inthe warm evenings, and the gnats buzzed and the fishes spouted closeashore in the stillness, and the eider-duck swam about.
"If only some one would build me a boat as swift and nimble as a fish,and able to ride upon the billows like a sea-mew!" sighed and lamentedJack, "then I could be off."
"Would you like me to guide you to Thjoettoe?" said a voice up from thesea-shore.
There stood a fellow in a flat turned-down skin cap, whose face theycouldn't see.
And right outside the boulders there, just where they had seen theeider-duck, lay a long and narrow boat, with high prow and stern; andthe tar-boards were mirrored plainly in the clear water below; there wasnot so much as a single knot in the wood.
"I would be thankful for any such guidance," said Jack.
When Seimke heard this, she began to cry and take on terribly. She fellupon his neck, and wouldn't let go, and raved and shrieked. She promisedhim her snow-shoes, which would carry him through everything, and saidshe would steal for him the bone-stick from the Gan-Finn, so that hemight find all the old lucky dollars that ever were buried, and wouldteach him how to make salmon-catching knots in the fishing lines, andhow to entice the reindeer from afar. He should become as rich as theGan-Finn, if only he wouldn't forsake her.
But Jack had only eyes for the boat down there. Then she sprang up, andtore down her black locks, and bound them round his feet, so that he hadto wrench them off before he could get quit of her.
"If I stay here and play with you and the young reindeer, many a poorfellow will have to cling with broken nails to the keel of a boat,"[9]said he. "If you like to make it up, give me a kiss and a parting hug,or shall I go without them?"
Then she threw herself into his arms like a young wild cat, and lookedstraight into his eyes through her tears, and shivered and laughed, andwas quite beside herself.
But when she saw she could do nothing with him, she rushed away, andwaved her hands above her head in the direction of the Gamme.[10]
Then Jack understood that she was going to take counsel of the Gan-Finn,and that he had better take refuge in his boat before the way wa
s closedto him. And, in fact, the boat had come so close up to the boulders,that he had only to step down upon the thwarts. The rudder glided intohis hand, and aslant behind the mast sat some one at the prow, andhoisted and stretched the sail: but his face Jack could not see.
Away they went.
And such a boat for running before the wind Jack had never seen before.The sea stood up round about them like a deep snow-drift, although itwas almost calm. But they hadn't gone very far before a nasty pipingbegan in the air. The birds shrieked and made for land, and the sea roselike a black wall behind them.
It was the Gan-Finn who had opened his wind-sack, and sent a storm afterthem.
"One needs a full sail in the Finn-cauldron here," said something frombehind the mast.
The fellow who had the boat in hand took such little heed of the weatherthat he did not so much as take in a single clew.
Then the Gan-Finn sent double knots[11] after them.
They sped along in a wild dance right over the firth, and the seawhirled up in white columns of foam, reaching to the very clouds.
Unless the boat could fly as quick and quicker than a bird, it was lost.
Then a hideous laugh was heard to larboard--
"Anfinn Ganfinn gives mouth, And blows us right south; There's a crack[12] in the sack, With three clews we must tack."
And heeling right over, with three clews in the sail, and the heavyforemost fellow astride on the sheer-strake, with his huge sea-bootsdangling in the sea-foam, away they scudded through the blinding sprayright into the open sea, amidst the howling and roaring of the wind.
The billowy walls were so vast and heavy that Jack couldn't even see thelight of day across the yards, nor could he exactly make out whetherthey were going under or over the sea-trough.
The boat shook the sea aside as lightly and easily as if its prow werethe slippery fin of a fish, and its planking was as smooth and fine asthe shell of a tern's egg; but, look as he would, Jack couldn't seewhere these planks ended; it was just as if there was only half a boatand no more; and at last it seemed to him as if the whole of the frontpart came off in the sea-foam, and they were scudding along under sailin half a boat.
When night fell, they went through the sea-fire, which glowed like hotembers, and there was a prolonged and hideous howling up in the air towindward.
And cries of distress and howls of mortal agony answered the wind fromall the upturned boat keels they sped by, and many hideouslypale-looking folks clutched hold of their thwarts. The gleam of thesea-fire cast a blue glare on their faces, and they sat, and gaped, andglared, and yelled at the blast.
Suddenly he awoke, and something cried, "Now thou art at home atThjoettoe, Jack!"
And when he had come to himself a bit, he recognised where he was. Hewas lying over against the boulders near his boathouse at home. The tidehad come so far inland that a border of foam gleamed right up in thepotato-field, and he could scarcely keep his feet for the blast. He sathim down in the boathouse, and began scratching and marking out theshape of the Draugboat in the black darkness till sleep overtook him.
When it was light in the morning, his sister came down to him with ameat-basket. She didn't greet him as if he were a stranger, but behavedas if it were the usual thing for her to come thus every morning. Butwhen he began telling her all about his voyage to Finmark, and theGan-Finn, and the Draugboat he had come home in at night, he perceivedthat she only grinned and let him chatter. And all that day he talkedabout it to his sister and his brothers and his mother, until he arrivedat the conclusion that they thought him a little out of his wits. Whenhe mentioned the Draugboat they smiled amongst themselves, and evidentlywent out of their way to humour him. But they might believe what theyliked, if only he could carry out what he wanted to do, and be left tohimself in the out-of-the-way old boathouse.
"One should go with the stream," thought Jack; and if they thought himcrazy and out of his wits, he ought to behave so that they might bewareof interfering with him, and disturbing him in his work.
So he took a bed of skins with him down to the boathouse, and sleptthere at night; but in the daytime he perched himself on a pole on theroof, and bellowed out that now he was sailing. Sometimes he rodeastraddle on the roof ridge, and dug his sheath-knife deep into therafters, so that people might think he fancied himself at sea, holdingfast on to the keel of a boat.
Whenever folks passed by, he stood in the doorway, and turned up thewhites of his eyes so hideously, that every one who saw him was quitescared. As for the people at home, it was as much as they dared to stickhis meat-basket into the boathouse for him. So they sent it to him byhis youngest sister, merry little Malfri, who would sit and talk withhim, and thought it such fun when he made toys and playthings for her,and talked about the boat which should go like a bird, and sail as noother boat had ever sailed.
If any one chanced to come upon him unexpectedly, and tried to peep andsee what he was about in the boathouse there, he would creep up into thetimber-loft and bang and pitch the boards and planks about, so that theydidn't know exactly where to find him, and were glad enough to be off.But one and all made haste to climb over the hill again when they heardhim fling himself down at full length and send peal after peal oflaughter after them.
So that was how Jack got folks to leave him at peace.
He worked best at night when the storm tore and tugged at the stones andbirchbark of the turf roof, and the sea-wrack came right up to theboathouse door.
When it piped and whined through the fissured walls, and the finesnowflakes flitted through the cracks, the model of the Draugboat stoodplainest before him. The winter days were short, and the wick of thetrain-oil lamp, which hung over him as he worked, cast deep shadows, sothat the darkness came soon and lasted a long way into the morning, whenhe sought sleep in his bed of skins with a heap of shavings for hispillow.
He spared no pains or trouble. If there was a board which would not runinto the right groove with the others, though never so little, he wouldtake out a whole row of them and plane them all round again and again.
Now, one night, just before Christmas, he had finished all but theuppermost planking and the gabs. He was working so hard to finish upthat he took no count of time.
The plane was sending the shavings flying their briskest when he came toa dead stop at something black which was moving along the plank.
It was a large and hideous fly which was crawling about and feeling andpoking all the planks in the boat. When it reached the lowest keel-boardit whirred with its wings and buzzed. Then it rose and swept above it inthe air till, all at once, it swerved away into the darkness.
Jack's heart sank within him. Such doubt and anguish came upon him. Heknew well enough that no good errand had brought the Gan-fly buzzingover the boat like that.
So he took the train-oil lamp and a wooden club, and began to test theprow and light up the boarding, and thump it well, and go over theplanks one by one. And in this way he went over every bit of the boatfrom stem to stern, both above and below. There was not a nail or arivet that he really believed in now.
But now neither the shape nor the proportions of the boat pleased himany more. The prow was too big, and the whole cut of the boat all theway down the gunwale had something of a twist and a bend and a swerveabout it, so that it looked like the halves of two different boats puttogether, and the half in front didn't fit in with the half behind. Ashe was about to look into the matter still further (and he felt the coldsweat bursting out of the roots of his hair), the train-oil lamp wentout and left him in blank darkness.
Then he could contain himself no longer. He lifted his club and burstopen the boathouse door, and, snatching up a big cow-bell, he began toswing it about him and ring and ring with it through the black night.
"Art chiming for me, Jack?" something asked. There was a sound behindhim like the surf sucking at the shore, and a cold blast blew into theboathouse.
There on the keel-stick sat some one in a sloppy gr
ey sea-jacket, andwith a print cap drawn down over its ears, so that its skull looked likea low tassel.
Jack gave a great start. This was the very being he had been thinking ofin his wild rage. Then he took the large baling can and flung it at theDraug.
But right through the Draug it went, and rattled against the wallbehind, and back again it came whizzing about Jack's ears, and if it hadstruck 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 faceagain 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 wholeboat-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 notfeast on it enough.
The old 'un blinked with satisfaction. His eyes became more and moreglowing.
"If I could guide you back to Helgeland," said he, "I could put you inthe way of gaining your bread too. But you must pay me a little tax forit. In every seventh boat you build 'tis _I_ who must put in thekeel-board."
Jack felt as if he were choking. He felt that the boat was dragging himinto the very jaws of an abomination.
"Or do you fancy you'll worm the trick out of me for nothing?" said thegaping grinning Draug.
Then there was a whirring sound, as if something heavy was hoveringabout 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 knockthree times to-night on the keel-piece with the club, you shall havesuch help in building boats that the like of them will not be found inall Nordland."
Twice did Jack raise his club that night, and twice he laid it asideagain.
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 theropes and fishing gear just put in. He kicked and shook the fine slimboat with his foot just to see how light and high she could rise on thewaves 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 Sjoeholm.
Thick as birds together stood a countless number of people on theheadland in the autumn, watching Jack and his brothers putting out inthe new Ottring.
It glided through the strong current so that the foam was like a fossall round it.
Now it was gone, and now it ducked up again like a sea-mew, and pastskerries 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 broadheavy _Femboering_ for winter fishing which made the folks open theireyes.
And every boat that Jack turned out was lighter to row and swifter tosail than the one before it.
But the largest and finest of all was the last that stood on the stockson the shore.
This was the _seventh_.
Jack walked to and fro, and thought about it a good deal; but when hecame down to see it in the morning, it seemed to him, oddly enough, tohave grown in the night and, what is more, was such a wondrous beautythat 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 anunjust man who laid heavy taxes upon the people, taking double weightand tale both of fish and of eider-down, nor was he less grasping withthe tithes and grain dues. Wherever his fellows came they fleeced andflayed. No sooner, then, did the rumour of the new boats reach him thanhe sent his people out to see what truth was in it, for he himself usedto go fishing in the fishing grounds with large crews. When thus hisfellows came back and told him what they had seen, the Bailiff was sotaken with it that he drove straightway over to Sjoeholm, and one fineday down he came swooping on Jack like a hawk. "Neither tithe nor taxhast thou paid for thy livelihood, so now thou shalt be fined as manyhalf-marks of silver as thou hast made boats," said he.
Ever louder and fiercer grew his rage. Jack should be put in chains andirons and be transported northwards to the fortress of Skraar, and bekept so close that he should never see sun or moon more.
But when the Bailiff had rowed round the _Femboering_, and feasted hiseyes upon it, and seen how smart and shapely it was, he agreed at lastto let Mercy go before Justice, and was content to take the _Femboering_in lieu of a fine.
Then Jack took off his cap and said that if there was one man more thananother to whom he would like to give the boat, it was his honour theBailiff.
So off the magistrate sailed with it.
Jack's mother and sister and brothers cried bitterly at the loss of thebeautiful _Femboering_; but Jack stood on the roof of the boat-house andlaughed fit to split.
And towards autumn the news spread that the Bailiff with his eight menhad gone down with the _Femboering_ in the West-fjord.
But in those days there was quite a changing about of boats all overNordland, and Jack was unable to build a tenth part of the boatsrequired of him. Folks from near and far hung about the walls of hisboat-house, and it was quite a favour on his part to take orders, andagree to carry them out. A whole score of boats soon stood beneath thepent-house on the strand.
He no longer troubled his head about every _seventh_ boat, or cared toknow 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 avery good thing indeed out of it. Besides, surely folks could pick andchoose their own boats, and take which they liked best.
But Jack got so great and mighty that it was not advisable for any oneto thwart him, or interfere where he ruled and reigned.
Whole rows of silver dollars stood in the barrels in the loft, and hisboat-building establishment stretched over all the islands of Sjoeholm.
One Sunday his brothers and merry little Malfri had gone to church inthe _Femboering_. When evening came, and they hadn't come home, theboatman came in and said that some one had better sail out and lookafter them, as a gale was blowing up.
Jack was sitting with a plumb-line in his hand, taking the measurementsof a new boat, which was to be bigger and statelier than any of theothers, 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 andshook the walls, and there were cries from the sea far away. And justthen 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 tinyfingers at the door.
"Can't you leave me at peace o' nights?" he bawled, "or must I build meanother bedroom?"
But the knocking and the fumbling for the latch outside continued, andthere was a sweeping sound at the door, as of some one who could notopen it. And there was a stretching of hands towards the latch everhigher and higher.
But Jack only lay there and laughed. "The _Femboerings_ that are built atSjoeholm 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 inthe doorway stood pretty Malfri and her mother and brothers. Thesea-fire shone about them, and they were dripping with water.
Their faces were pale and blue, and pinched about the corners of themouth, as if they had just gone through their death agony. Malfri hadone 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 andlamented, 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 tosearch 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 _Femboering_ 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, thingswere very different at Sjoeholm.
In the daytime, so long as the hammering and the banging and the planingand the clinching rang about his ears, things went along swimmingly, andthe frames of boat after boat rose thick as sea fowl on an_AEggevaer_.[14]
But no sooner was it quiet of an evening than he had company. His motherbustled and banged about the house, and opened and shut drawers andcupboards, and the stairs creaked with the heavy tread of his brothersgoing up to their bedrooms.
At night no sleep visited his eyes, and sure enough pretty Malfri cameto his door and sighed and groaned.
Then he would lie awake there and think, and reckon up how many boatswith false keel-boards he might have sent to sea. And the longer hereckoned the more draug-boats he made of it.
Then he would plump out of bed and creep through the dark night down tothe boathouse. There he held a light beneath the boats, and banged andtested all the keel-boards with a club to see if he couldn't hit uponthe _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 nextmorning, that he had no peace till he went down and tested itskeel-board with his club.
But while he sat in the boat, and was bending over the thwart with alight, there was a gulping sound out at sea, and then came such a vilestench of rottenness. The same instant he heard a wading sound, as ofmany people coming ashore, and then up over the headland he saw a boat'screw coming along.
They were all crooked-looking creatures, and they all leaned rightforward and stretched out their arms before them. Whatever came in theirway, both stone and stour,[16] they went right through it, and there wasneither sound nor shriek.
Behind them came another boat's crew, big and little, grown men andlittle children, rattling and creaking.
And crew after crew came ashore and took the path leading to theheadland.
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, oneafter the other: the place quite swarmed with them.
Then Jack perceived that here were all they whom he had tried to countand 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 builthis boats!"
But now like an icy whizzing blast they all came down upon him, staringat him with their hollow eyes.
They gnashed their teeth, and each one of them sighed and groaned forhis lost life.
Then Jack, in his horror, put out from Sjoeholm.
But the sail slackened, and he glided into dead water.[17] There, in themidst of the still water, was a floating mass of rotten swollen planks.All of them had once been shaped and fashioned together, but were nowburst and sprung, and slime and green mould and filth and nastiness hungabout them.
Dead hands grabbed at the corners of them with their white knuckles andcouldn't grip fast. They stretched themselves across the water and sankagain.
Then Jack let out all his clews and sailed and sailed and tackedaccording as the wind blew.
He glared back at the rubbish behind him to see if those _things_ wereafter him. Down in the sea all the dead hands were writhing, and triedto strike him with gaffs astern.
Then there came a gust of wind whining and howling, and the boat drovealong betwixt white seething rollers.
The weather darkened, thick snowflakes filled the air, and the rubbisharound him grew greener.
In the daytime he took the cormorants far away in the grey mist for hislandmarks, and at night they screeched about his ears.
And the birds flitted and flitted continually, but Jack sat still andlooked out upon the hideous cormorants.
At last the sea-fog lifted a little, and the air began to be alive withbright, black, buzzing flies. The sun burned, and far away inland thesnowy plains blazed in its light.
He recognised very well the headland and shore where he was now able tolay to. The smoke came from the Gamme up on the snow-hill there. In thedoorway sat the Gan-Finn. He was lifting his pointed cap up and down, upand 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 shewas spreading out in the sunny weather. But she peeped beneath her armas 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 lookeddown at him. Her dog barked, but she quieted it so that the Gan-Finnshould 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 laughedand shook and nestled close up to him, and cried and pleaded, and didn'tknow what to do with herself, and ducked down upon his bosom, and threwherself on his neck, and kissed and fondled him, and wouldn't let himgo.
But the Gan-Finn had noticed that there was something amiss, and sat allthe time in his furs, and mumbled and muttered to the Gan-flies, so thatJack 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, hecomplained. He was now so poor that he would very soon have to go aboutand beg his bread. And of all his reindeer he had only a single doeleft, 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 Gammedoor in the smoke, so that the Gan-Finn only saw the grey skin, andfancied 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 andshrieked. The flies came as thick as snow-flakes; the Finn's furrywrappings were alive with them.
Jack bid and bid till it reached a whole bushel load of silver, and theFinn was ready to jump out of his skins.
Then he stuck his head under his furs again, and mumbled and _joejked_till the amount rose to seven bushels of silver.
Then the Gan-Finn laughed till he nearly split. He thought the reindeerwould cost the purchaser a pretty penny.
But Jack lifted Seimke up, and sprang down with her to his boat, andheld 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 atthe oars.
The northern light shot out like a comb, all greeny-red and fiery, andlicked and played upon her face. She talked to it, and fought it withher hands, and her eyes sparkled. She used both tongue and mouth andrapid gestures as she exchanged words with it.
Then it grew dark, and she lay on his bosom, so that he could feel herwarm breath. Her black hair lay right over him, and she was as soft andwarm to the touch as a ptarmigan when it is frightened and its bloodthrobs.
Jack put the reindeer-skin over Seimke, and the boat rocked them to andfro on the heavy
sea as if it were a cradle.
They sailed on and on till night-fall; they sailed on and on till theysaw neither headland nor island nor sea-bird in the outer skerries more.
* * * * *
[1] This untranslatable word is a derivative of the Icelandic _Gandr_,and means magic of the black or malefic sort.
[2] The northernmost province of Norway, right within the Arctic circle.
[3] The huts peculiar to the Norwegian Finns.
[4] To sing songs (here magic songs), as the Finns do. Possibly derivedfrom the Finnish verb _joikun_, which means monotonous chanting.
[5] The Norse _Kverva Syni_ is to delude the sight by magic spells.
[6] I.e., the boat he (Jack) wanted to build.
[7] A mountain between Sweden and Norway.
[8] I.e., the boat he would be building.
[9] Meaning that he would never have a chance of building the new sortof boat that his mind was bent on.
[10] The Finn's hut.
[11] _Tvinde Knuder_. When the Finn tied _one_ magic knot, he raised agale, so two knots would give a tempest.
[12] I.e., where the Gan-Finn let out the wind.
[13] An eight-oared boat.
[14] A place where sea-birds' eggs abound.
[15] A contraction of _Sexaering_, i.e., a boat with six oars.
[16] Eng. dialect word (the Norse is _staur_) meaning impediments of anykind.
[17] _Daudvatn_ (Dan. _Doedvand_), water in which there is no motion.
* * * * *
TUG OF WAR.
TUG OF WAR.]