The Pilot and his Wife by Jonas Lie

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THE PILOT AND HIS WIFE

_TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN OF_

JONAS LIE

BY

G.L. TOTTENHAM

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLXXVII

THE PILOT AND HIS WIFE.

CHAPTER I.

On the stern, pine-clad southern coast of Norway, off the
picturesquely-situated town of Arendal, stand planted far out into the
sea the white walls of the Great and Little Torungen Lighthouses, each
on its bare rock-island of corresponding name, the lesser of which
seems, as you sail past, to have only just room for the lighthouse and
the attendant's residence by the side. It is a wild and lonely
situation,--the spray, in stormy weather, driving in sheets against the
walls, and eagles and sea-birds not unfrequently dashing themselves to
death against the thick glass panes at night; while in winter all
communication with the land is very often cut off, either by drift or
patchy ice, which is impassable either on foot or by boat.

These, however, and others of the now numerous lights along that
dangerous coast, are of comparatively recent erection. Many persons now
living can remember the time when for long reaches the only lighting was
the gleam of the white breakers themselves. And the captain who had
passed the Oxoe light off Christiansand might think himself lucky if he
sighted the distant Jomfruland up by Krageroe.

About a score of years before the lighthouse was placed on Little
Torungen there was, however, already a house there, if it could be
dignified by that name, with its back and one side almost up to the eave
of the roof stuck into a heap of stones, so that it had the appearance
of bending forward to let the storm sweep over it. The low entrance-door
opened to the land, and two small windows looked out upon the sea, and
upon the boat, which was usually drawn up in a cleft above the sea-weed
outside.

When you entered, or, more properly speaking, descended into it, there
was more room than might have been expected; and it contained sundry
articles of furniture, such as a handsome press and sideboard, which no
one would have dreamt of finding under such a roof. In one corner there
stood an old spinning-wheel covered with dust, and with a smoke-blackened
tuft of wool still hanging from its reel; from which, and from other
small indications, it might be surmised that there had once been a woman
in the house, and that tuft of wool had probably been her last spin.

There sat now on the bench by the hearth a lonely old man, of a
flint-hard and somewhat gloomy countenance, with a mass of white hair
falling over his ears and neck, who was generally occupied with some
cobbling work, and who from time to time, as he drew out the thread,
would make some remark aloud, as if he thought he still had the partner
of his life for audience. The look askance over his brass spectacles
with which he greeted any casual stranger who might come into the house
had very little welcome in it, and an expression about his sunken mouth
and sharp chin said plainly enough that the other might state his
business at once and be gone. He sought no company; and the only time he
had ever been seen at church was when he came rowing over to Tromoe with
his wife's body in her coffin. When the pastor sprinkled earth upon it,
it was observed that the tears streamed down his cheeks, and it was long
after dark before he quitted the churchyard to return. He had become a
proverb for obstinacy for miles beyond his own residence; and people who
dealt with him for fish in the harbour, if they once began to bargain,
were as likely as not to see him without a word just quietly row away.

All that was known further about "Old Jacob," as he was called, was that
he had once been a pilot, and that he had had a son who had taken to
drinking, through whose fault it had been eventually that the father had
lost his certificate; and it was thought that on the occasion in
question the father had taken the son's blame upon himself. Since then
he had shunned society, and had retired with his wife to his present
habitation, whither, after their son was drowned, they had brought their
little orphan granddaughter, who now was his sole companion. His only
ostensible means of living were by shoemaking, and by fishing, the
produce of which he generally disposed of to passing ships, and, during
the earlier period of his sojourn there, by shooting occasionally. But
it was understood that he received a small regular contribution from
several of the pilots, certificated or otherwise, of the district, for
keeping a fire alight on his hearth during the dark autumn nights, and
so giving them, by the light from his two windows, something to steer by
when they arrived off the coast after nightfall. Whether the light was
shown for their benefit particularly, or whether it was not rather
intended for the guidance of smuggling vessels standing in under cover
of the night to land their cargoes, it was not their business to
inquire. Its friendly assistance was, at all events, not unacknowledged
by these latter, and very acceptable presents, in the shape of kegs of
spirits, bags of coffee, tobacco, meal, and so forth, would, from time
to time, come rolling into the old man's room, so that upon the whole,
he was well-to-do enough out there upon his rock.

Of late years he had fallen into feeble health, and found it not so easy
to row the long distance over to land. Even in his best days he had,
owing to an old injury to one of his legs, found some difficulty in
getting down to the boat; and now, therefore, he sat during the greater
part of the day over the hearth, in his woolen jacket and leather
breeches, with his indoor work. Now and then, when his granddaughter--a
child with a thick crop of hair falling about her ears, and a rough dog
constantly at her heels--would burst into the house with all the
freshness of the outside air blowing round her, as it were, and deliver
herself of her intelligence, he might be drawn, perhaps, to the window
to look out over the sea, and afterwards, like a growling bear disturbed
from its lair, even follow her with some difficulty out of the door with
the spyglass. There he would station himself, so as to use her shoulder
as a rest for his shaking hand, and with his never-ceasing directions
and growling going on behind her neck, she would do her best to fix the
glass on the desired object. His crossness would then disappear, little
by little, in their joint speculation as to what ship it could be, or in
whatever remarks it might suggest; and after giving his decision, the
old man would generally hobble in again.

He was really very proud of his granddaughter's cleverness. She could
distinguish with her naked eye as clearly as he could through the glass.
She never made a mistake about the craft, large or small, that belonged
to that part of the coast, and could, besides, say to a nicety, what
sort of master each had. Her superiority of sight she asserted, too,
with a tyranny to which he made no resistance, although it might have
tried a temper many degrees more patient than his was.

One day, however, she was at a loss. They made out a crescent on the
flag, and this caused even the old man a moment's astonishment. But he
declared then, for her information, shortly and decisively, that it was
a "barbarian."

This satisfied her for a moment. But then she asked--

"What is a barbarian, grandfather?"

"It is a Turk."

"Yes, but a Turk?"

"Oh! it's--it's--a Mohammedan--"

"A what!--a Moham--"

"A Mohammedan--a robber on board ship."

"On board ship!"

He was not going to give up his ascendancy in the matter, hard as she
pushed him; so he bethought him of a pack of old tales there-anent, and
went on to explain drily--

"They go to the Baltic--to Russia--to salt human flesh."

"Human flesh!"

"Yes, and sometimes, too, they seize vessels in the open sea and do
their salting there."

She fixed a pair of large, terrified eyes on him, which made the old man
continue--

"And it is especially for little girls they look. That meat is the
finest, and goes by tons down to the Grand Turk."

Having played this last trump, he was going in again, but was stopped by
her eager question--

"Do they use a glass there on board?" And when he said they did, she
slipped quickly by him through the door, and kept cautiously within as
long as the vessel was to be seen through the window-pane on the
horizon.

The moods of the two were for once reversed. The old man looked very sly
over his work, whilst she was quiet and cowed. Once only she broke out
angrily--

"But why doesn't the king get rid of them? If I was captain of a
man-of-war, I'd--"

"Yes, Elizabeth, if you were captain of a man-of-war!--what then?"

The child's conceptions apparently reached no further than such matters
as these as yet. She had seen few human beings as she grew up, and in
recent years, after her grandmother's death, she and her grandfather had
been the only regular inhabitants of the island. Every now and then
there might perhaps come a boat on one errand or another, and a couple
of times she had paid a visit to her maternal aunt on land, at Arendal.
Her grandfather had taught her to read and write, and with what she
found in the Bible and psalm-book, and in 'Exploits of Danish and
Norwegian Naval Heroes,' a book in their possession, she had in a manner
lived pretty much upon the anecdotes which in leisure moments she could
extract from that grandfather, so chary of his speech, about his sailor
life in his youth.

They had besides, in the little inner room, a small print, without a
frame, of the action near the Heather Islands, in which he had taken
part. It represented the frigate Naiad, with the brigs Samso, Kiel, and
Lolland, in furious conflict with the English ship of the line Dictator,
which lay across the narrow harbour with the brig Calypso, and was
pounding the Naiad to pieces. The names of the ships were printed
underneath.

On the print there was little to be seen but mast-heads and
cannon-mouths, and a confusion of smoke, but in this had the child lived
whole years of her life; and many a time in fancy had she stood there
and fought the Englishman. Men-of-war and their officers had become the
highest conception of her fancy, and the dearest wish of her heart was
that a man-of-war might some day pass so near to Torungen that she would
be able to see distinctly everything on board.

CHAPTER II.

After old Jacob had fallen into ill health, lighterman Kristiansen used
to come out oftener to Torungen with provisions and other necessaries;
and his visits now became periodical.

He was accompanied one autumn by his son Salve, a black-haired,
dark-eyed, handsome lad, with a sharp, clever face, who had worked in
the fishing-boats along the coast from his childhood almost, and had, in
fact, been brought up amongst its sunken rocks and reefs and breakers.
He was something small in stature, perhaps; but what he wanted in
robustness he made up in readiness and activity--qualities which stood
him in good stead in the many quarrels into which his too ready tongue
was wont to bring him. He was eighteen years old at this time; had been
already engaged as an able seaman; and was in great request at the
Sandvigen and Vraangen dances,--a fact of which he was perfectly well
aware. Old Jacob's granddaughter, being a little girl of only fourteen
years of age, was of course altogether beneath his notice, and he didn't
condescend to speak to her. He merely delivered himself of the witticism
that she was like a heron; and with her thick, checked woollen
handkerchief tied with the ends behind her waist, the resemblance was
not so very far-fetched. At any rate, he declared on the way home that
such a specimen of womankind he, for his part, had never come across
before, and that he would give anything to see her dancing in the public
room with her thin arms and legs--it would be like a grasshopper.

The next time he came, she took out her grandfather's watch in its
silver case and showed it to him, and some conversation passed between
them. His first impression of her was that she was stupid. She asked
questions about every sort of thing, and seemed to think that he must
know everything. And finally, she wanted to know what it was like on
shore among the great folk of Arendal, and particularly how the ladies
behaved. It afforded him much amusement at the time to see with what
simple credulity she took in everything he chose to invent on the
subject; but after he had left he was not sure that he wasn't sorry for
what he had done, and at the same time he made the discovery that the
girl, in her way, was anything but silly.

His remorse was to be brought home to him presently, for old Jacob had
had duly recounted to him over again all his cock-and-bull stories, and
was in high dudgeon. When he came again the old man was very snappish to
him, and he found it so unpleasant in the house that he made all the
haste he could to get his business done. While he was thus occupied, the
little girl told him all about the Naiad, and the part her grandfather
had taken in the action. Salve, who was ruffled, and thought the old man
had been an ill-mannered old dog, followed the relation from time to
time with a sneering remark, which in her eagerness she didn't notice,
or didn't understand. But when he had finished what he had to do, he
gave vent to his feelings in a way she did understand,--he laughed
incredulously.

"Old Jacob there on board the Naiad! This is the first time anybody ever
heard of it."

The individual in question unfortunately came out at the moment to see
the boat off, and turning, to him, red with anger, she cried--

"Grandfather! he doesn't believe you were on board the Naiad that time!"

The old man answered at first as if he didn't deign to enter upon any
controversy on the subject--

"Oh, I suppose it's only little girls' prattle again."

But whether it was wounded vanity, or a sudden access of irritation
against the lad, or that his eye fell upon his granddaughter standing
there, so evidently incensed and resentful, he flared up the next
moment, and thrusting his huge fist under the youngster's nose, burst
out--

"If you want to know all about it, you young swabber, I may tell you I
stood on the Naiad's gun-deck with better folk than _you_ are ever
likely to come across"--he stamped his foot here as if he had the deck
under him--"when, with one broadside from the Dictator, the three masts
and bowsprit were shot away, and the main deck came crashing down upon
the lower;"--the last sentence was taken from 'Exploits of Danish and
Norwegian Naval Heroes,' and the old man was as proud of these lines as
he would have been of a medal.

"When the crash came," he pursued, always in the same posture, and in
the manner of the sacred text, "he who stands here and tells the tale
had but just time to save himself by leaping into the sea through a
gun-port."

But he threw off then the trammels of the text, and continued _in
propria persona_, violently gesticulating with his fists, and steadily
advancing all the time, while Salve prudently retreated before his
advance down to the boat.

"We don't deal in lies and fabricate stories out here like you, you
young whipper-snapper of a ship's cub; and if it wasn't for your father,
who has sense enough to rope's-end you himself, I'd lay a stick across
your back till you hadn't a howl left in you."

With this finale of the longest speech to which he had given vent for
thirty years perhaps, he turned with a short nod to the father, and went
into the house again.

Elizabeth was miserable that Salve should go away like this, without so
much as deigning to say good-bye to her. And her grandfather was cross
enough himself; for he was afraid that he had done something foolish,
and broken with the lighterman.

CHAPTER III.

Salve came out to the rock again the next autumn, after a voyage to
Liverpool and Havre.

At first he was rather shy, although his father and old Jacob Torungen
had in the interval, in spite of that little affair of the previous
year, been on the best of terms. The white bear, however, as he called
him, seemed to have altogether forgotten what had passed; and with the
girl he was very easily reconciled--she had learnt now not to tell
everything to her grandfather.

Whilst the lighterman and old Jacob enjoyed a heart-warming glass
together in the house, Salve carried the things up to the cellar,
Elizabeth following him up and down every time, and the conversation
meanwhile going round all the points of the compass, so to speak. After
she had asked him about Havre de Grace, where he had been, and about
America, where he had not been,--if his captain's wife was as fine as a
man-of-war captain's; and then if he wouldn't like one day to marry a
fine lady,--she wanted at last to know, from the laughing sailor lad, if
the officers' wives were ever allowed to be with them in war.

Her face had of late acquired something wonderfully attractive in its
expression--such a seriousness would come over it sometimes, although
she continued as childlike as ever; and such eyes as hers were, at all
events in Salve's experience, not common. At any rate, after this, he
invariably accompanied his father upon these expeditions.

The last time he was out there he told her about the dances on shore at
Sandvigen, and took care to give her to understand that the girls made
much of him there--but he was tired now of dancing with them.

She was very curious on this subject, and extracted from him that he had
had two tremendous fights that winter. She looked at him in terror, and
asked rather hesitatingly--

"But had they done anything to you?"

"Oh, no! all dancing entertainments have a little extra dance like that
to wind up with. They merely wanted to dance with the girl I had asked
first."

"Is it so dangerous, then? What sort of a girl was she?--I mean, what
was her name?"

"Oh, one was called Marie, and the other was Anne--Herluf Andersen's
daughter. They were pretty girls, I can tell you. Anne had a white
brooch and earrings, and danced more smoothly than ever you saw a cutter
sail. Mate George said the same."

The upshot of this conversation was, that she found out that the girls
in Arendal, and in the ports generally where he had touched, were all
well dressed; and the next time he returned from Holland, he promised he
would bring with him a pair of morocco-leather shoes with silver buckles
for her.

With this promise they parted, after she had allowed him--and that there
might be no mistake, twice over--to take the accurate measure of her
foot; and there were roses of joy in her cheeks, as she called after him
to be sure and not forget them.

The year after Salve came with the shoes. There were silver buckles in
them, and they were very smart; but if they were, they had cost him more
than half a month's pay.

Elizabeth was more carefully dressed now, and might almost be called
grown up. She hesitated about accepting the shoes, and didn't ask
questions about everything as she used to do. Nor was she so willing to
stand and talk with him alone by the boat--she liked to have him up
within hearing of the others.

"Don't you see how high the sea is running?" he said, and tried to
persuade her that the boat would be dashed to pieces on the rocks. But
she saw that it wasn't true, and went up with a little toss of her head
alone. He followed her.

She must have learned all this in Arendal, where in the course of the
autumn she had been confirmed, and where she had lived with her aunt.
But she had grown marvellously handsome in that time--so much so,
indeed, that Salve was almost taken aback when he saw her; and when they
said good-bye, it was no longer in the old laughing tones, but with some
slight embarrassment on his side--he didn't seem to know exactly how
matters lay between them.

After that she filled his head so completely that he had not a thought
for anything else.

CHAPTER IV.

The old Juno, to which Salve belonged, was lying at that time at
Sandvigen, and was only waiting for a north-east wind to come out. She
was a square-rigged vessel, with a crew of nineteen hands all told,
which had plied for many years in American waters, and off and on in the
North Sea, and was reckoned at the time one of Arendal's largest craft.
Her arrival or departure was quite an event for the town and
neighbourhood; and to have a berth in her was considered among the
sailors of the district a very high honour indeed--the more so that her
master and principal owner, Captain Beck, was a particularly good chief
to serve under, and a lucky one to boot.

When at last, between ten and eleven o'clock one morning, she weighed
anchor, and before a light north-westerly breeze, with her small sails
set, glided out to sea, the quays were crowded with spectators, the
majority of the crew belonging to the place, and it being generally
known that they were bound on a longer voyage than usual. On board she
had with her still the captain's son, Carl Beck, a smart young naval
officer, with his sister and a small party of their friends, who meant
to land out on the Torungens in the sailing-boat they had in tow. They
wished to remain with her as long as possible, and for the purpose had
made up a party to the islands, where the gentlemen proposed to shoot
some of the sea-fowl, which are to be found out there on the rocks in
swarms at the spring season of the year on their passage north along the
coast.

It was about four o'clock when they passed Little Torungen; and as there
were swells then bursting in white jets upon the reefs, and a line of
dark fire-fringed clouds about the sunset, which looked like heavy
weather coming up, the pleasure party determined to leave the vessel
here, instead of going on, as they had intended, to the larger of the
two islands.

As they went over the side Salve Kristiansen was standing out on the
forecastle gazing eagerly over to where the barren mass of rock lay like
a dipping hull in the distance, bathed in the evening sun, and with a
fringe of foam round its base; and he could see old Jacob's
granddaughter standing by the wall of the house with the glass. He had
chosen on purpose a conspicuous place, and stood with his back against
the stay, so heavy of heart and sad at having to go away, that it would
have taken very little to make him burst into tears. It seemed to have
dawned upon him all of a sudden that he was in love.

To try whether it was upon him that she was directing the glass, or at
the unusual discharging of freight into the sail-boat, he waved his hat,
and his whole face lighted up with joy as he saw her return his signal.
He took off his hat again, and received another wave of the glass in
reply.

He stood there then straining his eyes abstractedly in the direction of
the rock until it disappeared behind them in the gathering twilight. He
had been inspirited for the whole voyage; and the first thing he should
do when they arrived at Boston would be to buy a dress and a ring; and
when he came home he determined that his first business should be to
make an expedition to the island, and put a certain question to a
certain person whom he knew out there.

He was roused from his abstraction by the boatswain bawling out his
name, and asking if he was going to sleep there, and whether he wanted
something to wake him up. The order had been given to make all snug for
the night, as the breeze was freshening.

The watches had been set at noon, and the starboard and larboard watch
told off, as customary on the first day a vessel goes to sea. Salve had
the middle watch; and by that time the sea was running high, and they
were plunging through the darkness under a double-reefed mainsail, the
moon every now and then clearing an open space in the storm--clouds that
were driving like smoke before it, so that he could fitfully distinguish
objects over the deck, even to the look-out man's looming figure out
upon the forecastle.

Upon the capstan bar sat a sailor in oilskin clothes, who had probably
been on shore the previous night and not closed his eyes, and who was
making great efforts to keep awake. His head, however, would still keep
nodding; and from time to time he stood up and tried to keep himself
warm by exercising his arms. He sang, or more often took up afresh upon
each recovery of consciousness a verse of a half-Swedish ballad about a
"girl so true," that he wished he then had by his side, for the time
without her seemed so long. Now and then the spray of a sea would bring
him more sharply to himself, but it did not last long; and so the ditty,
which was melancholy to the last degree, would begin afresh.

Salve was far too restless to have any desire to sleep, and as he paced
to and fro by the fore-hatch, lost in his dreams, and listened to the
song, it seemed to him a most touching one.

The nodding sailor little thought that he was performing before a
deeply-moved audience.

CHAPTER V.

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