The Pilot and his Wife. Jonas Lie
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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. Salvé, 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 propriâ personâ, violently gesticulating with his fists, and steadily advancing all the time, while Salvé 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 Salvé 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.
Salvé 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, Salvé 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 Salvé'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 Salvé 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 Salvé 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.