Salve and Federigo were sitting over their gin in a side-room which opened into the dancing-room, and was filled with men talking and drinking, or with couples who came in to rest for a moment. Neither took part in the dancing. Salve was gloomy and out of tune for pleasure, although, for Federigo's sake, he made his humour as little apparent as possible. Federigo looked very disconsolate, and during the early part of the evening sat and sipped his glass abstractedly. But as the time wore on he kept filling Salve's glass unconsciously as it were, and getting apparently more and more drunk himself, until he several times spilt the contents of his own glass on the floor. He became very talkative, recalling incident after incident of their life together. "I shall never forget you," he cried, with open-hearted impulsiveness, "never!" And as he repeated the word, there was a gleam of suppressed feeling of some kind or other in his eye.

Salve's attention was preoccupied at the moment. He had heard two voices speaking Norwegian by the window at his back, and it made his heart knock against his ribs—it was so long since he had heard his mother-tongue. They were two men belonging to timber ships, and one of them, very red and excited, was singing the praises of one of the girls in the other room.

"Ah!" broke in the other, a Tonsberger, "you should have seen handsome Elizabeth in 'The Star' at Amsterdam. But she wasn't for such as you to dance with, my lad."

Salve's interest was awakened at once. He listened with strained attention for what might come next.

"And why not?" asked the other, a little on his dignity.

"Well, in the first place, they don't dance there; and in the next, you would want to be a skipper at least to pay court in that quarter, mind you. I saw her in the spring of last year, when we were lying there with the Galatea; she was talking to the captain, for she's Norwegian—and a proud one she is, too; with hair like a crown of gold on her head, and so straight rigged that it makes a man nervous to come alongside her."

Salve sat rapt in thought, and more absent than was polite to his friend for the rest of the evening. An idea that it might be Elizabeth had shot through him, and he could not divest himself of it, although the more he reflected the more certain he knew he ought to be that she had been married long ago to young Beck. His mind was in a ferment, and a wild longing now possessed him to get home to Arendal and find out for certain how matters actually stood.

When the time came for breaking up, Federigo was drunk, and Salve was obliged to accompany his inconsolable friend in the darkness over the long narrow dam down by the dock, where there was water on both sides, Federigo clinging to his arm the whole way, and leaning heavily upon it.

When they had reached the middle of the dam, Salve saw him make a sudden movement, and almost at the same moment he received a thrust in the region of the heart, of such force that he staggered two or three steps backwards. At the same time he heard Federigo say, in a voice trembling with vindictive passion—

"Take that for Paolina, you hound!"

The object of his cupidity, the belt of money, had saved Salve, who now felled him to the ground with a blow that sent him rolling over the embankment into the sea.

"Help! help!" came up to him from the water.

"You shall have it," replied Salve, derisively, "for our fine friendship's sake. Throw up your knife, though, first;" and he made a noose in his handkerchief then to reach down to him. "You and your owl of a sister," he muttered as he did so, "have taught me a thing or two. I should only have had exactly what I deserved if I had been both stuck and plundered, after being fool enough to put faith for one moment in you or any one else."

"Now, up with you!"

When he saw Federigo's form scrambling up over the edge, he said, scornfully, "Now then, at last we part. Good-bye, my old and faithful friend!"

With that he went his way, and heard the Brazilian screaming and stamping with rage down on the dam behind him in the dark.



CHAPTER XVIII.

An opportunity offered almost immediately for taking a passage home with the Tonsberger before alluded to, and Salve gladly availed himself of it, calculating upon being taken off by one of the pilot boats off the coast of Arendal.

It was with a strange deep feeling that he once more trod the deck of a home vessel, and as he went about and listened to the people's talk, felt himself an object for their curiosity. The southern brown of his face, the foreign cut of his clothes, and his whole exterior, marked him as coming from a much higher condition of sailor life than any with which they were acquainted, and he passed for an Englishman or an American; for he purposely avoided being recognised by them as a countryman, and had made his agreement with the skipper in English.

It was certainly a long time since he had been on board a craft so miserably found in every way as this leaky old galliot was. She had been bought by auction for a small sum at Faerder; and in shape resembled an old wooden shoe, in which her skipper venturesomely trudged across to Holland through the spring and winter storms, calculating that he and his crew could always lash themselves to something to avoid being washed overboard; that their timber cargo would keep them afloat; and that as long as the rigging held they could sail. He carried no top-gallant-mast, so as not to strain her; her sails were all in holes, as if they had been riddled with bullets; and where ropes had broken in the rigging, they had been tied in clumsy knots, instead of being spliced in proper sailor-like fashion. There was not much to boast of in the way of navigation either; the captain keeping his log by the simple method of spitting over the side, or throwing a chip of wood overboard, and making his calculations according to the pace it drifted past. The food, too, was on a par with all the rest, and the cook could be heard beating the dried fish with the back of an axe to make it tender. Salve seemed to have dropped all at once into home life and ways again.

The crew were dressed in thick winter clothing, and had the appearance of navvies rather than of sailors, but they were all fearless, hardy-looking fellows, as most of the men who risk their lives on these timber vessels are; and what immediately struck him with a feeling of pleasure, was the honest expression which every countenance, without exception, wore. It was long since he had seen a sight of the kind, and he felt ashamed of himself for going about with his knife ready to hand, as had been his custom for so many years, and put it away in his chest the very first day. He took a pleasure in leaving his watch and money out on the top where they might easily have been taken, and was filled with surprise and admiration when he found that they were not stirred.

He had not been able to get out of his head the idea that Elizabeth was now in Amsterdam, in spite of the almost certain feeling which he had that she had been long ago married to young Beck. His thoughts kept returning to, and dwelling upon, this subject, and he began to sound the skipper as to whether the trade with Holland was a paying one, and to post himself up generally in all particulars. Their conversation was carried on in a kind of jumble of English chiefly, and he gathered, at all events, that it was a lucrative business, and an occupation which seemed likely to suit him in every way. It was adventurous, and that was a recommendation; and a way of living at home in which he would be under nobody's orders but his own, fell in exactly with his nature. He had more than money enough to purchase some old craft or other, and—in fact, it was decided; he would be the owner of a timber ship, and ply to Holland.

He began now to look out more impatiently than ever for land, and longed so to catch the first streak of the Norwegian coast above the horizon, as if it was something he hardly dared hope that he should live to see. He paced up and down for hours together, anathematising through his teeth the old tub with her slack sails and rolling motion—they seemed to be drifting, not sailing; and from the restlessness and impatience he exhibited, it began to be whispered among the crew that the Englishman must have a screw loose somewhere. When the dim outline of Lindesnaes became discernible at last in the far distance, there was not a palm-clad promontory in all the southern seas that could compare with it, he thought; and the pleasure he experienced was only dashed by the apprehension of what he might have to learn about Elizabeth on landing.

They were hailed shortly after by a pilot boat from Arendal, and he arrived there after dark the same evening, and went to Madam Gjers's unpretending lodging-house until the morning.

The following day was Sunday. And as he listened to the bells ringing, and watched the townspeople, great and small, going decorously up the street in their best clothes to church—most of them he recognised, and among them Elizabeth's old aunt going up by herself, with her psalm-book and her white folded handkerchief in her hand—an indescribable feeling came over him, and his eyes filled so that he could hardly see. Here passing before him were all the gentleness and the purity that he had once believed in, when his young faith had as yet received no shock, and when he was as joyous and credulous as the rest; and he could not resist the temptation of joining the stream, trusting to the alteration in his appearance to save him from recognition.

Beside him, almost, there walked a respectable family—he knew well who they were—with a couple of handsome daughters, in light dresses, who had grown up since he last saw them, and a younger brother whom he did not remember. The foreign, black-bearded sailor, with his fine cloth clothes, and his patent gold watch-chain, seemed to excite their curiosity; while he on his side was thinking how they would fly from him, as if a wolf had suddenly appeared in their midst, if they had any conception of the life that he had been leading for years, half-a-day of which would have filled them with more horror than they had ever imagined. They would not understand it if it was described to them, and the description would be too foul for their ears. As he quietly followed the stream up the hill, it seemed as if all the sunny houses in his beautiful native town were crying out against him, and asking whether it was possible that a man from the Stars and Stripes could be permitted to go to church as well as other people; and on entering the building he had to summon up all his self-command—he had a feeling that he was violating the sanctity of the place.

He took his seat in the last pew close to the door, and watched the people passing up the aisle. It was like a dream; they all seemed creatures of a purer world than his. The organ commenced to play, the singing was begun, and he leaned his head forward on his hands, completely overcome, and trying to conceal his sobs. In this position he remained during the greater part of the service, his past life coming up, scene by scene, before him. What a gulf he felt there was between the present condition of his mind and what it had been in the days when as a boy or lad he had gone to church like the rest. He had been familiar with more murder and blasphemy than the whole congregation together could conceive; and the simple faith he had once possessed he had been robbed of, he feared irrecoverably. His eyes flashed then with a sudden wildness as he thought who it was that had brought him to this; and it was with a deep hatred in his heart to one of the two at least, that he left the church. In a couple who were coming out at the same time, he recognised Captain Beck and his wife, and the sight added fuel to the flames. He hastened on; and was hardly to be recognised as the same man who had gone up the same way so quietly two hours before.

He had meant to go over at once to Sandvigen to see his father, but he thought that before going it would be as well to find out for certain all about Elizabeth; and his landlady seemed as likely a person to be able to satisfy him as any one. He remembered well that sharp, bright-eyed little woman, and knew that she was a regular magpie for chatter, and for repeating the gossip of the town.

At that time of the day on Sunday there were no other customers in the house, and while she was busying herself with preparations for his dinner, he asked casually if Captain Beck's son, the one in the navy, was married?

"To be sure he is," she replied, surprised to hear him speak Norwegian. "He has been married for—let me see—about three years."

She looked fixedly at him.

"But who are you?" she asked; and then, as if the thought had suddenly flashed upon her, she said, "It's never Salve Kristiansen, who—" She stopped here, and Salve dryly finished the sentence for her—

"Who deserted from Beck at Rio?—the same."

Madam Gjers was agog with curiosity, and whispered, "I'll say nothing—you may trust me;" and waited eagerly then for further particulars which she might take the first opportunity of retailing.

Salve assured her that he knew of old that a secret was always safe with her, and resumed then absently—

"So the lieutenant is married?"

"This long while," she replied. "The wedding was at the house of the bride's parents; and they are living now at Frederiksvaern."

"Elizabeth had no parents," said Salve, rather impatiently.

"Elizabeth?—oh! you mean the girl the Becks took to live with them. That is quite another story," she said, significantly. "No, the lieutenant's wife was Postmaster Forstberg's daughter. The other was just a passing fancy—the end of it was that she had to go to Holland, poor thing! It was said she had got a place there."

"Do you know anything for certain of this?" asked Salve, severely, and with an earnestness that put the little madam out of countenance, and made her be careful of her words.

"It was all done very secretly, that's true," she replied. "But she went away in the greatest possible hurry, and the affair was well enough known, more's the pity—known and forgotten now, one may say."

"What was known?" asked Salve, catching her up, angrily. "Did you see her, Madam Gjers?"

"Not I, indeed, nor no one else neither. The Becks were living out at Tromoe at the time; and there was just very good reason for—"

"Then neither you nor any one else who wants to take away her character know a jot more about the business than what you have chosen to invent," said Salve, fiercely and contemptuously; for although he had slain Elizabeth himself in his heart, he must still defend her against the attacks of others. He felt quite sick and faint.

"I happen to know the rights of the case," he said, with a short laugh, looking her coldly and sharply in the face, "and—" he sprang up suddenly here, and striking the table violently with his fist—"and I don't taste another morsel in such a scandal-mongering house," he cried. "Do you understand, madam? Be good enough to take what is owing to you out of that," and flinging down a handful of silver on to the table, he sprang over it, and proceeded to drag his chest down-stairs himself.

Madam Gjers exhausted herself in a flood of deprecation, the gist of which was that she had only said and believed what she had heard from every creature in the town; but Salve was unappeasable, and slinging his chest over his back with a rope, he went down with it to the quay, with the intention of chartering a boat to take him over to his father. For the present, however, he remained sitting upon the chest, gazing out abstractedly over the harbour.

The result of his reflections was that he gave up his idea of plying to Holland.

He took a boat to Sandvigen, but while they were on the way, he suddenly made the boatman change his course, and put in to the slip on the other side of the harbour. He must talk to Elizabeth's aunt. There was something in his mind all the time that wouldn't let him altogether believe the worst.

When he went in to the old woman, she recognised him at once.

"How do you do, Salve?" she said, quite calmly. "You have been a long while away—half a century almost."

She offered him a chair, but he remained standing, and asked abruptly—

"Is it true that Elizabeth—left Beck's like that—and went to Holland?"

"How do you mean like that?" she asked, sharply, while her face flushed slightly.

"As people say," replied Salve, with bitter emphasis.

"When people say it, a fool like you of course must believe it," she rejoined, derisively. "I don't understand why you want to come here to her old aunt for information when it seems you have so many other confidants about the town. But anyhow, she can tell you something different from them, my lad; and she wouldn't do it, if it wasn't that she knew the girl still loved you in spite of all the years you have been away, gadding about, God knows where, in the world. It's true enough she left Beck's one night and came here in the morning; but it was just for your sake, and no one else's, that she might get quit of the lieutenant. It was Madam Beck herself that got her a place in Holland, because she didn't want to have her for a daughter-in-law."

A wild gleam of joy broke over Salve's features for a moment, but they relapsed almost immediately into gloom.

"Was she not engaged to Carl Beck, then?" he asked.

"Yes and no," replied the old woman, cautiously, not wishing to depart a hair's-breadth from the truth. "She allowed herself to be betrayed into saying 'yes,' but fled from the house because she didn't want to have him. She told me, with tears in her eyes, that she repented having said 'no' to you."

"So that was the way of it," he rejoined sarcastically. "The 'yes' and 'no' meant that the Becks wouldn't have her for a daughter-in-law, and bundled her out of the house over to Holland; and you want me to believe it was for my sake she went. God knows," he added, sadly, and shaking his head slowly, "I would willingly believe it—more willingly than I can say; but I can't, Mother Kirstine. You are her aunt, and want of course to—"

"I'm afraid it is your misfortune, Salve," she broke in severely, "not to have it in your power to believe thoroughly in any one creature upon this earth; you'll be always doubting, always listening to folks' talk. With the thoughts you have now in your mind, you have at any rate no business any longer inside my door. But there is one thing I'll ask of you," she said, with a look of mildly impressive earnestness in her strong, clever face. "I know Elizabeth's nature well, and don't you attempt to approach her or try to win her as long as you have a trace of those doubts about her in your heart—it would only bring unhappiness to both of you."

He looked dejected; and as he said good-bye to her, offered to take her hand. But she would not give it to him, and merely added instead—

"Remember that it is an old woman who has seen a good deal in the world who tells you this."

He went away then; and while he was being rowed across to Sandvigen he changed his mind again, and determined that his plan of plying to Holland should be carried out.



CHAPTER XIX.

Skipper Garvloit, into whose family Elizabeth had come, occupied one of the many-storeyed houses, with green window-shutters, narrow entrance-doors, and polished brass knockers, after the usual Dutch fashion, in the lively street leading down to the dock in Amsterdam, with the canal on the other side, with its various bridges, and vessels and barges of all kinds unlading, running up from it into the heart of the town.

Madam Garvloit had four young children, and was not very strong, so that Elizabeth's robust, healthy nature had been a perfect godsend to her in the house, and she was content to overlook her occasional shortcomings of manner or temper in consideration of the assistance which she rendered in every department of the housekeeping.

Elizabeth had always had a pretty strong will of her own; and here, where she virtually had the control of everything, her tendency to self-assertion had been considerably developed. The force and decision with which she gave her opinion about everything seemed to Madam Garvloit sometimes (although she said nothing) rather like a reversing of their relative positions; and on days when she was in a captious humour—and those were her days of most feverish activity—she would even go so far as to set aside her mistress's orders altogether. In a general way her moods were very uncertain: one day she would be in tearing spirits, racing up and down the stairs with the children, as if she had been inhaling the wild air of Torungen again; and another she would be so pensive and taciturn that they thought she must be pining after home.

She had many admirers, both among young and old, her gay moods attracting the former, and her serious ones the latter. Among the former were two young gentlemen acquaintances of the house, relatives of Garvloit—one a smart young clerk from one of the larger counting-houses in the town, who rather affected the gentleman; and the other a light-haired, pink-complexioned, skipper's son from Vlieland. They both came regularly every Sunday, were frantically jealous of one another, tried to outbid each other whenever an opportunity offered, and were both fully convinced that they sighed in vain. She was so different, they felt, from the other specimens of femininity of their acquaintance to whom their weak attentions had sometimes proved acceptable. There was something almost imperious in Elizabeth's manner at times that made them feel quite small beside her; and however careless she might be of the convenances in her way of speaking to them, they had very soon found that wherever she chose to draw the line, so far could they go and no farther.

Madame Garvloit would take her to task sometimes for the scant courtesy with which she treated the young clerk. Elizabeth would answer that he bored her; and Madame Garvloit would insist that a young girl ought to have tact enough not to make this evident. Elizabeth, however, was not deficient in tact, but disliked putting a restraint upon her feelings; and it seemed to her on the whole unreasonable that a person should pretend that a thing was pleasant when in reality it was wearisome.

During the second autumn of her service with the Garvloits, the skipper, on his return from a trip to Norway, brought the intelligence that Lieutenant Beck was engaged to Postmaster Forstberg's daughter in Arendal, and he had many messages for Elizabeth from the latter. They were to be married in the spring.

Elizabeth was overjoyed to hear it, for the thought had often weighed heavily on her mind that Carl Beck might be making himself miserable on her account. She judged so from her own feeling for Salve: and as she sat alone by her window at bedtime that night, gazing out over the canal and the shipping in the calm moonlight, the quiet afterglow of a holiday evening seemed to have shed itself over her thoughts. She knew from her friend's message that she was ignorant of what had passed between herself and Carl Beck; and although it was a relief to think that he had not taken his disappointment more to heart, the smile that played about her lips for a moment showed at the same time that his love had been duly appraised. As the shadow, then, of the window-frame in the moonlight, crept slowly over the wall above her bed, her thoughts glided off in the direction they loved best to take—over the world and far away to Salve.

She sat with her heavy hair falling loose over her well-shaped shoulders, and her face grew more and more sorrowful in its absent expression, and would twitch occasionally with pain. The bitter thought would recur that it was she who was the cause of Salve's going out into the world and becoming a desperate man. The thought haunted her; and yet, much as she wished to free herself from it, she found a pleasure in dwelling on it. She saw him, in fancy, miserable and proud, with his pale face and keen, clever eyes fixed upon her in hatred, as the cause of his unhappiness, and then the idea occurred to her to put on sailor's clothes and go and seek him out in the world. But if she were to find him, she knew, on the other hand, that for very shame she dared not show herself before him, having as good as belonged to another; and she would not for all the world read her hard dismissal in his eye. She laid her head upon her arms on the window-sill and sobbed convulsively, until at length she dropped off to sleep where she sat.

She had been three years in the Garvloits' house when Garvloit had the misfortune to run his vessel aground out near Amland, where she became a wreck. He lost with her nearly all he had in the world, and what was worse, all prospect of livelihood for the future as skipper.

An uncomfortable feeling prevailed now in the house, and Elizabeth saw with regret that she would have to leave. Garvloit, who in figure resembled some thick, short-legged animal of the sea, a seal or walrus come on land, had become perceptibly reduced in flesh, and went about all day long in his shirtsleeves, fanning himself with a large silk pocket-handkerchief. On one particular afternoon it was observed that he indulged in this exercise with more than his usual vigour and restlessness; and it was not without cause. He had had an inspiration. If he could no longer follow his old trade, he would try a new one; he would set up a house of entertainment for sailors. His house being so close to the dock, could not be more favourably situated for the purpose, and they had ample accommodation. On the ground floor they could have a room for common sailors, and on the floor above they had one where captains and mates could be served.

He said nothing about it, however, to any one until the scheme had been fully matured; and then all of a sudden one day he came into the room where his wife was, with a bundle of printed placards and a large board in his hand.

"Good gracious, Garvloit, what is that?" she cried.

He turned the board round with an important air, and without saying a word. Upon it there stood in large gilt letters, "The Star."

"This is our new means of earning our bread, wife," he said. "Next month this sign hangs over our door, and these bills are to post on the walls, and distribute among the ships down in the harbour. Garvloit is not on his beam-ends yet," he concluded, with self-conscious satisfaction; and proceeded then to explain how he intended to be landlord himself, and how Elizabeth was to help him in the management of the whole.

Madam Garvloit only made one slight objection—

"You know that you can't drink ale, my friend."

Another objection, namely, what they would say at home in Norway when they heard that her husband had sunk into a mere tavern-keeper, she very wisely kept to herself. The important point was that they should find a way of living, and they had at all events the great consolation that now they would be able to keep Elizabeth. What feeling of pride still remained she got rid of in telling Elizabeth that at home they knew nothing of millionaires in wooden shoes such as were to be found in Holland; and her husband found her much more keen for his project than he had expected. Being accustomed to place great reliance upon her stronger understanding, he would not have been happy if she had been against the plan.

Thus it came about, then, that in the crowded street by the canal one Monday morning there appeared over one of the entrance-doors a sign-board with "The Star," in letters of gold on a blue ground. It was set up at a fortunate time and in a fortunate place, and almost as soon as the house was opened, customers from the vessels in the harbour began to gather in, both into the down-stairs and up-stairs rooms, so that there was a prospect of a steadily increasing traffic. Garvloit generally presided himself in the bar behind the counter, at the lower end of which there stood an array of stone mugs with tin lids; while in a recess of the wall there stuck out from beside canisters of tobacco, long and short Dutch clay pipes, a new one filled being handed to every customer, with whatever drink he ordered. Out of sight under the counter where the stone mugs stood was the ale-barrel, with its bright tap over a vessel that caught the drip; and after the same cleanly Dutch fashion, spittoons filled with sand stood in every corner of the room. The shelves above were filled in rows with a regular apothecary's shop of bottles and jars of spirits, and among them a goodly array of securely-fastened, dark-green flasks of Dutch hollands.

Elizabeth had as housekeeper quite as much as she could do, and did not directly busy herself with waiting, unless there was something particular required to be done for the up-stairs customers. Occasionally, however, she would come into the bar also, on some errand or another, or to make sure that nothing was wanted; and the fame of handsome Elizabeth of "The Star" contributed not a little to bring custom to the house.

Such Norwegians as came to Amsterdam with timber—the majority unloaded their cargoes up at Puermurende or Alkmar—invariably patronised "The Star." Elizabeth used to talk to them as countrymen of her own; and if she heard that any of them had been across the Atlantic, she would quietly, and as if quite casually, ask if perchance they had come across or had heard anything of a sailor of her acquaintance called Salve Kristiansen who hailed from Arendal. No one had ever heard of him, and she had begun to fear that he might be lost to her for ever.

One forenoon, however, when she had a great deal to do in the house, she was passing quickly through the room up-stairs, and there sat at one of the small tables, with an untouched mug of ale before him, a bearded man in a blue pea-jacket. In her hurry she had set him down as some mate or captain; but there must have been something about him that attracted her attention, for she turned again at the door for an instant, and looked at him before she went out. He was so pale—and he had sent her one look.

As she stood outside the door she knew it was Salve, although she had always pictured him to herself as a common sailor. She stood there trembling all over, and fumbling with the latch of the door in the greatest agitation, evidently debating with herself whether she should dare go in again. She pressed upon the latch, in the certainty that it would go up before she had actually decided that she would go in; and it did so. The door opened again of itself, and Elizabeth entered with downcast eyes, and scarlet in the face, and passed through the room, making a slight inclination of her head, as if for greeting, as she passed him. She had reached the opposite door when she heard a quiet bitter laugh behind her.

At once she turned, with pride in every feature of her face, and looked at him.

"How do you do, Salve Kristiansen?" she said, firmly and quietly.

"How do you do, Elizabeth?" he replied, rather huskily, getting up and looking confused.

"Are you lying here in Amsterdam with some vessel?"

He sat down again, for there was something in her manner that denied approach.

"No; in Puermurende," he replied. "I only came in here to—"

"You are in the timber line, then, now?"

"Yes—Elizabeth," he ventured to add, in another tone, which had a whole volume of meaning in it. But she took her leave of him now in the same proud manner, and left the room.

Salve sat for a while with compressed lips, looking down upon the table before him. When she turned round the first time at the door, something told him that she would come in again; but he had expected quite a different kind of scene. A good deal of the tyrant had been developed in him since they had last met; and when she had come in so quietly and so humbly, with the acknowledgment of the great wrong she had done him written upon her face, he felt himself at once, with a certain bitter and devouring pleasure, upon the judgment-seat. He must first see her crushed before him; then he would have forgiven her, and loved her with all the passion of his soul.

But as she stood there by the door, looking so grand in her pride, and so pale with repressed mortification, and spoke so calmly, he had felt that in that moment he had been separated farther from her than ever he had been in all his wanderings at the other side of the globe.

He sat there with his mind in a chaotic state of desperation and sorrow, and of anger with himself. What a grand creature she was! and he—how pitiful and petty! He set down the mug, which he had been absently toying with, hard on the table, and went out.

For a long while he wandered about the quays in a state of gloomy indecision, stopping every now and then to run his eye over the shipping, and his expression becoming darker still every time he did so. From long practice he could tell by the appearance of every vessel what trade it was engaged in. One was a coffee ship from Java; the next carried general cargo to all parts of the world; there was another that brought sugar and rum from the West Indies; and a fourth, that from its square build and breadth of beam must be a whaler returned from Spitzbergen. He thought of their long voyages, and of the life without root or tie that was passed on board them—was he to go back to that life again? It depended on Elizabeth; and he had not much hope.

To his impatient nature delay was intolerable; and he had half made up his mind to have his fate decided at once. In spite of his agitation, however, he could still think with coolness; and he knew that if he was to have any chance at all, he must wait until the first unfortunate impression had had time to pass off.

It had been a grey, foggy autumn day, but was now clearing, and blue patches of sky were coming out; and as he crossed the bridge the afternoon sun shone out, and sent a ray of glittering light against the window-panes of the street along the canal. Up in Garvloit's house Elizabeth was standing at the open window—she, too, that day had needed to be alone with her thoughts. Salve saw her, and stood still for a moment contemplating her as she leant out over the window ledge.

"That dear head shall be mine," he burst out then passionately, and without knowing it, aloud; and the next moment he was at Garvloit's door.

Elizabeth heard the door of the room open behind her; and when she saw Salve unexpectedly standing before her, she sank down for a moment on to a chair, but got up the next with a scared look, almost as if he was some hostile apparition.

"Elizabeth!" he said, gently, "are you going to send me out again into the world? God only knows how I shall come back if you do."

She did not answer, but stood looking at him with a rigid expression, and pale as death; she seemed to have forgotten to breathe, and to be only waiting for him to say more.

"Be my wife, Elizabeth," he asked, "and I shall grow up into a good man again. What a pitiful creature I have been without you, you have already seen sufficiently this morning."

"God be my witness, Salve," she answered, the tears bursting into her eyes with emotion which she tried to control, "you alone have always had my heart—but I must first know in perfect truth what you think of me."

"The same as I think of God's angels, Elizabeth," he said from his heart, and tried to take her hand.

"Do you know that I—was once very nearly engaged to young Beck?" she asked, reddening, but with a steady look. "I didn't know my real self then, but was thinking only of folly and nonsense, until I was obliged to fly from it all."

"Your aunt has told me all about it, Elizabeth. Don't let us mention the subject again."

"And you haven't a doubt about me in your heart? For that I never will bear, Salve, like to-day,—I can't bear it, do you understand?" she said, with a shake in her voice, and looking as it were down into his very soul.

"Doubt!" he said; and for that moment, at all events, he was evidently convinced that she had never given her real heart to any one but himself.

A look of inexpressible happiness came into her face; he caught her into his arms, and they stood as if they never would let go of each other again, cheek to cheek, not speaking, not thinking even. There was something convulsive in their embrace, as if they could not believe in the reality of their happiness, and as if they felt an instinctive dread that they should lose it again.

Unobserved by either of them the door had opened, and in the doorway stood pursy Garvloit, gazing in helpless bewilderment at the scene before him. At last Elizabeth caught sight of him, and—not with any confusion, but only eager to communicate her happiness—exclaimed—

"It is my lover—"

"Your lover!" and he fell back a step, as if he did not know what he was doing.

"My name is Salve Kristiansen, master of the Apollo," added Salve, without letting her go, and feeling everything around him infinitely small at that moment.

Garvloit turned round and shouted several times from the top of the stairs, raising his voice at each repetition, "Andrea! Andrea!" to his wife; and as she did not come immediately, he stumbled as fast as his corpulence would allow him down the stairs, pausing, however, with a vacant look upon the last step.

Madam Garvloit came out with her work in her hand, and asked what the matter was.

"The matter is," replied her husband, dismally, "that I am ruined. There is Elizabeth up there sitting with some skipper, God knows whom, who she says is her lover."

"Is it possible?"

"Go and see for yourself;" and as his wife hurried past him up the stairs, he added in the same dismal tone—"Who shall we get to look after the house now? we shall never have another like her;" and he sighed profoundly.

When Madam Garvloit appeared at the door, Elizabeth finished her interrupted explanation.

"I have known him ever since I was a little girl," she said.

It was at once evident to her mistress that there must be a romantic story here; but though brimming over with curiosity, she deferred her questions until a more convenient season. In the meantime she manifested the most lively sympathy; and after winning Salve's heart by telling him what a treasure Elizabeth had been to her, she begged that as long as he remained in Amsterdam he would come in and out of the house as he pleased.



CHAPTER XX.

When Madam Garvloit had made some excuse next morning to leave the two alone together in her sitting-room, Salve took out of his pocket a small parcel, and opening it deliberately, said, with a certain solemnity—

"Five years ago, Elizabeth, when I was in Boston, I bought these rings." He took them out of the paper, and laid them in her hand. "I have had a good deal to bear since, but you see I have kept them all along notwithstanding."

She threw her arms round his neck, hid her face upon his breast, and he could feel that she was crying. She tried them on then, both on the same finger, and holding up the hand to show him, said—

"That is the first ring I ever possessed."

A shadow passed across his face, and it flushed slightly; and she only then perceived what connection of ideas her remark might have suggested.

He had three days to spare before he was obliged to be back at Puermurende on board the old brig of which he was now master, and with which, patched and leaky though she was, after his sailor's pride had been overcome, he had grown to be well satisfied enough—more particularly, perhaps, because she was his own. The happiness of these days was not marred by a single further incident to remind him of the past; and it was only on the day that he was to leave that the foul fiend Distrust was again awakened in his unlucky heart.

It was a Sunday, and after the morning service there was to be a sort of popular fete in Amsterdam. At the famous town-hall, where, in Holland's great days, when De Ruyter's and Van Tromp's guns were thundering in the sea outside, the great merchant princes used to sit round the republican council-board, was to be exhibited that day, for the first time, the new picture of the young Dutch hero, Van Spyck, who blew up his ship in the war of 1830 against Belgium.

Salve and Elizabeth joined the stream, and even caught some of the national enthusiasm prevailing in the crowd that was swaying backwards and forwards in the courtyard, where a band was playing the stirring national air, "Wien Neerlands bloed door de aders vloeit."

At last they found themselves before the canvas. It represented the young cadet of seventeen years on the gunboat at the supreme moment.

Elizabeth stood with her hands clasped before her silently engrossed, while Salve kept her from being pressed upon behind.

"Look!" she said, turning half round to him, but without taking her eyes off the picture,—"the Belgian captain is inviting him to surrender. He has no choice—they are too many for him. But don't you see the thought he has in his mind?—you can read it in his face. And what a fine fellow he looks, with his handsome uniform, and his epaulets, and his short sword!" she said, in a lower tone, with a revival of her old childish enthusiasm for that kind of show.

Her last words were like a dagger's thrust to Salve. She still had a hankering, then, for all this, and he stood behind her pale with suppressed feeling, while she continued to gaze at the picture and think aloud to him.

"Poor, handsome lad! But he never will surrender—one can easily see that; and so he must go down," she said, in a subdued voice, involuntarily folding her hands, as if in fancy she went with him; "and he blows up Belgian and all into the air, Salve," she said, turning to him with a fine spirited look in her face, and with moistened eyes.

He made no reply; and supposing that, like herself, he was lost in the scene before them, she turned again to the picture. But while, after giving vent to her feelings, she stood there with a smile on her face, thinking that she knew one who would have been quite as capable as Van Spyck of such an exploit—the man, namely, who was then standing behind her—to him the picture had become a hateful thing; and he could have shot Van Spyck through the heart for his uniform's sake.

The whole of the way home he was silent and serious, and it was not until late in the afternoon that he at all recovered his spirits.

As this was to be his last trip for the year, the following spring was fixed for their marriage; and when he took his leave, it was with the gloomy presentiment that he had a dreary winter before him.

Certainly, for the development of a morbid state of mind, no conditions could have been more favourable than the enforced inactivity to which, with many another, he was condemned for the long dark months during which the ice put a stop to navigation. To his restless, energetic nature, such prolonged inaction was little suited under any circumstances, and in his present condition of mind it was little less than disastrous.

"If she was only here!" he would sometimes inwardly exclaim, as if crying out for help against himself and the thoughts which he felt to be unworthy, but which nevertheless he could not shake off.

He often thought of writing to her, but was so afraid of saying something which he might afterwards regret, that he kept putting it off from time to time, until at last he could restrain himself no longer.

His letter ran as follows:—

"To much esteemed Miss Elizabeth Raklev—

"As concerning the Apollo, she lies in a row of other ships up in Selvig Sound, and the ice is about a foot thick, and will be late in breaking up this year, they all prophesy: she is well looked after, and has a watchman on board, and storage room has been taken for her rigging in Pettersen's rigging-loft. But as touching her captain, to whom you said in Amsterdam you had given your full and first heart so firmly that it couldn't be moved by any might or power in the world whatsoever—he has thought much and often about this, and would like to hold out and see you again before all his shore cable is chafed away. It seems as if it was holding by its last threads, and these half-scraped through. But if I could see you, it would become so strong again that it could hold against any stream; and you must forgive me for my weakness when you think of those five years; but I won't say that it is your fault, neither make myself out better than I am, for I have confidence in you, Elizabeth, if I have not the same reliance upon myself, and I can't help it if I haven't. When you read this letter, Elizabeth, you must remember the poor sailor who is frozen up here, and not forget it afterwards till we meet again, which I would give half my life-blood or more for, if it was any use, as I am consuming away with impatience up here—I have such a longing to see you again. And now, farewell from my heart, and God bless you. I will trust you and hope in you till my last hour, come what may. Farewell, my dearest girl, with fond love from

"SALVE KRISTIANSEN."

This letter cost Elizabeth many a tear. She sat over it in the evenings before she went to bed, and felt so poignantly that it was she who had brought him to this—that he could not trust her; for she understood but too well what lay between the lines. "If I could only be with him," she thought, and she longed to be able to send him an answer; but she had never learnt properly how to write or to compose a letter.

With some difficulty, however, and after several ineffectual attempts, she managed to put two lines together which she remembered from the Catechism:—

"To my lover Salve Kristiansen—

"You shall put your trust in God, and after Him, in me before all others, who careth for you in all things, and have faith in me. That is the truth from your ever-unforgetting "ELIZABETH RAKLEV. And in the spring, "ELIZABETH KRISTIANSEN."

She folded the letter, and got one of Garvloit's sons to write the address; but, that it might be certain to go, she went with it herself to the post-office.

Salve received it one day with great surprise. He guessed from whom it came, and delayed opening it in the fear that it might contain a breaking off of their engagement occasioned by his own letter: he remembered that first morning in Amsterdam. What was his joy, then, when he found what the contents actually were; he seemed to have the thing now in black-and-white. He put the letter carefully back into his pocket-book every time after reading it, and for a while was quite another man. Still, it was high time that the ice should begin to break up, and that he should find occupation for his thoughts in work; he had begun to be afraid to be alone with them.

His first voyage was to Puermurende, and thence to Amsterdam; and they determined to be married there and then, although he had but four days to stay while the brig was loading in Puermurende. Out of consideration for the Garvloits, whom they wished to spare the expense of the wedding as much as possible, they insisted that they would be married on the day they were to leave for Puermurende.

The morning on which the wedding took place, Garvloit's house put forth all its splendour. Dress suits from former days of better circumstances were brought out from old boxes for the occasion; and Madam Garvloit appeared in a green-silk dress of stiff brocade, with a massive brooch, and a huge gilt comb that shone over her forehead like a piece of a crown. Garvloit, too, did his best; but his utmost endeavour had only availed to adapt one article of his grandfather's state dress to his corpulent person—a gold-laced waistcoat namely, which was much too long for him, and which appeared to occasion him extreme discomfort in the region of the buttons.

A couple of old friends of the family and the children went with the pair to church, and also the skipper's son from Vlieland, over whose round soft cheeks there trickled a regretful tear or two as the bride, with her myrtle wreath and long white veil, was led up to the altar by Garvloit. Elizabeth wore that day a pair of particularly handsome shoes with silver buckles, which Salve, with glad surprise, recognised as the ones he had presented to her many years before.

There was an entertainment provided by Madam Garvloit when they returned from church, which was not a very lively affair, the Garvloits not being in spirits at the prospect of losing Elizabeth, and she, notwithstanding all her present happiness, being really sorry to go.

A couple of hours after, they were on their way to Puermurende, and later on in the mellow evening, were standing together on the deck of the Apollo, as she was being towed up the wide canal. The bells were ringing out from Alkmar as they passed—ringing a sweet old chime of other days; and as they stood together by the ship's side, silently listening to the changing tones from the tower as they mingled in the air above them, they pleased themselves with the thought that it was their wedding chime.



CHAPTER XXI.

In a small house at Tonsberg, at the entrance to the beautiful Christiana fjord, the first summer of their married life passed without a cloud upon its sky. The house and all about it, with its flowers in each window, were a model of neatness and Dutch polish; and with Elizabeth herself as a centre to it all, it was no wonder that Salve's crew found him indifferent to all weathers when it was a question of getting home.

The charming young skipper's wife, however, during her husband's frequent absences, had attracted the notice of some of the leading families of the town, and had come presently to be if not exactly on intimate terms, at all events on a footing of acquaintanceship with many of them; and Salve's enjoyment of his home ceased then to be so perfectly unalloyed.

When Elizabeth recounted to him the flattering proofs of appreciation which she received, he listened in silence; and her social successes, instead of giving him pleasure, had a precisely opposite effect. He would not for the world have said a word to express his dislike of her making such acquaintances; and he even, when they went to church together on Sundays, liked her to be as well-dressed as any of these fine friends who now seemed to share his wife with him. But if he said nothing, and was even angry with himself for thinking about the subject, still he did think about it, and with increasing irritation. He could not get the idea out of his head that Elizabeth must now be always contrasting him unfavourably with these people; and as he paced the deck of his brig alone out at sea, he would picture them to himself as constantly in his house, and always talking on the subject which he could least endure—the sacrifice which Elizabeth must have made to become his wife.

When their son Gjert was born in the spring following their marriage, he had been sitting by Elizabeth's bedside unable to tear himself away from her and the cradle, until a small present arrived from one of her friends in the town, who with others had often sent to inquire after her, when he got up and went straight out of the house and paced backwards and forwards with his hands behind his back outside, as she could see through the window, thoroughly out of humour, though when he came in again he was even more affectionate and attentive to her than before.

As she never for a moment imagined that he could think her deep love for him could be in any way affected by the slight surface interest which her new acquaintances afforded her, she looked upon his jealousy of them, of which she had had indications often enough before, as a weakness merely to which he ought to have been superior; and as he said nothing himself on the subject, she also let it pass without comment on her side, but determined at the same time that she would see less of them in future, at all events while he was at home.

It happened however, unluckily, some weeks afterwards, that she had just been talking to some of them when he returned from an expedition to Notteroe to hire a crew for his next voyage to Amsterdam, on which she was to accompany him. "Herr Jurgensen and his wife," she said, "had just passed, and she had been talking to them; they were to start for Frederiksvoern on the following day."

"And fancy!" she went on with animation, "Fru Jurgensen knows Marie Forstberg. So I asked her to remember me to her."

"Marie Forstberg?—who is she?" asked Salve.

"She who was so kind to me,"—she stopped here, and the colour came and went in her face as she continued—"it was she who married—Beck's son—the lieutenant."

"You ought to have asked Fru Jurgensen to remember me to Beck then at the same time," he said, cuttingly, and went past her into the house without looking her in the face.

Elizabeth followed him, feeling very uncomfortable, and after standing for a moment in indecision, went over to him, and sitting down on his knee, put her arm round his neck, saying—

"You are not angry with me, are you? I didn't think you would mind, or I wouldn't have done it."

"Oh! it's quite immaterial to me, of course, who you send your love to."

"She was my best friend when I was—in Arendal," Elizabeth said, avoiding the mention of Beck's name again.

"I don't doubt you are on the best possible terms with all these people," Salve said, impatiently, and making a movement as if he would get up from his seat.

It was Elizabeth who rose first.

"Salve!" she exclaimed, and was about to add more, when he pulled her down to him again, and said in a gentle tone of remorse—

"Forgive me, Elizabeth. I didn't mean what I said. But I do so hate hearing you talk of these people."

Elizabeth burst into tears, protesting against his want of confidence in her; and Salve, now thoroughly distressed at the result of his want of self-control, overwhelmed her with tenderness in his endeavours to appease her. He succeeded after a while, and the evening was passed in such sunshine as only succeeds to storm.

After a quarrel of the kind, however, there must be always something left behind, and though Salve was doubly affectionate for many days, afterwards he grew more and more silent, and presently even irritable and moody, and would not go to church on any of the succeeding Sundays while he remained at home.



CHAPTER XXII.

Elizabeth carried out her intention of accompanying him to Amsterdam, where she paid a visit of several days to the Garvloits, and the pleasure of the trip was only alloyed for her by the change which had come over Salve's manner, and to which she had now to try and accustom herself as one does to a less brilliant light after having seen the sun.

They were on their way home again, sailing before a light breeze, and under a soft blue sky, out of the busy, shallow Zuyder Zee. Elizabeth was sitting on deck with little Gjert, blooming as a rose, and asking animated questions of the pilot, whom they had been compelled to take on board, about the various flat sandy islands and towns which came in sight from time to time, Salve occasionally stopping in his walk to listen.

By Terschelling the channel from the Zuyder Zee to the North Sea is marked out like a narrow strait with black and red buoys; and even in that calm weather there were foaming breakers the whole way close to the ship on either side. "What must it be like," Elizabeth asked, in a sort of terror, "in a storm, when the whole sea was driving in?"

"That is a sight it's better not to see," replied the pilot.

"But you have to be out, storm or not, pilot?"

"It is my way of getting a living," he answered, shortly.

Salve stood and listened, as the conversation took this turn.

"We have pilots in Norway, too," she said, "who don't mind a wet jacket either. It is a fine life!"

The Dutchman merely observed, coldly, in reply—

"In two successive years—it is three years ago now—they lost out here off Amland a total of fifty pilots."

"Still, it is a fine life!" she said; and Salve resumed his walk.

A couple of evenings after, the Apollo was pitching out on the Doggerbank in the moonlight, with a reef in her topsails. Elizabeth had not yet gone below, and was sitting with her child warmly wrapped up on her lap, while Salve paced the deck and looked at her from time to time. A little farther off, near the main-hatch, Nils Buvaagen (whom Salve had met again at Notteroe, and persuaded to take service with him) and a couple of the crew who were off duty were engaged in story-telling, the others lounging about near them to listen. Elizabeth, too, was listening.

They had crossed that day a long stretch of dead water, and the carpenter had several mysterious incidents, of which he declared he had been an eyewitness, to recount on the head of it. Meeting dead water like that out in the open sea generally meant that something was going to happen.

Nils Buvaagen, like all fjord peasants, had a strong leaning towards every kind of superstition; and in his many voyages across the North Sea, he had had more than one experience of the kind in question. He had sat quite silent so far.

"H'm!" he remarked now, thoughtfully taking a pull at his pipe. "I dare be sworn there's many a one out here on the Dogger. Where we are now, I tell you, is as it might be an old burial-ground."

With that he retired into himself, and began to pull away vigorously at his pipe, as if he had unintentionally said more than he exactly liked. But being pressed to go on, he was obliged to satisfy the curiosity he had excited, and resumed accordingly in a hushed tone, after cautiously looking round first.

"Do you know," he asked, mysteriously, "how all the old fish come by their deaths?"

None of his audience were able to give an answer to this unexpected question.

"You don't?" he continued; "nor no one else neither. But all the same, such myriads die every day that, if all was right, the whole surface of the sea would be covered with their white bellies—we should be sailing all day long through dead fish. It is a 'mystery,' the same as it is what becomes of all the old ships in the world." Coming from him, that word "mystery" had something very weird and uncanny about it.

"Yes, the Dogger can be ugly enough, and may be so perhaps before we are clear of it," he concluded, and leant back against the spar behind him to look up at the clouds. Some scud was driving at the moment across the full moon.

"But about the old fish and the old vessels, Nils?" said the carpenter, recalling him to the subject.

"Yes, it is here, to the Dogger Bank, that they resort for the most part, and to one or two other places perhaps in the world besides. That is the reason that there is always a sort of corpse sand in the water here, and so many noises and things that one can't explain."

There was a general start as he said this, and they looked at one another in silence; for it seemed as if the vessel had suddenly stopped with a shock in the middle of her course, and the spray from a heavy sea came pouring down over the deck.

"She heard it," said the carpenter, involuntarily; "she is an old craft, and doesn't like going over the churchyard."

Elizabeth thought that last proposition sounded so uncomfortable that she got up and went below to bed.

The sea ran high in the night, and the vessel kept pitching with dull thuds as if they were in very shoal water, which, however, the lead showed not to be the case. In the morning the chain-cable of the anchor was found tossed by the force of the sand-laden seas right over the deck, and arranged there with a certain regularity. To many of the crew it seemed clear that other than natural causes must have been at work; there were evidently "dead hands" upon the bank, and this was a warning. Nils shook his head and said nothing.

All the morning they were enveloped in a thick sea fog that surrounded them like a wall; but towards noon the sun began to appear like a sickly gleam above them, and by dinner-time they were sailing under a clear sky, and in a fresh green breezy sea, with sails on every side.

It was an exhilarating sight, and reminded Elizabeth of the days of her childhood. She called Salve over to share her enjoyment of it.

Of all the vessels in sight, the handsomest, without comparison, was the North Star, a Norwegian corvette, well known along the coast of Norway, and which had often aroused Elizabeth's enthusiasm in earlier days. She was crossing their course, and standing under full sail for the Channel. Elizabeth recognised her at once, and exclaimed decisively—

"That is the North Star—isn't she a magnificent ship, Salve! See, they are taking in the topsails; they look like a flock of birds up there on the yard among those beautiful big sails. Did you ever see anything so grand as her shape? and how majestically she ploughs through the sea! When she has all her canvas spread like that, I could fancy Tordenskjold himself on board of her in full chase."

Salve looked straight before him and didn't answer. He knew, what Elizabeth had not the faintest suspicion of, that Lieutenant Beck was on board the North Star, as third in command for that year's cruise in the Mediterranean, whither she was now bound; and a host of unpleasant associations were raised by Elizabeth's innocent admiration of her.

"It was the North Star," she continued, "that beat through the straits of Gibraltar against the current when none of the others could." The North Star had long ago taken the place of the Naiad as her heroine ship, and she related the performance with a certain pride.

"How would you like to be in command of a ship like that, Salve?" she asked, determined to wake him up and get an answer.

"It would be a very different thing from having such an old tub as the Apollo under one—there's no disputing that," he replied bitterly; and quitted her side abruptly, as if to give orders to the crew.

Elizabeth remained standing where she was, utterly puzzled. What could there possibly have been in what she had said to offend him? and offended he certainly was by the tone of voice in which he was giving his orders, and the expression of his face as he stood there by the wheel with his hand in the breast of his pea-jacket—she felt certain it was clenched there. It was really too unreasonable—the idea of his being jealous of a ship! This uncertainty about every word she spoke now was getting absolutely insupportable, and with a toss of her head she determined that she would stand it no longer, but would speak her mind to him once for all, whether it should lead to a scene or not.

No opportunity, however, for carrying out her intention occurred during the remainder of the afternoon. There appeared to be bad weather coming up, and many of the sails had to be taken in; and afterwards he paced up and down by the round-house forward for a couple of hours, purposely, as she could see, avoiding her. The crew apparently had an impression, too, that it was as well to keep out of his way, as they left him that side of the deck to himself, and stood talking in knots about the capstan, with their oilskin coats and sou'westers on, in anticipation of dirty weather, and casting anxious glances from time to time at the banks of cloud that were rolling up darkly from the horizon to leeward, and sending already a whine through the old rigging above them. They waited impatiently for the word to take in more sail, as it was obvious that they must go with storm sails only for the night.

It was only at the last moment apparently that Salve made up his mind, for when he suddenly shouted over to them to take in topsails and put a couple of reefs in the mainsail, the storm was already upon them. He sprang aft at the same time and seized the trumpet, saying shortly and harshly to Elizabeth as he passed her hurriedly, and almost without looking at her—

"This is not weather for sitting up on deck, Elizabeth. You had better take the child below and lie down."

Elizabeth saw that he was right, and went; but there was a look of pained surprise in her face as she lingered for a moment and looked after him. He had never spoken to her like that before.

The crew had supposed that he would of course keep away and run before the gale, and not strain the old brig by beating to windward in such a night as they saw before them; and it was under mute protest, therefore, that they proceeded to carry out his orders to clap on preventer braces on the rags of sail which they were carrying. The old blocks creaked and screamed in the increasing darkness above the rattle of the hail squalls, and the vessel careened over and went plunging into the head seas with successive shocks that seemed likely very soon to shake her to pieces.

Nils Buvaagen was standing in moody silence, with another, at the wheel, and he could see by the light from the binnacle, which occasionally fell upon Salve's face as he walked up and down near them to leeward, that he was ashy pale. He would have liked to say something, but it didn't seem advisable.

"Topsail's flapping!" came from forward, "she'll be taken aback!"

"She's an old craft, captain—her topmasts'll not bear a great deal," Nils ventured to observe.

"I'll show you that I can make the old tub go," muttered Salve between his teeth, affecting not to have heard what was said.

"Keep her away, Nils—she must have more way—and so over on a new tack," was his reply in a peremptory tone.

"Stand by to 'bout ship!"

Nils sighed: such sailing was quite indefensible; and there was not one of the crew who had not the same feeling.

Through the darkness and the blinding dash of the seas came then at intervals—

"Haul in the boom—hard a-lee—brace forward—brace aft!" and here there was a longer interval, for one of the ropes on the foremast had apparently got foul, and there was a difficulty in bracing the yard, the sail flapping with a dull noise above and making the whole mast tremble. One of the crew had to mount the old rigging at the risk of his life, and feel over the unsteady yard in the dark for the rope and disentangle it, with the white tops of the seas breaking not far under his feet.

"Sharp up aft—sharp forward!" came then again. "Haul the jib-sheet!" but no sooner was the jib hauled taut and made fast, than it broke loose and hung fluttering wildly about the stay until it gradually twisted itself up into a tangle.

The sails filled on the new tack; but they were not much better off than before, the sea breaking over them with such violence that the deck, from amidships forward, was only passable with the greatest difficulty and danger. The crew began to think the captain must have taken leave of his senses; and, in fact, Salve was not himself that night. He was sailing in this reckless way in a mere fit of temper intensified by the consciousness of his own unreasonableness. Elizabeth made a mistake, he told himself by way of justification, if she thought that he on board his poor brig gave in to any officer in the navy, let him be who he might. She should see that he, too, was a man who could beat—he required no North Star under him, he would perform the same feat in a leaky old barge.

A couple of times when the cook, who looked after Elizabeth's wants, came up the cabin stairs, Salve inquired how she was getting on, and heard each time that she was sitting up not yet undressed. The last time the good-natured cook had added—

"She wants badly to see you, captain—she isn't accustomed to this sort of thing."

He made no reply further than a scornful contraction of his features which was not visible to the other, and resumed his staggering walk to leeward, between the companion and the wheel.

Elizabeth meanwhile had been sitting a prey to most distracted thoughts. When she went below with her child, she had a dull feeling at her heart that some great sorrow had come or was coming over her, and she had sat for some time almost without the power to think. He had never treated her like that before.

She set about putting the child to bed then in her usual way, as if she had been a mere machine. For him the rolling berth was only a rocking cradle, and he was soon sleeping quietly without an idea of danger. She stood with her arm leaning over the edge of the berth, supporting him, and gazing on his dimpled face; the lamp that swung to and fro under the beam, shedding a dim light over the narrow cabin, with its small table, and pegs full of seamen's clothes, moving solemnly backwards and forwards on the wall. Between the creaking of the ship's timbers and the noise of ropes being dragged across the deck, Salve's voice could be heard in harsh tones of command, and every now and then there would be a sudden concussion that would make the whole vessel shake, and the floor would seem to go from under her feet, so that she had to hold on by the rail of the berth, and keep the child from falling out as best she could at the same time. Whenever they had had such weather before, Salve had always come down from time to time to see her. Now—she didn't know what to think. From what the cook had told her, she gathered that they were beating with unjustifiable recklessness, and from the tone of Salve's voice she knew that he was in a savagely defiant mood, and that she, for some reason or other, was the cause of it. Her expression gradually changed to one of deeper and deeper anxiety of soul.

"But what have I done to him?" she exclaimed impetuously, and buried her face in the bedclothes.

"What have I done to him?" she repeated. "What can he believe?—what can he possibly think?" she asked herself, as she stood now like a statue almost, lost in conjecture, until the thought which she had always tried to keep away came up before her in full, heavy, unmistakable clearness.

"He doesn't trust me!" she whispered to herself, in despair. "He has no faith in me;" and she laid her head—her beautiful head—down upon her arm, just as her own child might have done, in an inconsolable fit of crying. But to her no tears would come, and she seemed to see an abyss of suspicion and distrust before her in which Salve's love for her was going to disappear.

She heard no longer the creaking and the noise on deck—no longer cared about the lurching and the thuds against the head-seas—although she had often to hold on to the berth with all her strength. All the energy of her soul was now occupied with this one awful terror which had taken possession of her. All her defiance was gone. Her only source of courage now was to do anything or everything to keep his love. She felt ready for any sacrifice whatever—ready, without a sigh, to bear the burden of his suspicions all her life through if she might only keep his love. It was she who had made him distrustful, and it was upon her the punishment should fall, if she could not by persistent love bring him back to a healthy condition of mind again.

Her instinct at once suggested to her how she should begin. He should see that she on her side had entire confidence in him—confidence as absolute as the child's there who was sleeping before her. And with a sickly smile upon her lips, she undressed and laid herself down beside little Gjert.

Upon deck Salve had wanted the night-glass, which was down in the cabin. The look-out man had fancied that he had caught a glimpse for a moment of a light, in which case, against Salve's calculations, they must be under Jutland. His pride, however, would not allow him to send any one else to fetch the glass, and he couldn't make up his mind to go down himself. At last it became absolutely necessary, and he went hurriedly down the stair.

When he opened the cabin door he stood still for a moment in surprise, and looked about him. He had expected to find Elizabeth sitting up, with the child on her lap, and looking frightened. In place of that all was quiet, and the lamp was nearly out. He strode on and took the glass from the wall; and after a couple of attempts, managed to light a match, in spite of the damp, and held it to the barometer. He remained then standing with it in his hand, and listened to hear whether she was asleep or not. Involuntarily he approached the berth, and looked into it.

"Elizabeth," he whispered, softly, as if he was afraid of waking her.

"Is that you, Salve?" was the reply, in a perfectly calm voice.

"I thought you would be sitting up with the boy in this gale. She rolls so; and I—I haven't been down to see you," he said.

"I knew I had you on deck, Salve," she replied. "The rest we must only leave to God. You have not had time to come down, poor fellow," she added, "you have been so busy."

"Elizabeth!" he exclaimed, with a sudden pang of passionate remorse, and reached over impetuously into the berth to embrace her with his wet clothes.

At that moment a crash was heard, accompanied by a violent trembling of the ship, and loud cries on deck. Something had evidently given way.

With the same movement with which he had intended to embrace her, he lifted her quickly out of the berth, and told her to dress herself and the child, and come up to the top of the cabin stairs. The words were hardly out of his mouth when the vessel heeled over, and didn't right herself again.

"Fore-topmast gone, captain; rigging hanging!" bawled Nils Buvaagen down the stair.

Salve turned to her for a moment with a face full of mute, crushing self-reproach, and sprang up on deck.

"Keep her away, if she'll answer her helm!" he shouted to the man at the wheel. "To the axes, men!"

The brig lay over on one side, with her brittle rigging at the mercy of the wind and sea, the waves making a clean breach over her. Salve himself went up and cut away the topmast, which went over the side to leeward; and as the first grey light of dawn appeared, and made the figures of the crew dimly distinguishable, the axes were still being feverishly plied in strong hands among the stays, backstays, and topmast rigging. While the work was going on the fearful rolling caused first the main-topgallant sail to go, and then the topsail, with the yards and all belonging to it. The forestay snapped, the mainsail split, and the lower yards and foremast were damaged. And when at last, after desperate efforts, they had succeeded in freeing the ship from the encumbrance of the fallen rigging, she lay there more than half a wreck, and scarcely capable of doing more than run before the wind.

They had only the boom-mainsail now, and the forecourse, left; and with these Salve kept her away—it was the only thing now to be done—until the growing light should show them whether they had sea-room, or the dreaded Jutland coast before them. The last, with this westerly gale blowing, would mean pretty nearly for a certainty stranding upon the sandbanks and the vessel becoming a wreck.

When it was clear day, they made out Horn's Reef far down to the south-east; they lay about off Ringkjobing's Fjord, and would require now to do their utmost to clear the coast. With some difficulty they succeeded in rigging up a jury-mast, and managed by that means to keep up a little closer in the wind. But their only chance was that the wind might go down, or shift a little to the southward, or in the current, which generally takes a northerly direction here, unless it should set them in too much under land.

Salve paced restlessly up and down his dismantled deck, where a great part of the bulwarks and the round-house forward were stove in, whilst the crew relieved each other two and two at the pumps. They had evidently sprung a serious leak, which was the more cause for anxiety that they were returning in ballast, and had no timber cargo to keep them afloat. He had confided their situation to Elizabeth.

"I am afraid we may be obliged to beach her at some convenient spot," he said, adding, with a slight quiver in his voice, "we shall lose the brig."

He laid emphasis upon this, because he didn't wish to tell her the worst—namely, that this convenient spot was not to be found upon the whole coast, and that their lives were unmistakably in danger.

Whatever happened, it seemed sufficient for Elizabeth that he was near her, and there was a look of quiet trust in her face as she turned towards him that went to his heart; he could not bear it, and turned away.

The brig and its possible loss did not occupy much of Elizabeth's thoughts. In the midst of their danger she was absolutely glad at heart at the thought that by her display of implicit confidence she had succeeded in winning a great victory with Salve. After what she had gone through that night, this was everything to her.

There was a fine energetic look of determination in her face, and her eyes were moist with tears as she bent over the child in her lap and whispered—

"If he cannot trust us, we two must teach him—mustn't we, Gjert?"



CHAPTER XXIII.

Towards dinner-time Salve and Nils Buvaagen were standing for a moment together by the ship's side.

The storm had perceptibly lulled, but the weather was still dull and hazy, and the sea high. Two or three sea-gulls were circling drearily between them and the coast, where they could now see a long line of yellow foaming breakers like a huge wall, rising and falling on the sandbanks, with here and there a mast-high jet of spray from some reef outside. Although the wind was on shore they could hear the dull thunder of the breakers there, and a kind of dim rumbling in the air. The next three or four hours would obviously decide their fate.

Neither spoke; each was occupied with his own reflections. Nils was thinking of his wife and children at home, and Salve of his future. It was hard to lose the brig; he had worked hard for the money she represented, and he would have now to begin again on the lowest step of the ladder—if he escaped with his life, that was to say.

Less selfish thoughts succeeded then, and he turned to Nils.

"What I feel most in this business, Nils," he said, earnestly, "is the thought that you or any of the others may perhaps pay the penalty for my mad sailing last night, with your lives. The brig is my own affair."

"Oh, it will be all right, captain, you'll see," replied Nils, cheeringly. "If we can hang on to the old craft while she bumps over the banks, we shall manage somehow or other inside I expect."

"God grant it!" said Salve, and turned away.

Nils remained standing where he was for a moment, and something like a spasm passed across his heavy features. He believed their situation to be desperate, and the vision of his home again rose before him, and almost choked him.

"Relieve the pumps!" was heard. It was his turn again, and he gave himself unweariedly to the work.

Salve seemed like one conscience-smitten. His face wore an expression of strained uneasiness, and his look more and more, as the moments passed, betokened the consciousness that a struggle for life was before them. Through the glass a knot of people could be seen gathering on the downs which ran along the coast, with their jagged formations showing out in tones of dim violet and blue.

He stood now in the companion with his wife and his child, and sighed heavily as he looked at them.

"I would gladly give the brig, and be reduced to my own two hands once more, to have last night over again, Elizabeth!" he said.

She pressed his hand with an expression of sympathy, which answered him better than words; and the next moment he was again the practical man, showing her how she might tie the child to her breast with a handkerchief.

"I can't stay with you any longer now," he said. "I am responsible for the lives of all on board, and must do my duty by them."

"Do your duty, Salve," she said.

"And so," he concluded, as, trying to conceal his emotion, he stroked her forehead and then the child's, "you must keep a good heart. When the pinch comes I shall be at your side, and we shall win through it, you'll see."

"With God's gracious help!" she answered; "remember that, Salve."

He strode away then down the deck and called the crew aft to take counsel with him on the situation. The vessel was rapidly becoming water-logged.

"Listen, my lads!" he said; "this is a serious business, as you can all very clearly see. But if we only have stout hearts we may get out of it yet, at all events with our lives. We have about three hours still before we run upon the sandbanks; but by that time it will have begun to get dark, and it may be difficult for the people on shore to come to our rescue. We must steer straight in and choose the likeliest place ourselves; and if you are of the same way of thinking we'll head for the shore now at once, rather than wait to have the old craft flung over the banks in the dark like a dead fish."

The crew were silent, and looked anxiously over towards the land. But when Nils Buvaagen declared himself a supporter of the captain's plan by crossing over the deck to him, all the others followed.

Salve went himself to the wheel, and gave the order to "Ease off the sheet."

"Ease it is," was the answer; and that was the last order ever given on board the Apollo.

Running now before the wind, they rapidly approached the land. Salve stood at the wheel, resting his knee from time to time on one of the spokes, with a concentrated look on his dark keen face, and his eye searching like a kite's along the coast for the place they were to make for. A couple of times he took up the glass and directed it towards the downs, where a group of people were moving about.

The chalk-white wall of water, rising and falling, grew higher and higher as they approached it; the noise and the dull roar of the breakers became more and more deafening, and a feeling of faintness crept over Elizabeth as she looked towards the land, and began to realise their danger.

The suspense was so painfully prolonged, a mist was coming before her eyes, so that she could scarcely see Salve over at the wheel; and she tried, in her terror, to keep them fixed upon the child in her arms. The seething, hissing sound in the air around her kept increasing, and made her giddy; a confusion of wild sounds, that grew louder and ever louder, seemed to fill her brain; and before her eyes there was nothing but a whirl of scudding flakes of white. A mass of sand-laden foaming water appeared then suddenly to rise before her with a towering crest; she heard one loud cry of terror from different voices; the brig seemed lifted high in the air; the mainmast tottered; and a suffocating deluge of water came crashing down upon her, nearly carrying her with it down the cabin stairs, where she was clinging. Again and again it came, and her one thought now was to hold fast.

When she returned to consciousness again, Salve was by her side. They were fastened to the same rope, and all the crew had come aft, and lashed themselves there. The brig lay over on her side upon the inner bank, with her stern up, and with the mainmast lying over the side. She kept lifting and striking heavily against the bottom, while heavy seas, one after another, swept her forward.

"The rigging to leeward must be cleared away, and we shall get off, lads!" shouted Salve, through his hollowed hand; and he sprang over with an axe to do it. Nils Buvaagen came to his assistance, and Elizabeth, in intense anxiety, watched the two men while they cut away rope after rope, holding on by the rigging all the time, the sea breaking over them, so that sometimes they were hardly visible through the drench of water. After one last stroke, which freed them from the mast, Salve was by her side again.

The next moment they were carried over the bank by the yellow churning surge, and with a succession of jerks and bumps, over to the shoal inside, where the bow-timbers were stove in—"the best thing that could have happened to them," Salve said, coolly, "as it would relieve the vessel of the weight of water in the hold, and they might now be washed up nearer to the beach."

At length, after a couple of long and terrible hours, as twilight was coming on, and the face of the downs was becoming darker in the gloomy atmosphere, it seemed as if the vessel had finally settled. The waves now broke less frequently over her, but left a heavy deposit of sand upon the deck when they did break. It seemed likely that she would go to pieces, plank by plank, if they remained as they were through the night, or else perhaps they would be buried in sand.

On one side of the shoal—on the side where they saw people upon the beach—ran a channel with a strong current; and they, perceived that they had been fortunate to some extent in not having been washed right over into it, as in that case the brig must inevitably have sunk: on the other side there was navigable water, though with breakers here and there. Their signals, they knew, had been seen by the people on shore; but, to their despair, they saw them all at once disappear.

Salve, upon that, set to work to lash some planks together for a raft; and the crew followed his example with whatever they could lay their hands upon that would float. His idea was, to try and get Elizabeth and the child to land by tying them securely to the raft, and trust to his own swimming powers and address to reach the shore with the line he was attaching to it; and the only question then would be, whether he would be able to haul it to land against the strong back-suck of the receding waves, that left every time a long stretch of dry sand behind them. Elizabeth was sitting meanwhile on the cabin-stairs, scarcely in a condition to comprehend what was passing.

As Salve was occupied with this work, he suddenly heard a shout of joy round him. From behind a projection in the downs a group of men had appeared, carrying a large boat. They stopped at a corner of the beach. A number of them took their seats in the boat; and as a wave was curling over to break, the others ran her down, and the back flow carried her out to sea, the men setting to work at once with all their might at the oars.

The plucky fellows evidently knew the water thereabouts; for they steered in a wide circle up behind a line of shoals, that acted like a mole in breaking the force of the waves, and bore down then obliquely upon the wreck, to leeward of which the water was comparatively smooth.

"Now then, look alive, my hearties!" they shouted, as they hooked on; and the admonition was scarcely needed.

Salve carried his almost unconscious wife down to the side, where they took her and laid her aft in the bottom of the boat; but she sat up with outstretched arms until her child had been passed to her from hand to hand, and was safe in them again, and then she watched anxiously for Salve to come too. He sprang down into the boat the last, and then she fainted.

They put off, and stood in now on the crests of the waves straight for the beach, where a score of men in sea-boots and woollen jackets made a chain down into the water by holding each other's hands, and drew the boat ashore.

They heard congratulations all round; and the man who had held the tiller exclaimed, as Salve silently grasped his hand—

"It was resolutely done, Northman, to steer like that—only that you did, you'd have passed the night upon the bank."

The invitation of their rescuers to partake of such hospitality as they could offer was gladly accepted by the famished party from the wreck; and they followed the steersman, Ib Mathisen, and his comrades in among the downs, where the wind was no longer felt. It was some miles to the fishing village; and they trudged on after it grew dark in silence, being too exhausted, and too dejected, to talk, their guides only keeping up a low conversation among themselves. Salve carried the child, sheltering it from the pricking sand that blew in their faces when they came out upon the flat downs farther on, and supporting Elizabeth at the same time.

At last they saw the lights of a group of cottages. The largest of these belonged to Ib Mathisen; and into this Salve and his wife were conducted, while the crew were distributed among the others.

Ib's wife, a robust-looking woman of fifty or thereabouts, with a bold, straightforward expression in her tanned countenance, was standing over by the fire with her sleeves tucked up baking, when they came in. She examined the incomers steadily for a moment without raising herself from her stooping position; but at the sight of Elizabeth and the child she exclaimed in a tone of compassion that was better than any more formal welcome, "The poor woman and her child have been cast ashore, Ib?" and set about caring for their wants at once, her grown-up daughter helping her to draw a bench to the fire for them, and putting a kettle on to make something warm for them to drink. This was evidently not her first experience of the kind; and before long they had all put on dry clothes, and Elizabeth and the child were in a warm bed. As she went about she put questions in a low voice to her husband; and Salve, who was sitting with his cheek in his hand staring into the fire, heard her say—

"Perhaps he was the owner of the vessel himself?"

"Yes, she was all the property we possessed," Salve answered, quietly. "But we are none the less grateful to your husband for rescuing us, and we have unfortunately very little to thank him with for venturing his life out on the banks in such weather."

"So you've been at that game again, Ib," said the wife, turning to her husband reproachfully, but not seeming altogether sincere in her reproach.

Turning to Salve then she said a little curtly, "For the like of that we take no payment," adding in a milder tone, "We have two sons ourselves who ply to Norway—there's a bad coast there too."

Salve was pale and worn out with over-exertion, and after taking a mouthful of food he lay down to rest. But he could not sleep, and towards morning he was lying awake listening to the dull booming of the distant sea. Elizabeth was tossing about feverishly and talking in her sleep. Her brain was evidently busy with the terrors of the previous night, and from occasional words it seemed as if he had a share in her thoughts. He lay and listened, though there was not much to be made out of her disjointed utterances. She grew more restless, and began to talk more excitedly—

"Never! never!" she said, vehemently; "he shall never hear a word about the brig," and she went on then in a confidential whisper—

"Shall he, Gjert? He shall find us in our berth, or else he will think we are afraid."

Salve kissed her forehead tenderly, but with a sigh. There had been a motive then, after all, at the bottom of that display of confidence which had occasioned him such pangs of self-reproach.

A couple of hours after he was on the way down to the sea to look at the brig. The general aspect of the world about him was in harmony with his mood. The wind whistled over the dreary sand-hills, whirling the sand in clouds in among the downs that stretched away like a storm-tossed sea into the distance, in every variety of desolate and jagged outline. Upon the melancholy shore a sea-gull or two were circling round some old black stumps of wreck that protruded from the sand; while beyond lay the dismal expanse of the western sea, without a sail upon its leaden waste of waters, so shunned by all. Dreariness, wreck, and desolation were on every side; and it seemed to Salve that it was only a reflection of his own life. He had got to be the owner of a brig, and there it lay, what remained of it, buried in the sand. He had succeeded in making Elizabeth his own, but had he thereby added anything to the happiness of his life?

He stood gazing at the remains of his brig, over which the yellow waves were breaking, in a state of gloomy abstraction, from which he was only aroused by the approach of Ib Mathisen and a party of his own crew, who had followed him to the shore to see if possibly they might retrieve some of their property. He joined them in the search, and with but small result; three ship chests and the compass being all the reward of an hour's labour among the timber-ends and bolts and pieces of rigging that strewed the beach, or made ripples in the sand for a long distance in either direction.

They remained that day in the fishing hamlet; and when Salve had made his declaration before the authorities, and had paid the crew what he owed them with the greater part of the money he had saved, he and Elizabeth took passage for Christiansand in a corn ship from Harboere.

He was very silent on the way, thinking about his future; and the prospect was not a bright one: he knew that there prevailed but one opinion among the crew about the loss of the brig, that he had his own folly only to thank for it; and as this, of course, would get about, his chance of being employed as a skipper by any shipowner would be very small. Elizabeth's popularity in Tonsberg might probably be of service to him, but he would sooner starve than help himself to a situation by means of it; and in her present circumstances she should not even return to Tonsberg.

One only course remained open to him if he was not to begin again from the very beginning—he would become an uncertificated pilot for the Arendal district. No one knew the coast there better than he did; he had always had the idea in his mind, ever since the night when he brought the Juno into Merdoe; and out there, or in some other spot along the coast, he reflected gloomily that he could have Elizabeth all to himself.