Chapter Five.
The Water-Sprites’ Doings.
Erica now profited by her lover’s industry in the morning. He had so far advanced with the raft that, though no one would have thought of taking it in its present state to the mouth of the fiord for shipment, it would serve as a conveyance in still water for a short distance safely enough.
And still, indeed, the waters were. As Erica and Oddo were busily and silently employed in tying moss round their oars to muffle their sound, the ripple of the tide upon the white sand could scarcely be heard, and it appeared to the eye as if the lingering remains of the daylight brooded on the fiord, unwilling to depart. The stars had, however, been showing themselves for some time; and they might now be seen twinkling below almost as clearly and steadily as overhead. As Erica and Oddo put their little raft off from the shore, and then waited, with their oars suspended, to observe whether the tide carried them towards the islet they must reach, it seemed as if some invisible hand was pushing them forth to shiver the bright pavement of constellations as it lay. Star after star was shivered, and its bright fragments danced in their wake; and those fragments reunited and became a star again as the waters closed over the path of the raft, and subsided into perfect stillness.
The tide favoured Erica’s object. A few strokes of the oar brought the raft to the right point for landing on the islet. They stepped ashore, and towed the raft along till they came to the skiff, and then they fastened the raft with the boat-hook which had been fixed there for the skiff. This done, Oddo ran to turn over the little boat, and examine its condition: but he found he could not move it. It was frozen fast to the ground. It was scarcely possible to get a firm hold of it, it was so slippery with ice; and all pulling and pushing of the two together was in vain, though the boat was so light that either of them could have lifted and carried it in a time of thaw.
This circumstance caused a good deal of delay: and, what was worse, it obliged them to make some noise. They struck at the ice with sharp stones; but it was long before they could make any visible impression; and Erica proposed, again and again, that they should proceed on the raft. Oddo was unwilling. The skiff would go so incomparably faster, that it was worth spending some time upon it: and the fears he had had of its leaking were removed, now that he found what a sheet of ice it was covered with,—ice which would not melt to admit a drop of water while they were in it. So he knocked and knocked away, wishing that the echoes would be quiet for once, and then laughing as he imagined the ghost-stories that would spring up all round the fiord to-morrow, from the noise he was then making.
Erica worked hard too; and one advantage of their labour was that they were well warmed before they put off again. The boat’s icy fastenings were all broken at last: and it was launched: but all was not ready yet. The skiff had lain in a direction east and west; and its north side had so much thicker a coating of ice than the other, that its balance was destroyed. It hung so low on one side as to promise to upset with a touch.
“We must clear off more of the ice,” said Erica. “But how late it is growing!”
“No more knocking, I say,” replied Oddo. “There is a quieter way of trimming the boat.”
He fastened a few stones to the gunwale on the lighter side, and took in a few more for the purpose of shifting the weight, if necessary, while they were on their way.
They did not leave quiet behind them, when they departed. They had roused the multitude of eider-ducks, and other sea-fowl, which thronged the islet, and which now, being roused, began their night-feeding and flying, though at an earlier hour than usual. When their discordant cries were left so far behind as to be softened by distance, the flapping of wings and swash of water, as the fowl plunged in, still made the air busy all round.
The rowers were so occupied with the management of their dangerous craft, that they had not spoken since they left the islet. The skiff would have been unmanageable by any maiden and boy in our country; but, on the coast of Norway, it is as natural to persons of all ages and degrees to guide a boat as to walk. Swiftly but cautiously they shot through the water, till, at length, Oddo uttered a most hideous croak.
“What do you mean?” asked Erica, hastily glancing round her.
Oddo laughed, and looked upwards as he croaked again. He was answered by a similar croak, and a large raven was seen flying homewards over the fiord for the night. Then the echoes all croaked, till the whole region seemed to be full of ravens.
“Are you sure you know the cove?” asked Erica, who wished to put an end to this sound, unwelcome to the superstitious. “Do not make that bird croak so; it will be quiet if you let it alone. Are you sure you can find the cove again?”
“Quite sure. I wish I was as sure that Hund would not find it again before me. Pull away.”
“How much farther is it?”
“Farther than I like to think of. I doubt your arm holding out. I wish Rolf was here.”
Erica did not wish the same thing. She thought that Rolf was, on the whole, safer waging war with bears than with pirates; especially if Hund was among them. She pulled her oar cheerfully, observing that there was no fatigue at present; and that when they were once afloat in the heavier boat, and had cleared the cove, there need be no hurry,—unless, indeed, they should see something of the pirate-schooner on the way: and of this she had no expectation, as the booty that might be had where the fishery was beginning was worth more than anything that could be found higher up the fiords:—to say nothing of the danger of running up into the country, so far as that getting away again depended upon one particular wind.
Yet Erica looked behind her after every few strokes of her oar; and once, when she saw something, her start was felt like a start of the skiff itself. There was a fire glancing and gleaming and quivering over the water, some way down the fiord.
“Some people night-fishing,” observed Oddo. “What sport they will have! I wish I was with them. How fast we go! How you can row when you choose! I can see the man that is holding the torch. Cannot you see his black figure? And the spearman,—see how he stands at the bow,—now going to cast his spear! I wish I was there.”
“We must get farther away,—into the shadow somewhere,—or wait,” observed Erica. “I had rather not wait,—it is growing so late. We might creep along under that promontory, in the shadow, if you would be quiet. I wonder whether you can be silent in the sight of night-fishing.”
“To be sure,” said Oddo, disposed to be angry, and only kept from it by the thought of last night. He helped to bring the skiff into the shadow of the overhanging rocks, and only spoke once more, to whisper that the fishing-boat was drifting down with the tide, and that he thought their cove lay between them and the fishing-party.
It was so. As the skiff rounded the point of the promontory, Oddo pointed out what appeared like a mere dark chasm in the high perpendicular wall of rock that bounded the waters. This chasm still looked so narrow, on approaching it, that Erica hesitated to push her skiff into it, till certain that there was no one there. Oddo, however, was so clear, that she might safely do this, so noiseless was their rowing, and it was so plain that there was no footing on the rocks by which he might enter to explore, that in a sort of desperation, and seeing nothing else to be done, Erica agreed. She wished it had been summer, when either of them might have learned what they wanted by swimming. This was now out of the question; and stealthily therefore she pulled her little craft into the deepest shadow, and crept into the cove.
At a little distance from the entrance it widened; but it was a wonder to Erica that even Oddo’s eyes should have seen Hund moor his boat here from the other side of the fiord; though the fiord was not more than a gunshot over in this part. Oddo himself wondered, till he recalled how the sun was shining down into the chasm at the time. By starlight the outline of all that the cove contained might be seen; the outline of the boat, among other things. There she lay! But there was something about her which was unpleasant enough. There were three men in her.
What was to be done bow? Here was the very worst danger that Erica had feared—worse than finding the boat gone—worse than meeting it in the wide fiord. What was to be done?
There was nothing for it but to do nothing—to lie perfectly still in the shadow, ready, however, to push out on the first movement of the boat to leave the cove; for, though the canoe might remain unnoticed at present, it was impossible that anybody could pass out of the cove without seeing her. In such a case, there would be nothing for it but a race—a race for which Erica and Oddo held themselves prepared, without any mutual explanation; for they dared not speak. The faintest whisper would have crept over the smooth water to the ears in the larger boat.
One thing was certain—that something must happen presently. It is impossible for the hardiest men to sit inactive in a boat for any length of time in a January night in Norway. In the calmest nights the cold is only to be sustained by means of the glow from strong exercise. It was certain that these three men could not have been long in their places, and that they would not sit many moments more without some change in their arrangements.
They did not seem to be talking; for Oddo, who was the best listener in the world, could not discover that a sound issued from their boat. He fancied they were drowsy; and, being aware what were the consequences of yielding to drowsiness in severe cold, the boy began to entertain high hopes of taking these three men prisoners. The whole country would ring with such a feat, performed by Erica and himself.
The men were, however, too much awake to be made prisoners of at present. One was seen to drink from a flask, and the hoarse voice of another was heard grumbling, as far as the listeners could make out, at being kept waiting. The third then rose to look about him, and Erica trembled from head to foot. He only looked upon the land, however, declared he saw nothing of those he was expecting, and began to warm himself as he stood, by repeatedly clapping his arms across his breast, in the way that hackney-coachmen and porters do in England. This was Hund. He could not have been known by his figure, for all persons look alike in wolf-skin pelisses; but the voice and the action were his. Oddo saw how Erica shuddered. He put his finger on his lips, but Erica needed no reminding of the necessity of quietness.
The other two men then rose; and, after a consultation, the words of which could not be heard, all stepped ashore one after another, and climbed a rocky pathway.
“Now, now!” whispered Erica. “Now we can get away!”
“Not without the boat,” said Oddo. “You would not leave them the boat!”
“No—not if—but they will be back in a moment. They are only gone to hasten their companions.”
“I know it,” said Oddo. “Now two strokes forward.”
While she gave these two strokes, which brought the skiff to the stern of the boat, Erica saw that Oddo had taken out a knife, which gleamed in the starlight. It was for cutting the thong by which the boat was fastened to a birch pole, the other end of which was hooked on shore. This was to save his going ashore to unhook the pole. It was well for him that boat-chains were not in use, owing to the scarcity of metal in that region. The clink of a chain would certainly have been heard.
Quickly and silently he entered the boat and tied the skiff to its stern, and he and Erica took their places where the men had sat one minute before. They used their own muffled oars to turn the boat round, till Oddo observed that the boat oars were muffled too. Then voices were heard again. The men were returning. Strongly did the two companions draw their strokes till a good breadth of water lay between them and the shore, and then till they had again entered the deep shadow which shrouded the mouth of the cove. There they paused.
“In with you!” some loud voice said, as man after man was seen in outline coming down the pathway; “in with you! We have lost time enough already.”
“Where is she? I can’t see the boat,” answered the foremost man.
“You can’t miss her,” said one behind, “unless the brandy has got into your eyes.”
“So I should have said; but I do miss her. It is very incomprehensible to me.”
Oddo shook with stifled laughter as he partly saw and partly overheard the perplexity of these men. At last one gave a deep groan, and another declared that the spirits of the fiord were against them, and there was no doubt that their boat was now lying twenty fathoms deep at the bottom of the creek, drawn down by the strong hand of an angry water-spirit. Oddo squeezed Erica’s little hand as he heard this. If it had been light enough, he would have seen that even she was smiling.
One of the men mourned their having no other boat, so that they must give up their plan. Another said that if they had a dozen boats, he would not set foot in one after what had happened. He should go straight back, the way he came, to their own vessel. Another said he would not go till he had looked abroad over the fiord for some chance of seeing the boat. This he persisted in, though told by the rest that it was absurd to suppose that the boat had loosed itself, and gone out into the fiord, in the course of the two minutes that they had been absent. He showed the fragment of the cut thong in proof of the boat not having loosed itself, and set off for a point on the heights which he said overlooked the fiord. One or two went with him, the rest returning up the narrow pathway at some speed—such speed that Erica thought they were afraid of the hindmost being caught by the same enemy that had taken their boat. Oddo observed this too, and he quickened their pace by setting up very loud the mournful cry with which he was accustomed to call out the plovers on the mountain side on sporting days. No sound can be more melancholy; and now, as it rang from the rocks, it was so unsuitable to the place, and so terrible to the already frightened men, that they ran on as fast as the slipperiness of the rocks would allow, till they were all out of sight over the ridge.
“Now for it, before the other two come out above us there!” said Oddo; and in another minute they were again in the fiord, keeping as much in the shadow as they could, however, till they must strike over to the islet.
“Thank God that we came!” exclaimed Erica. “We shall never forget what we owe you, Oddo. You shall see, by the care we take of your grandfather and Ulla, that we do not forget what you have done this night. If Nipen will only forgive, for the sake of this—”
“We were just in the nick of time,” observed Oddo. “It was better than if we had been earlier.”
“I do not know,” said Erica. “Here are their brandy-bottles, and many things besides. I had rather not have had to bring these away.”
“But if we had been earlier, they would not have had their fright. That is the best part of it. Depend upon it, some that have not said their prayers for long will say them to-night.”
“That will be good. But I do not like carrying home these things that are not ours. If they are seen at Erlingsen’s, they may bring the pirates down upon us. I would leave them on the islet, but that the skiff has to be left there too, and that would explain our trick.”
Erica would not consent to throw the property overboard. This would be robbing those who had not actually injured her, whatever their intentions might have been. She thought that if the goods were left upon some barren, uninhabited part of the shore, the pirates would probably be the first to find them; and that, if not, the rumour of such an extraordinary fact, spread by the simple country-people, would be sure to reach them. So Oddo carried on shore, at the first stretch of white beach they came to, the brandy-flasks, the bearskins, the tobacco-pouch, the muskets and powder-horns, and the tinder-box. He scattered these about just above high-water mark, laughing to think how report would tell of the sprite’s care in placing all these articles out of reach of injury from the water.
Oddo did not want for light while doing this. When he returned, he found Erica gazing up over the towering precipices, at the Northern lights, which had now unfurled their broad yellow blaze. She was glad that they had not appeared sooner, to spoil the adventure of the night; but she was thankful to have the way home thus illumined, now that the business was done. She answered with so much alacrity to Oddo’s question whether she was not very weary, that he ventured to say two things which had before been upon his tongue, without his having courage to utter them.
“You will not be so afraid of Nipen any more,” observed he, glancing at her face, of which he could see every feature by the quivering light. “You see how well everything has turned out.”
“O, hush! It is too soon yet to speak so. It is never right to speak so. There is no knowing till next Christmas, nor even then, that Nipen forgives; and the first twenty-four hours are not over yet. Pray do not speak any more, Oddo.”
“Well, not about that. But what was it exactly that you thought Hund would do with this boat and those people? Did you think,” he continued, after a short pause, “that they would come up to Erlingsen’s to rob the place?”
“Not for the object of robbing the place, because there is very little that is worth their taking, far less than at the fishing-grounds; not but they might have robbed us, if they took a fancy to anything we have. No! I thought, and I still think, that they would have carried off Rolf, led on by Hund—”
“O, ho! carried off Rolf! So here is the secret of your wonderful courage to-night—you who durst not look round at your own shadow last night! This is the secret of your not being tired—you who are out of breath with rowing a mile sometimes!”
“That is in summer,” pleaded Erica; “however, you have my secret, as you say, a thing which is no secret at home. We all think that Hund bears such a grudge against Rolf, for having got the houseman’s place—”
“And for nothing else?”
“That,” continued Erica, “he would be glad to—to—”
“To get rid of Rolf, and be a houseman, and get betrothed instead of him. Well: Hund is balked for this time. Rolf must look to himself after to-day.”
Erica sighed deeply. She did not believe that Rolf would attend to his own safety, and the future looked very dark,—all shrouded by her fears.
By the time the skiff was deposited where it had been found, both the rowers were so weary that they gave up the idea of taking the raft in tow, as for full security they ought to do. They doubted whether they could get home, if they had more weight to draw than their own boat. It was well that they left this incumbrance behind, for there was quite peril and difficulty enough without it, and Erica’s strength and spirits failed the more the further the enemy was left behind.
A breath of wind seemed to bring a sudden darkening of the friendly lights which had blazed up higher and brighter, from their first appearance till now. Both rowers looked down the fiord, and uttered an exclamation at the same moment.
“See the fog!” cried Oddo, putting fresh strength into his oar.
“O Nipen! Nipen!” mournfully exclaimed Erica. “Here it is, Oddo,—the west wind!”
The west wind is, in winter, the great foe of the fishermen of the fiords: it brings in the fog from the sea, and the fogs of the Arctic Circle are no trifling enemy. If Nipen really had the charge of the winds, he could not more emphatically show his displeasure towards any unhappy boatman than by overtaking him with the west wind and fog.
“The wind must have just changed,” said Oddo, pulling exhausting strokes, as the fog marched towards them over the water, like a solid and immeasurably lofty wall. “The wind must have gone right round in a minute.”
“To be sure,—since you said what you did of Nipen,” replied Erica, bitterly.
Oddo made no answer, but he did what he could. Erica had to tell him not to wear himself out too quickly, as there was no saying how long they should be on the water.
How long they had been on the water, how far they had deviated from their right course, they could not at all tell, when, at last, more by accident than skill, they touched the shore near home, and heard friendly voices, and saw the light of torches through the thick air. The fog had wrapped them round so that they could not even see the water, or each other. They had rowed mechanically, sometimes touching the rock, sometimes grazing upon the sand, but never knowing where they were till the ringing of a bell, which they recognised as the farm bell, roused hope in their hearts, and strengthened them to throw off the fatal drowsiness caused by cold and fatigue. They made towards the bell, and then heard Peder’s shouts, and next saw the dull light of two torches which looked as if they could not burn in the fog. The old man lent a strong hand to pull up the boat upon the beach, and to lift out the benumbed rowers, and they were presently revived by having their limbs chafed, and by a strong dose of the universal medicine—corn-brandy and camphor—which in Norway, neither man nor woman, young nor old, sick nor well, thinks of refusing upon occasion.
When Erica was in bed, warm beneath an eider-down coverlid, her mistress bent over her and whispered, “You saw and heard Hund himself?”
“Hund himself, madame.”
“What shall we do if he comes back before my husband is home from the bear-hunt?”
“If he comes, it will be in fear and penitence, thinking that all the powers are against him. But O, madame, let him never know how it really was!”
“He must not know. Leave that to me, and go to sleep now, Erica. You ought to rest well, for there is no saying what you and Oddo have saved us from. I could not have asked such a service. My husband and I must see how we can reward it.” And her kind and grateful mistress kissed Erica’s cheek, though Erica tried to explain that she was thinking most of some one else, when she undertook this expedition.
“Then let him thank you in his own way,” replied Madame Erlingsen. “Meantime, why should not I thank you in mine?”
Stiorna here opened her eyes for an instant. When she next did so, her mistress was gone; and she told in the morning what an odd dream she had had of her mistress being in her room, and kissing Erica. It was so distinct a dream that, if the thing had not been so ridiculous, she could almost have declared that she had seen it.