It was the day before Christmas eve, when he after a stormy night, during which he believed he had heard cannon shots and cries of human beings, went out to walk on the newly fallen snow. The heavens were blue black as an iron sheet, and the waves were heaving against the strand While the whistling buoy cried in a single uninterrupted howl, as if it called for help.
And now he saw out on the sea to the south-east a big, black steamer, with cinnabar red bottom shining as a torn and bloody breast. The funnel with its white ring lay broken on one side, and in the masts and yards dark figures were hanging, twisted as angleworms on hooks.
From a crack midships could be seen how the waves tore out chests, parcels, bales, boxes and sunk the heaviest, but carried the lighter ones to shore.
With an indifference for the fate of the shipwrecked, such as that one must feel, who regards it lucky to die, he went forwards on the strand and came out on the point, where the pile of stones and the cross stood. There the waves foamed more furiously than elsewhere, and on the green water he saw scattered objects of strange shape and color, over which the mews circled with spiteful cries, as though they had been deceived in their greedy waiting for prey.
After he had regarded the curious objects, which came nearer, he saw that they resembled very small children, very finely dressed. Some had blond bangs, others black, their cheeks were rose and white, and their big, open blue eyes, glanced up to the black sky, immovable and without winking. But when they came nearer the strand, he observed, that when they swung on the wave, the eyes of some of them moved, as if they signaled to him, that he should rescue them. And on the next wave five were thrown upon the strand.
He had his desire so fixed to own a child and so rooted in his soft brain, that he was not led to the thought, that they were dolls, which the delayed and stranded vessel had brought for the Christmas season, and he collected his arms full of the small orphan children, whom the sea, the great mother, gave him. And with his wet protégées pressed to his breast he hurried back to the cottage to dry them. But he had nothing to make a fire with, for the people had said they had no wood to sell. He himself did not feel the cold, but his little Christmas company should have it warm, and therefore he broke a book shelf to pieces, and made a flaming fire in the big fireplace, pulled out the sofa and placed the five little ones in a row before the fire. After he comprehended that they could not dry without being undressed, he began to take off their clothes, but when he saw that they were all girls, he left their small chemises on.
Now he washed their feet and hands with his sponge, and afterwards combed their hair, dressed them and laid them to sleep.
It was as though he had company in the cottage, and he walked on tiptoe not to wake them.
He had found something to live for, something to cherish, to give his sympathy to, and when he regarded the small sleepers a moment and saw that they lay with open eyes, he thought that the light pained them, therefore he let the window shades down.