On the Seaboard: A Novel of the Baltic Islands

by August Strindberg

The barometer and weather vane told him that there would be sunshine later in the day, and therefore he stepped into his boat without long preparations; only provided with chart and compass, on which, however, he did not intend to rely, as he could hear the whistling buoy three miles out at sea, just in the direction in which he would seek a landing.

He therefore put full sail on and was soon in the fog. Here, where the eyes were free from all impressions of color and form, he felt first the pleasure of isolation from the medley of an outer world. He had as it were his own atmosphere around him, soaring onwards alone as on another celestial body, in a medium, which was not air but water vapors, more agreeable and more refreshing to inhale than the exsiccating air with its superfluous seventy-nine per cent of nitrogen, which had remained without evident purpose, when the elements of the earth emerged from the chaos of gases.

It was not an obscure, smoke colored mist, through which the sunlight shone. It was light, like newly melted silver. Warm as wadding it lay healingly round his tired ego, protecting it from jars and pressure. He enjoyed for a moment this fully-awake rest of the senses, without sound, without color, without smell, and he felt how his pained head was soothed by this safety from contact with others. He was sure of not being questioned; needed not to answer, nor talk. The apparatus was standing still a moment, now that all conducts had been cut off; and so he began again to think clearly, systematically over all that had passed. But what he had just gone through was so inferior, so trifling, that he must first let the bilge water run off before the fresh came in.

In the distance he heard the whistling buoy cry at intervals of several minutes, and guided by the sound he steered his course right into the mist.

It became silent again, and only the splashing of the boat at the bow and the purling aft in the wake made him conscious that he was moving forwards. Immediately after he heard a sea gull cry in the fog, and at the same time it seemed to him that he heard the dashing and rustle about the prow of a boat coming abaft, and when he shouted to avoid the danger, he received no answer, but heard only the hissing of the water as when a boat is falling off.

After a moment of sailing he observed to windward the top of a mast with mainsail and jib, but nothing was to be seen of the hull or helmsman for they were hidden by the high swells of the sea.

This occurrence under other circumstances would not have disturbed his thought, but now it made an impression which was momentarily inexplicable, and which caused a fear, which was only one step removed from thoughts of persecution. The newly awakened suspicions were further aroused, when he shortly after caught sight of the haunting boat which shot by him on the lee side, as though painted on the mist, without his being able to get sight of the helmsman who was hidden by the mainsail.

He now hailed again, but instead of an answer he saw only the boat fall off so much that he observed that the stern sheet was empty; and then the apparition vanished in the all devouring mist.

Accustomed to free himself from fear of the unknown, he at once formed suggestions to explain it, but stopped finally at the question, why the helmsman hid himself, for that there must be a helmsman on a sailboat, which did not drift, he had no doubt. Why did he not want to be seen? In usual cases one does not want to be seen when going on a bad errand, wishing to be by oneself, or intending to frighten somebody. That the unknown sailor did not seek solitude was probable, as he held the same course, and if he would frighten an intrepid person, who was not susceptible to superstition, he could find some better way. However he held his course onward towards the buoy, incessantly, doggedly pursued by the haunting boat to the leaward, still at such a distance, that it appeared only as condensed fog.

Upon coming farther out where the wind was stronger the mist seemed to grow somewhat thinner, and like long silver bullion lay the fog-silvered sunlight on the crests of the waves. With the rising of the wind the crying of the buoy increased, and now he steered straight into the sunlight where the mist had parted, and ran at highest speed towards the buoy. There it lay swinging on the wave, cinnabar-red and shining, moist as a taken-out lung with its great black windpipe pointed slanting upwards into the air. And when the wave next time compressed the air, it raised a cry, as though the sea roared after the sun, the bottom chain clinked until it had run out, and now when the waves sank and sucked back the air, there arose a roaring out of the depth as from the giant proboscis of a drowning mastodon.