On the Seaboard: A Novel of the Baltic Islands

by August Strindberg

It was the first mighty impression he had had after a month of prattle and trivialities.

He admired the genius of man, that had hung this buoy on the insidious wolf, the sea, that it should itself caution its defenseless victims. He envied this hermit, who was permitted to lie fettered to a bottom rock in the middle of the sea and with its roaring to beat the wind and wave day and night so that it could be heard miles around; to be the first to give the voyager a welcome to his land; and to wail forth its pain and be heard.

The sight was quickly passed, and the demi-darkness again closed round the boat, which now fell off towards the skerry for which he had started to rest. For half an hour he lay on the same tack until he heard the breakers beating on the strand; then he fell off to leeward and soon sped into a cove where he could land.

It was the last skerry outside the channel and consisted of a couple of acres of red gneiss without any vegetation other than a few lichens on places where the drifting ice had not scraped the rocks perfectly clean. Only sea gulls and mews had their resting place here, and now as the commissioner moored his boat and stepped up on the highest point of the skerry they gave forth cries of alarm. Here he wrapped himself in his blanket, and placed himself in a well-polished crevice, which made him a comfortable arm chair. Here, without witness, without auditors, he gave himself up to thoughts and let them loose, confessed himself, scrutinized himself inwardly and heard his own voice from within. Only two months of rubbing against other beings, and he had through the law of accommodation lost the better part of himself, had become used to acquiescing to avoid disputes, drilled himself to yield to avoid a break, and developed into a characterless, malleable, sociable fellow; with his head full of bagatelles and being urged to speak in an abbreviated, simplified vocabulary, he felt that his scale of language had lost its semi-tones, and that his thoughts had been switching in on old worn rails, which led back to the ballast place. Old lax sophisms about respecting others' belief, that everybody will be happy in his grime, had crept back into him, and he had from pure politeness performed as a wizard and finally got a dangerous competitor on his hands, who every moment threatened to liberate the only soul he would unite with his own.

A smile crossed his lips when he thought of how he had fooled these people, who believed they had fooled him: and with a subdued voice he involuntarily ejaculated, "asses," which made him start, frightened at the thought that somebody might have heard him.

And so the silent thoughts continued: They believed they had caught his soul, and he had caught them! They imagined that he went their errands, and they did not know that he used them as a gymnastical exercise for his soul and to feel the enjoyment of power.

But these thoughts, which he had not dared to acknowledge before as his own, proclaimed themselves now as the children of his soul, big, healthy children, whom he acknowledged as his own. And what had he done otherwise than the others had willed to do, but could not! And this young woman, who believed she had turned a hand organ for herself, did not suspect that she was selected to the sounding board of his soul....

At this moment he jumped up, and interrupted the course of his dangerous thoughts, for he plainly heard footsteps on the flat rocks in the fog, and although he at once guessed that it was an error of hearing, caused by the solitude and fear of being taken unawares, he turned his steps towards his boat. But when he found it in good condition, he decided to go around the skerry to search for the other boat, for there must be one here, since another being had come over. He climbed on the strand bowlders and soon found behind the next point on the lee side a boat with the same sprit sail rig, as he had seen out on the sea. It was thus evident that the sailor must be on the skerry, and now the commissioner began a razzia in the fog, but always kept in the neighborhood of the boats, so that he could cut off retreat. When after having cried out several times without getting an answer he finally saw that he must leave the boats in order to catch the mysterious being, he went down to the boats, and took off the tillers to make every escape impossible, and so he went into the mist again. He heard steps before him and followed them by the sound, but soon heard them in an entirely other direction. Tired of the hunt and provoked by the fruitlessness of the endeavors, he decided to make a short ending to the scene, as he had no mind to wait until the fog had disappeared.

With as loud a voice as he could command, he cried:

"If there is anybody there, answer, for I am going to shoot."