On the Seaboard: A Novel of the Baltic Islands

by August Strindberg

"Shall we sight Landsort or Sandham's lighthouse?"

"Not much of Sandham but more to Landsort," replied the surveyor.

"Sit still at your places and we shall come out all right," finished the commissioner, who seemed to have taken a bearing by the heads of the three men and some unknown firm point in the distance.

The clouds had flocked together and the May dusk had given place to obscurity. It was like a swing forwards into some thin impenetrable material, without light. The sea was rising only as darker shadows against the shadowy sky, the heads of the waves struck the bottom of the boat and lifting it up on their backs dived down on the other side and rolled out. But now to separate friend from foe was difficult and the calculation more uncertain. Two oars were out to leeward and one to windward, which if applied with more or less power at the right moment would keep the boat buoyant.

The commissioner, who soon could not see more than the two lighthouses in north and south, must now compensate the loss of sight by the ear and before he could become used to the sea's roaring, sighing, hissing and spouting, or distinguish between a dashing or a surging wave, the water had already come into the boat, so that to save his fine shoes he placed his feet on a thwart.

Soon he had studied the harmony of the waves, and could even hear from the regular beating of the swell the danger approaching, and feel on the right ear-drum when the wind pressed the harder and threatened to toss the water higher. It was as though he had improvised nautical and meteorological instruments out of his susceptible senses from which the conductors connected with his big brain battery, hidden by that little ridiculous hat and the black bang.

The men who at the moment of the water's intrusion muttered rebellious words, became silenced when they felt how the boat shot forward, and at each word of command, windward, or leeward, they knew which way to pull.

The commissioner had taken his bearings on the two lighthouses and used the lorgnette quadrangle glass as a distance measure, but the difficulty of holding the course was that no light could be seen from the windows of the cottages since they were in the lee of the hillock. When the dangerous voyage had been continued an hour or more, a dark rise was observed forward against the horizon. The helmsman, who would not, to gain doubtful advice, disturb his own intuitions on which he relied most, bore down on what he supposed to be the East Skerries or some of their points, consoling himself that arriving at a firm object, whatever it might be, was always better than hovering between air and water. The dark wall approached with a speed greater than that of the boat so that suspicion dawned in the commissioner's mind that everything was not right in their course. In order to ascertain what it could be and at the same time give a signal in case the obscure object should be a vessel which had neglected to put its lights out, he took up his box of storm matches and lighting them all, held them up in the air a moment, then threw them up so that they illuminated a few meters around the boat. The light penetrated the darkness for only, a second, but the picture which appeared like a magic-lantern view was fixed before his eyes for several seconds, and he saw drifting ice heaved upon a rock, against which a wave broke like a cave over a gigantic rock of limespar, and a flock of long-tailed ducks and sea-gulls that arose with numerous shrieks and were drowned in the darkness. The sight of the breaking wave affected the commissioner as it does the condemned to look upon the coffin in which his decapitated body shall rest, and he felt in a moment of imagination the double pang of cold and smothering, but the agony which paralyzed his muscles awoke on the other hand all the concealed powers of the soul, so that he, in a fraction of a second, could make a sure estimate of how great the danger was, and count out the only way of escape, whereupon he cried out, "Hold all!"

The men who had been sitting with their backs toward the wave and had not observed it, rested on their oars, and the boat was sucked into the wave which might have been three or four meters high. It broke over the boat, forming a green cupola and fell on the other side with all its mass of water. The boat was disgorged half filled with water and the occupants half smothered from the dreadful compression of air. Three outcries as from sleepers who have the nightmare were heard at a time, but the fourth, the man at the tiller, was silent. He made only a gesture with his hand toward the rock where now a light was shimmering, only a few cable lengths to leeward, and then sank in the stern sheets and lay there.

The boat ceased pitching for it had come into smooth water, the oarsmen were all sitting as if intoxicated, dipping the oars, which were now unnecessary for the boat was slowly wafted into harbor by the fair wind.