“Oh, no, child. I am heavy, very heavy. No, the good Lord managed wonderfully well for me when He sent me Oline; and He won’t forget you, who have a heart for one who is old and lame. Adieu, adieu, children.”
Ever since that time, whenever we pass her house, Madam Igland nods to us and we smile and wave to her. One day she tapped on the window. The kittens had come.
IX
ON BOARD THE SEVEN STARS
I love the sea. I know nothing else I delight in so much. Just to get the smell of seaweed, or to see the white spray dashing over a bare island, makes me happy. Poor naked hills and rocks, the salty sea air, old wharves, rocking boats, ships that have been on long voyages and are now laid up in the harbor,—all such things are the pleasantest to be found anywhere in the world. If you don’t think so, you can’t ever have known them, I am sure.
Sometimes I think that the sea is most beautiful in summer, when it lies like a polished mirror and the yellow seaweed sways lazily and silently against the steep gray shore; when the sun glitters out over Skagerak so that it hurts your eyes; when the sloops lie becalmed with loose sails and stay in one spot while the big steamers hurry past, bound for some foreign land, and their smoke makes a straight black streak in the sunshine.
But when the southwest wind rushes in and puts white-caps everywhere on the sea, and the sky is so clear and so blue; and the pilot-boat with the broad red stripe in its sail seems to hop over the waves, while the boat we are rowing in rocks and bobs up and down, and our hair blows all over our faces,—oh, then I think that is the very jolliest time on the sea, after all!
In the autumn when the sea moans and roars, and the water looks black while the spray rises like great white ghosts out on the islands, the sea often seems grim and terrible; for there is always some one on the water we are afraid will not come back,—there are so many wrecks in the autumn.
One summer I was on the sea almost every day, although we had no boat of our own. Father says that if he bought us a boat we would certainly get drowned, all of us. However, I could always manage to get a boat some way. If there were no other to be had, it was usually easy to get hold of Sorensen’s old skiff; just climb over two fences, creep around behind a little mound, and then jump right down the steep bank on to Sorensen’s wharf, where the boat is tied.
Once, however, it happened that I jumped almost on old Sorensen’s head as he stood looking out over the sea and talking to himself. Then I was in a bad fix, for he is not a person to joke with.
Another time I had just untied the boat and rowed a few strokes, when an old cracked voice called out: