So saying, he rushed away over the crisp sand as fast as his feet would carry him, while his sister Hilda, who was rather a soft-hearted girl, and ready with her tears, ran after him, all out of breath and calling to him at the top of her voice. Finally, when she was more than half way to the boat-house, she stumbled against a stone and fell full length upon the beach. Bernt, fearing that she might be hurt, paused in his flight and returned to pick her up, but could not refrain from giving her a vindictive little shake, as soon as he discovered that she had sustained no injury.
“I do think girls are the greatest bother that ever was invented,” he said, in high dudgeon. “I don’t see what they are good for, anyway.”
“I want to go with you, Bernt,” cried Hilda.
Seeing there was no escape, he thought he might just as well be kind to her.
“You may go,” he said, “if you will promise never to tell anybody what I am going to do?”
“No, Bernt, I shall never tell,” said the child, eagerly, and drying her tears.
“I am going a-whaling,” whispered Bernt, mysteriously. “Come along!”
“Whaling!” echoed the girl, in delicious excitement. “Dear Bernt, how good you are! Oh, how lovely! No, I shall never tell it to anybody as long as I live.”
It was late in the afternoon, and the sun, which at that time of the year never sets in the northern part of Norway, threw its red, misty rays like a veil of dull flame over the lofty mountains which, with their snow-hooded peaks, pierced the fiery clouds; their huge reflections shone in soft tints of red, green, and blue in the depth of the fiord, whose glittering surface was calm and smooth as a mirror. Only in the bay which the school of dolphins had entered was the water ruffled; but there, high spouts rose every moment into the air and descended again in showers of fine spray.