The Modern Vikings: Stories of Life and Sport in the Norseland

by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

He made a motion to drag the struggling boy away, but the crowd closed about him on all sides, and pressed in upon him with angry shouts and gestures. The third officer, who had so far taken no part in the proceedings, now stepped up to the purser and begged him to release the boy.

“Of course,” he said, “you are in the right; but if I were you, I would waive my right this time. It’s hardly worth while making a row about so small a matter; and it is always bad policy to go to the captain with squabbles and grievances, especially when they might so easily have been avoided. I assure you, you will only injure yourself by doing it.”

They talked for a minute together, while the ever-increasing throng surged hither and thither about them. Whether purposely or not, the irate purser, in the zeal of his argument, released his hold on Truls’ collar, and the liberated boy dodged away, as quickly as possible, and was soon lost in the crowd. The Savoyard and his bear had long before seized the opportunity to withdraw from the public gaze.

III.

The life on shipboard did not agree with Fiddle-John. Like a spoiled child, he was restless and unhappy when he was unnoticed. All day long he sat on the top of a coil of rope in the forecastle of the ship and sang. The forecastle was often deserted, and there were probably not many among the emigrants who would have been capable of judging whether his voice was in any way extraordinary. And yet, one there was who found an untold amount of comfort in listening to that clear, sweet tenor of Fiddle-John’s, and that one was the Savoyard boy. It had been his constant effort, since his encounter with the purser, to make himself as inconspicuous as possible, and it would have gratified him much if he had possessed some means of making the bear invisible. As the forecastle was the least visited portion of the ship, he had chosen to hide himself there behind the anchor-cable.

He trembled whenever anyone approached, and threw the end of the tarpaulin which covered the deck-freight over his friend, the bear. The only people whose company did not incommode him were Fiddle-John and his children, for whom he testified his devotion by smiles and gestures and all sorts of endearing Italian diminutives, which, on account of his caressing tones, even a dumb brute could not have failed to appreciate. After a long and exciting pantomime, Truls ascertained that his name was Annibale Petrucchio and that his bear gloried in the name of Garibaldi.

Both boys felt that they had made great progress in each other’s friendship when these facts had been established, and another hour of dumb show, intersprinkled with exclamations, resulted in a still more astonishing revelation, which was that Annibale and his friend slept every night on deck, because they feared to arouse once more the purser’s displeasure by invading the steerage. Sometimes Annibale curled himself up with Garibaldi within the coil of the anchor-cable—he jumped up, dragging the bear after him, to show the attitude in which they slept—but when it rained, or when the sea was high enough to sprinkle the deck, they both crept under the deck-freight tarpaulin, where they had made themselves a little house between two trunks which they had pushed apart. The only trouble was that the April nights were very cold—Annibale shivered all over to show how cold he was—and anchor-cables and deck-freight were not particularly soft to sleep upon.

As Alf and Truls became duly impressed with the unpleasantness of the Savoyard’s situation, they took counsel in order to ascertain how they might relieve his distress. But all the plans that were suggested were found to be risky, and night came before they arrived at a decision. The weather had been raw and blustery all the afternoon, and the officer on the bridge had been looking every minute uneasily at the falling barometer. After sunset the gale increased in violence and the ship pitched and rolled in the heavy sea. In the steerage there was a terrible commotion; women prayed and screamed and moaned, children of all ages joined in the chorus, the lamps swung forward and backward in their brass frames, and bottles, glasses, and loose crockery made a terrible racket, sliding to starboard and back again to port with every motion of the ship. The wind howled in the rigging, and every now and then a big wave swept across the deck and poured out through the scupper-holes.

Alf and Truls, who had been lying awake for hours listening to the hollow boom of the waves and the shrieking of the wind, conversed in a whisper about the poor Savoyard, who had to be on deck in that terrible weather, and they finally summoned courage to creep toward the ladder and slowly to mount it, tightly clutching each other’s hands. It was a risky undertaking, and their hearts stuck in their throats as they clung to the door-knob, hesitating whether they should open the door. Without knowing, however, they must have given the knob a twist; for suddenly the door swung open with a tremendous bang, and Truls was flung across the deck against the bulwarks with such force that for an instant he scarcely knew whether he had lighted on his head or his feet.