"It really was one then?" said the pilot, with a searching look at his son. He did not easily give credence to gossip of the kind.
To be addressed by his father in this interested tone was highly flattering to Gjert's self-love. It was this, in fact, that he had been eager all the time to tell them about; and he burst out now with the deepest conviction in his manner—
"That it was, father! Some say six, others nine; but that they were all flogged within an inch of their lives and put in irons down in the Mediterranean is as certain as—as," he looked about him eagerly here for something that should be duly emphatic, and when no other more striking illustration suggested itself, had to wind up finally with this rather lame one—"as that the cuckoo is standing up there on the clock."
The intelligence had the effect of bringing his mother to a seat, with the plate on her lap, while she looked apprehensively from her son to her husband. There was nothing, however, in the aspect of the latter to justify her apprehension.
"Who did you hear this from, Gjert?" she asked.
"Who did I hear it from? From everybody."
But bethinking him then that in his incredulous home "everybody" would be reckoned about as valuable an authority as "nobody," he continued—
"From Frederick Beck. He had talked himself with one of the sailors who was in charge of the officers' gig down by the landing-stairs while his chief was on shore; and that wasn't all he heard, but a lot of other queer things besides." Here he looked round him evidently with a satisfied feeling that he must have convinced them this time at any rate.
"He seems to have been a credible kind of a chap, that sailor," observed his father with a mild irony, which escaped his son, however; while his mother looked at him in some anxiety lest he should be going to sit there and make a fool of himself. "Well, and what further did he tell him?"
"Oh, lots of things."