CHAPTER VIII.
As for Salvé, during the first few days after coming home he was a happy man. He was in love: he had received from his captain a hundred-daler note, accompanied by a promise that as soon as he had learnt navigation he should be third mate on board the Juno; and he heard himself admired on all sides by his equals and associates. There was so much work to be done, though, in discharging the cargo and getting the vessel into dock for repairs—they had managed to get her up as far as Arendal—that it would be Saturday evening before he could get his so longed-for home-leave.
On the day before, as he was sitting on watch in the early morning under the lee of the bulwark, he accidentally overheard a conversation going on upon the slip below that set his blood on fire.
The carpenters had just come to their work, and one of them was telling the story of old Jacob's death, and of the heroism which his granddaughter had displayed.
"They say," he went on, "that Captain Beck is to have him buried on Monday next, and that he is to provide for the granddaughter—the navy lieutenant has seen to that."
The noise and the clinking of the hammers that were now at work made
Salvé lose a good deal of the conversation here.
"There is good reason for that, mind you," was the next observation he caught, made in a somewhat lower tone, and accompanied by a doubtful laugh. "It is not for nothing that he has been out so constantly shooting sea-fowl about Torungen."
"Would she be a—sea-bird of that feather? Old Jacob, I should have thought, was not the kind of man—"
"Well, perhaps not that altogether; but the first thing she did was to come straight over here; and he has had her already taken into his own house. I have that from the aunt. The old woman had no suspicion of anything, but told me quite innocently that now she was to be a sort of housekeeper with the Becks."
A slight noise above him here caused the speaker to look up. A deadly pale young sailor was staring down at him over the ship's side with a pair of eyes that struck him as resembling those he had once seen in the head of a mad dog. Their owner turned away at once and crossed the deck.