The Pilot and His Wife

by Jonas Lie

Apart from the sensation which her lofty rig, the shining brass stoppers protruding from her gunports, her swarm of sailors, and the sound of the shrill whistle and occasional beat of drum on board, suggestive of man-of-war discipline, created, curiosity had been further excited by some rumours which were in circulation about her cruise having been a flogging cruise; and among Gjert's friends, and indeed among the harbour people generally, she was so much the object of awe, that whenever the whistle sounded, it would darkly suggest the thought that another flogging was going to take place, and any boats that were near at the moment would sheer off to a more comfortable distance. There was just so much truth in all this that there was one very hot-tempered officer on board who was very much hated by the crew, and who had been unfortunate enough to single out for flogging just the man whom, if he had been better advised, he would have left alone—the song-maker, namely, of the ship. The result had been that ever since a mystic refrain, sufficiently significant, however, had been sung at the capstan, and had found its way on shore, where it was in the mouth now of every boy about the harbour.

Gjert's curiosity about everything connected with the vessel was unbounded, and Frederick Beck, with whom he had established a close friendship since that little affair with the other's grandfather, when Gjert had saved him from punishment, could not tell him half enough. "Fancy," he thought, "to be able to go about in a uniform all covered with gold like the officers there on board!" He could think and talk of nothing else all the time they were sailing home next day.

The wind had risen to half a gale, and they had three reefs in the mainsail. His father, who for some days past had been wandering with increasing frequency up to the flag-staff, or down to the quay, where he would stand with his hand behind his back alone, and look about him in an eager, restless way—sure signs that he was getting tired of being on land—had been up several times to look out for the boy, and was now sitting in the house, pasting together an old chart, as his son came up from the quay shouting out the new song at the top of his voice against the wind. He stopped in the porch to collect his breath to give the last stanza with effect, and husband and wife as they listened exchanged glances.

It was easy to see when he came in that he was bursting with the consciousness of having all sorts of wonderful things to relate. His mother had just laid the table for their evening meal, and as he greeted them in an off-hand sort of way, he drew a chair over to the table at the same time, that he might be ready to fall to the moment the food was set down.

"Well, Gjert," said his mother, after he had sat and looked round him for a moment or two, evidently expecting to be invited to gratify their curiosity, "were you on board?"

"Not myself; but I talked to others who had been. For that matter I saw everything that was to be seen," he assured them with a self-conscious nod, reaching over at the same time for a crust of bread—"from the topmast of the Antonia, a schooner that was lying close alongside. She barely reached up to the Eagle's bulwarks; she would just about make a long-boat for her—"

"If she was a good deal smaller," said his father, drily, completing the sentence for him, as he went over and placed the chart upon the top of the small cupboard in the corner.

Gjert began then, addressing himself to his mother, to support his assertion by a comparison of the height out of the water of the schooner's hull and of the corvette's, by assuring her that the vane at her mast-head had not reached higher than the man-of-war's mainyard, &c., but he was interrupted by his father—

"What song was that you were singing out there?"

"Oh, it was the one about the flogging cruise."