Whole rows of silver dollars stood in the barrels in the loft, and his boat-building establishment stretched over all the islands of Sjöholm.
One Sunday his brothers and merry little Malfri had gone to church in the Femböring. When evening came, and they hadn't come home, the boatman came in and said that some one had better sail out and look after them, as a gale was blowing up.
Jack was sitting with a plumb-line in his hand, taking the measurements of a new boat, which was to be bigger and statelier than any of the others, so that it was not well to disturb him.
"Do you fancy they're gone out in a rotten old tub, then?" bellowed he. And the boatman was driven out as quickly as he had come.
But at night Jack lay awake and listened. The wind whined outside and shook the walls, and there were cries from the sea far away. And just then there came a knocking at the door, and some one called him by name.
"Go back whence you came," cried he, and nestled more snugly in his bed.
Shortly afterwards there came the fumbling and the scratching of tiny fingers at the door.
"Can't you leave me at peace o' nights?" he bawled, "or must I build me another bedroom?"
But the knocking and the fumbling for the latch outside continued, and there was a sweeping sound at the door, as of some one who could not open it. And there was a stretching of hands towards the latch ever higher and higher.
But Jack only lay there and laughed. "The Fembörings that are built at Sjöholm don't go down before the first blast that blows," mocked he.