“Heaven be praised!” said the crew—and the captain added: “I am going to let the company know that you saved ship and cargo.”
“That’s all very well, but we are not through yet,” said the boy, “there is worse to come,” and he told them to reef every last rag, as well as what had been left of the topsails. The second squall hit them with even greater force than the first, and was so vicious and violent that the whole crew was frightened. While it was at its worst, the boy told them to throw overboard the second cord; and they threw it over billet by billet, and took care not to take any from the third cord. When the last billet fell, they again heard a deep groan, and then all was still. “Now there will be one more squall, and that will be the worst,” said the boy, and sent every one to his station. There was not a hawser loose on the whole ship.
The last squall hit them with far more force than either of the preceding ones, the ship laid over on her side so that they thought she would not right herself again, and the breaker swept over the deck.
But the boy told them to throw the last cord of wood overboard, billet by billet, and no two billets at once. And when the last billet of wood fell, they heard a deep groaning, as though some one were dying hard, and when all was quiet once more, the whole sea was the color of blood, as far as eye could reach.
When they reached land, the captain and the quartermasters spoke of writing to their wives. “That is something you might just as well let be,” said the cabin-boy, “seeing that you no longer have any wives.”
“What silly talk is this, young know-it-all! We have no wives?” said the captain. “Or do you happen to have done away with them?” asked the quartermasters.
“No, all of us together did away with them,” answered the boy, and told them what he had heard and seen that Sunday afternoon when he was on watch on the ship; while the crew was ashore, and the captain was buying his deckload of wood.
And when they sailed home they learned that their wives had disappeared the day of the storm, and that since that time no one had seen or heard anything more of them.
NOTE
A weird tale of the sea and of witches is that of “Storm Magic” (Asbjörnsen, Huldreeventyr, I, p. 248. From the vicinity of Christiania, told by a sailor, Rasmus Olsen). In the “Fritjof Legend” the hero has a similar adventure at sea with two witches, who call up a tremendous storm. It would be interesting to know the inner context of the cabin-boy’s counter magic, and why it is that the birch-wood, cast into the sea billet by billet, had the power to destroy the witches.