Mothwise

by Knut Hamsun

The fisherman is a gambler. He lays out his nets or his lines, and waits for the haul; he casts his seine and leaves the rest to fate. Often he meets with only loss and loss again, his gear is carried out to sea, or sunk, or ruined by storms, but he furnishes himself anew and tries again. Sometimes he ventures farther off, to some grounds where he has heard of others finding luck, rowing and toiling for weeks over stubborn seas, only to find he has come too late; the fishing is at an end. But now and again the prize may lie waiting for him on his way, and stop him and fill his boat with money. No one can say whom luck will favour next; all have like grounds, or hope....

Trader Mack had everything in readiness; his seine was in the boat, his master seiner swept the offing with his glass. Mack had a schooner and a couple of coasting-boats in the bay, emptied and cleaned after their voyage to Bergen with dried fish; he would load them up with herring now if the herring came; his store-loft was bursting with empty barrels. He was a buyer himself as well, in the market for herrings to any quantity, and he had provided himself with a stock of ready money, to take all he could before the price went up.

Half-way through May, Mack’s seine made its first haul. Nothing to speak of, only some fifty barrels, but the catch was noised abroad, and, a few days later, a stranger crew appeared in the bay. Things looked like business.

Then one night there was a burglary at Mack’s office in the factory. It was a bold misdemeanour indeed; the nights now were shining bright from evening to morning, and everything could be seen far off. The thief had broken open two doors and stolen two hundred Daler.

It was an altogether unprecedented happening in the village, and a thing beyond understanding. To break in and steal from Mack—from Mack himself—even aged folk declared they had never heard the like in their days. The village folk might do a little pilfering and cheating in accordance with their humble station, but burglary on a grand scale was more than they would ever attempt. And suspicion fell at once on the stranger crew, who were questioned closely.

But the stranger crew were able to prove that they had been out, with every man on board, four miles away, on the night.

This was a terrible blow to Trader Mack. It meant that the thief was someone in the village itself.

Trader Mack cared little for the money; he said openly that the thief must have been a fool not to take more. But that any of his own people should steal from him—the idea cut him to the quick, mighty man as he was, and the protector of them all. Did he not furnish half the entire communal budget with the taxes he paid on his various undertakings?—and had any deserving case ever been turned away from his door without relief?

Mack offered a reward for information leading to discovery. Something had to be done. There were strange boats coming in now almost every day, and a nice idea they would gain of the relations between Trader Mack and his people when it was found that they robbed and stole his money. Like the open-handed merchant prince he was, Mack fixed the reward at four hundred Daler. Then all could see he was not afraid of putting up a round sum.