The boys had orders from their parents to take care of themselves, for Marta, the old skipper’s widow, had three nights running heard the sea demand corpses with a short bark. They talked about that, too, and about when the fishermen would venture out again, while they ran about the beach. “A bottle, a bottle!” cried one of them suddenly, dashing off along the shore; he was quite sure he had seen a bottle bob up out of the surf a little way off, and disappear again. The whole swarm stood for a long time gazing eagerly out into the seething foam, and Kilen and another boy had thrown off their jackets to be ready to jump out when it appeared again.
The bottle did not appear again, but it had given a spur to the imagination, and every boy had his own solemn knowledge of such things. Just now, during the equinoctial storms, many a bottle went over a ship’s side with a last message to those on land. Really and truly, of course, that was why you learned to write—so as to be able to write your messages when your hour came. Then perhaps the bottle would be swallowed by a shark, or perhaps it would be fished up by stupid peasants who took it home with them to their wives to put drink into—this last a good-natured hit at Pelle. But it sometimes happened that it drifted ashore just at the place it was meant for; and, if not, it was the finder’s business to take it to the nearest magistrate, if he didn’t want to lose his right hand.
Out in the harbor the waves broke over the mole; the fishermen had drawn their boats up on shore. They could not rest indoors in their warm cottages; the sea and bad weather kept them on the beach night and day. They stood in shelter behind their boats, yawning heavily and gazing out to sea, where now and then a sail fluttered past like a storm-beaten bird.
“In, in!” cried the girls from the schoolroom door, and the boys sauntered slowly up. Fris was walking backward and forward in front of his desk, smoking his pipe with the picture of the king on it, and with the newspaper sticking out of his pocket. “To your places!” he shouted, striking his desk with the cane.
“Is there any news?” asked a boy, when they had taken their places. Fris sometimes read aloud the Shipping News to them.
“I don’t know,” answered Fris crossly. “You can get out your slates and arithmetics.”
“Oh, we’re going to do sums, oh, that’s fun!” The whole class was rejoicing audibly as they got out their things.
Fris did not share the children’s delight over arithmetic; his gifts, he was accustomed to say, were of a purely historical nature. But he accommodated himself to their needs, because long experience had taught him that a pandemonium might easily arise on a stormy day such as this; the weather had a remarkable influence upon the children. His own knowledge extended only as far as Christian Hansen’s Part I.; but there were two peasant boys who had worked on by themselves into Part III., and they helped the others.
The children were deep in their work, their long, regular breathing rising and falling in the room like a deep sleep. There was a continual passing backward and forward to the two arithmeticians, and the industry was only now and then interrupted by some little piece of mischief that came over one or another of the children as a reminder; but they soon fell into order again.
At the bottom of the class there was a sound of sniffing, growing more and more distinct. Fris laid down his newspaper impatiently.