Bernick. My house and home, my domestic happiness, my whole position as a citizen in society—all these I owe to you.
Johan. Well, I am glad of it....
Bernick. Thanks, thanks all the same. Not one in ten thousand would have done what you then did for me.
Johan. Oh, nonsense!... One of us had to take the blame upon him.
Bernick. But to whom did it lie nearer than to the guilty one?
Johan. Stop! Then it lay nearer to the innocent one. I was alone, free, an orphan.... You, on the other hand, had your old mother in life; and, besides, you had just become secretly engaged to Betty, and she was very fond of you. What would have become of her if she had come to know——?
Bernick. True, true, true; but ... but yet, that you should turn appearances against yourself, and go away——
Johan. Have no scruples, my dear Karsten ... you had to be saved, and you were my friend.
Here the idea of the sacrificial lamb is normal and rational. But it is soon afterwards introduced into the same piece in a distorted shape. Bernick sends the rotten-keeled Indian Girl to sea, to her certain destruction, in spite of his foreman Aune’s opposition. While, however, planning this wholesale murder, he also schemes for laying the burden of his crime on the innocent Aune (p. 65):
Krap. ... There is rascality at work, Consul.