their great boats, it is wonderful to see how they cross the reefs.
One of them stands upright in the bow of the boat, and the others
watch him sitting with the oars in their hands. Outside the reef it
looks as if the boat was not approaching land but going back to sea;
then the man who is standing up gives them the signal that the great
wave is coming which is to float them across the reef. The boat is
lifted high into the air, so that the keel is seen from the shore; the
next moment nothing can be seen, mast, keel, and people are all
hidden- it seems as though the sea had devoured them; but in a few
moments they emerge like a great sea animal climbing up the waves, and
the oars move as if the creature had legs. The second and third reef
are passed in the same manner; then the fishermen jump into the
water and push the boat towards the shore- every wave helps them-
and at length they have it drawn up, beyond the reach of the breakers.
A wrong order given in front of the reef- the slightest
hesitation- and the boat would be lost,
"Then it would be all over with me and Martin too!"
This thought passed through Jurgen's mind one day while they
were out at sea, where his foster-father had been taken suddenly
ill. The fever had seized him. They were only a few oars' strokes from
the reef, and Jurgen sprang from his seat and stood up in the bow.
"Father-let me come!" he said, and he glanced at Martin and across
the waves; every oar bent with the exertions of the rowers as the
great wave came towards them, and he saw his father's pale face, and
dared not obey the evil impulse that had shot through his brain. The
boat came safely across the reef to land; but the evil thought
remained in his heart, and roused up every little fibre of
bitterness which he remembered between himself and Martin since they
had known each other. But he could not weave the fibres together,
nor did he endeavour to do so. He felt that Martin had robbed him, and
this was enough to make him hate his former friend. Several of the
fishermen saw this, but Martin did not- he remained as obliging and
talkative as ever, in fact he talked rather too much.
Jurgen's foster-father took to his bed, and it became his
death-bed, for he died a week afterwards; and now Jurgen was heir to
the little house behind the sand-hills. It was small, certainly, but
still it was something, and Martin had nothing of the kind.
"You will not go to sea again, Jurgen, I suppose," observed one of
the old fishermen. "You will always stay with us now."
But this was not Jurgen's intention; he wanted to see something of
the world. The eel-breeder of Fjaltring had an uncle at Old Skjagen,
who was a fisherman, but also a prosperous merchant with ships upon
the sea; he was said to be a good old man, and it would not be a bad
thing to enter his service. Old Skjagen lies in the extreme north of
Jutland, as far away from the Hunsby dunes as one can travel in that
country; and this is just what pleased Jurgen, for he did not want
to remain till the wedding of Martin and Else, which would take
place in a week or two.
The old fisherman said it was foolish to go away, for now that
Jurgen had a home Else would very likely be inclined to take him
instead of Martin.
Jurgen gave such a vague answer that it was not easy to make out
what he meant- the old man brought Else to him, and she said:
"You have a home now; you ought to think of that."
And Jurgen thought of many things.
The sea has heavy waves, but there are heavier waves in the
human heart. Many thoughts, strong and weak, rushed through Jurgen's
brain, and he said to Else:
"If Martin had a house like mine, which of us would you rather
have?"
"But Martin has no house and cannot get one."
"Suppose he had one?"
"Well, then I would certainly take Martin, for that is what my
heart tells me; but one cannot live upon love."
Jurgen turned these things over in his mind all night. Something
was working within him, he hardly knew what it was, but it was even
stronger than his love for Else; and so he went to Martin's, and
what he said and did there was well considered. He let the house to
Martin on most liberal terms, saying that he wished to go to sea
again, because he loved it. And Else kissed him when she heard of
it, for she loved Martin best.
Jurgen proposed to start early in the morning, and on the
evening before his departure, when it was already getting rather late,
he felt a wish to visit Martin once more. He started, and among the
dunes met the old fisherman, who was angry at his leaving the place.
The old man made jokes about Martin, and declared there must be some
magic about that fellow, of whom the girls were so fond.
Jurgen did not pay any attention to his remarks, but said good-bye
to the old man and went on towards the house where Martin dwelt. He
heard loud talking inside; Martin was not alone, and this made
Jurgen waver in his determination, for he did not wish to see Else
again. On second thoughts, he decided that it was better not to hear
any more thanks from Martin, and so he turned back.
On the following morning, before the sun rose, he fastened his
knapsack on his back, took his wooden provision box in his hand, and
went away among the sand-hills towards the coast path. This way was
more pleasant than the heavy sand road, and besides it was shorter;
and he intended to go first to Fjaltring, near Bovbjerg, where the
eel-breeder lived, to whom he had promised a visit.
The sea lay before him, clear and blue, and the mussel shells
and pebbles, the playthings of his childhood, crunched over his
feet. While he thus walked on his nose suddenly began to bleed; it was
a trifling occurrence, but trifles sometimes are of great
importance. A few large drops of blood fell upon one of his sleeves.
He wiped them off and stopped the bleeding, and it seemed to him as if
this had cleared and lightened his brain. The sea-cale bloomed here
and there in the sand as he passed. He broke off a spray and stuck
it in his hat; he determined to be merry and light-hearted, for he was
going out into the wide world- "a little way out, beyond the bay,"
as the young eels had said. "Beware of bad people who will catch
you, and skin you, and put you in the frying-pan!" he repeated in
his mind, and smiled, for he thought he should find his way through
the world- good courage is a strong weapon!
The sun was high in the heavens when he approached the narrow
entrance to Nissum Bay. He looked back and saw a couple of horsemen
galloping a long distance behind him, and there were other people with
them. But this did not concern him.
The ferry-boat was on the opposite side of the bay. Jurgen
called to the ferry-man, and the latter came over with his boat.
Jurgen stepped in; but before he had got half-way across, the men whom
he had seen riding so hastily, came up, hailed the ferry-man, and
commanded him to return in the name of the law. Jurgen did not
understand the reason of this, but he thought it would be best to turn
back, and therefore he himself took an oar and returned. As soon as
the boat touched the shore, the men sprang on board, and before he was
aware of it, they had bound his hands with a rope.
"This wicked deed will cost you your life," they said. "It is a
good thing we have caught you."
He was accused of nothing less than murder. Martin had been
found dead, with his throat cut. One of the fishermen, late on the
previous evening, had met Jurgen going towards Martin's house; this
was not the first time Jurgen had raised his knife against Martin,
so they felt sure that he was the murderer. The prison was in a town
at a great distance, and the wind was contrary for going there by sea;
but it would not take half an hour to get across the bay, and
another quarter of an hour would bring them to Norre-Vosborg, the
great castle with ramparts and moat. One of Jurgen's captors was a
fisherman, a brother of the keeper of the castle, and he said it might
be managed that Jurgen should be placed for the present in the dungeon
at Vosborg, where Long Martha the gipsy had been shut up till her
execution. They paid no attention to Jurgen's defence; the few drops
of blood on his shirt-sleeve bore heavy witness against him. But he
was conscious of his innocence, and as there was no chance of clearing
himself at present he submitted to his fate.
The party landed just at the place where Sir Bugge's castle had
stood, and where Jurgen had walked with his foster-parents after the
burial feast, during. the four happiest days of his childhood. He
was led by the well-known path, over the meadow to Vosborg; once
more the elders were in bloom and the lofty lime-trees gave forth
sweet fragrance, and it seemed as if it were but yesterday that he had
last seen the spot. In each of the two wings of the castle there was a
staircase which led to a place below the entrance, from whence there
is access to a low, vaulted cellar. In this dungeon Long Martha had
been imprisoned, and from here she was led away to the scaffold. She
had eaten the hearts of five children, and had imagined that if she
could obtain two more she would be able to fly and make herself
invisible. In the middle of the roof of the cellar there was a
little narrow air-hole, but no window. The flowering lime trees
could not breathe refreshing fragrance into that abode, where
everything was dark and mouldy. There was only a rough bench in the
cell; but a good conscience is a soft pillow, and therefore Jurgen
could sleep well.
The thick oaken door was locked, and secured on the outside by
an iron bar; but the goblin of superstition can creep through a
keyhole into a baron's castle just as easily as it can into a
fisherman's cottage, and why should he not creep in here, where Jurgen
sat thinking of Long Martha and her wicked deeds? Her last thoughts on
the night before her execution had filled this place, and the magic
that tradition asserted to have been practised here, in Sir
Svanwedel's time, came into Jurgen's mind, and made him shudder; but a
sunbeam, a refreshing thought from without, penetrated his heart
even here- it was the remembrance of the flowering elder and the sweet
smelling lime-trees.
He was not left there long. They took him away to the town of
Ringkjobing, where he was imprisoned with equal severity.
Those times were not like ours. The common people were treated
harshly; and it was just after the days when farms were converted into
knights' estates, when coachmen and servants were often made
magistrates, and had power to sentence a poor man, for a small
offence, to lose his property and to corporeal punishment. Judges of
this kind were still to be found; and in Jutland, so far from the
capital, and from the enlightened, well-meaning, head of the
Government, the law was still very loosely administered sometimes- the
smallest grievance Jurgen could expect was that his case should be
delayed.
His dwelling was cold and comfortless; and how long would he be
obliged to bear all this? It seemed his fate to suffer misfortune
and sorrow innocently. He now had plenty of time to reflect on the
difference of fortune on earth, and to wonder why this fate had been
allotted to him; yet he felt sure that all would be made clear in
the next life, the existence that awaits us when this life is over.
His faith had grown strong in the poor fisherman's cottage; the
light which had never shone into his father's mind, in all the
richness and sunshine of Spain, was sent to him to be his comfort in
poverty and distress, a sign of that mercy of God which never fails.
The spring storms began to blow. The rolling and moaning of the
North Sea could be heard for miles inland when the wind was blowing,
and then it sounded like the rushing of a thousand waggons over a hard
road with a mine underneath. Jurgen heard these sounds in his
prison, and it was a relief to him. No music could have touched his
heart as did these sounds of the sea- the rolling sea, the boundless
sea, on which a man can be borne across the world before the wind,
carrying his own house with him wherever he goes, just as the snail
carries its home even into a strange country.
He listened eagerly to its deep murmur and then the thought arose-
"Free! free! How happy to be free, even barefooted and in ragged
clothes!" Sometimes, when such thoughts crossed his mind, the fiery
nature rose within him, and he beat the wall with his clenched fists.
Weeks, months, a whole year had gone by, when Niels the thief,
called also a horse-dealer, was arrested; and now better times came,
and it was seen that Jurgen had been wrongly accused.
On the afternoon before Jurgen's departure from home, and before
the murder, Niels the thief, had met Martin at a beer-house in the
neighbourhood of Ringkjobing. A few glasses were drank, not enough
to cloud the brain, but enough to loosen Martin's tongue. He began
to boast and to say that he had obtained a house and intended to
marry, and when Niels asked him where he was going to get the money,
he slapped his pocket proudly and said:
"The money is here, where it ought to be."
This boast cost him his life; for when he went home Niels followed
him, and cut his throat, intending to rob the murdered man of the
gold, which did not exist.
All this was circumstantially explained; but it is enough for us
to know that Jurgen was set free. But what compensation did he get for
having been imprisoned a whole year, and shut out from all
communication with his fellow creatures? They told him he was
fortunate in being proved innocent, and that he might go. The
burgomaster gave him two dollars for travelling expenses, and many
citizens offered him provisions and beer- there were still good
