The Pilot and his Wife | Page 5

and asked rather hesitatingly--
"But had they done anything to you?"
"Oh, no! all dancing entertainments have a little extra dance like that to wind up with. They merely wanted to dance with the girl I had asked first."
"Is it so dangerous, then? What sort of a girl was she?--I mean, what was her name?"
"Oh, one was called Marie, and the other was Anne--Herluf Andersen's daughter. They were pretty girls, I can tell you. Anne had a white brooch and earrings, and danced more smoothly than ever you saw a cutter sail. Mate George said the same."
The upshot of this conversation was, that she found out that the girls in Arendal, and in the ports generally where he had touched, were all well dressed; and the next time he returned from Holland, he promised he would bring with him a pair of morocco-leather shoes with silver buckles for her.
With this promise they parted, after she had allowed him--and that there might be no mistake, twice over--to take the accurate measure of her foot; and there were roses of joy in her cheeks, as she called after him to be sure and not forget them.
The year after Salvé came with the shoes. There were silver buckles in them, and they were very smart; but if they were, they had cost him more than half a month's pay.
Elizabeth was more carefully dressed now, and might almost be called grown up. She hesitated about accepting the shoes, and didn't ask questions about everything as she used to do. Nor was she so willing to stand and talk with him alone by the boat--she liked to have him up within hearing of the others.
"Don't you see how high the sea is running?" he said, and tried to persuade her that the boat would be dashed to pieces on the rocks. But she saw that it wasn't true, and went up with a little toss of her head alone. He followed her.
She must have learned all this in Arendal, where in the course of the autumn she had been confirmed, and where she had lived with her aunt. But she had grown marvellously handsome in that time--so much so, indeed, that Salvé was almost taken aback when he saw her; and when they said good-bye, it was no longer in the old laughing tones, but with some slight embarrassment on his side--he didn't seem to know exactly how matters lay between them.
After that she filled his head so completely that he had not a thought for anything else.
CHAPTER IV.
The old Juno, to which Salvé belonged, was lying at that time at Sandvigen, and was only waiting for a north-east wind to come out. She was a square-rigged vessel, with a crew of nineteen hands all told, which had plied for many years in American waters, and off and on in the North Sea, and was reckoned at the time one of Arendal's largest craft. Her arrival or departure was quite an event for the town and neighbourhood; and to have a berth in her was considered among the sailors of the district a very high honour indeed--the more so that her master and principal owner, Captain Beck, was a particularly good chief to serve under, and a lucky one to boot.
When at last, between ten and eleven o'clock one morning, she weighed anchor, and before a light north-westerly breeze, with her small sails set, glided out to sea, the quays were crowded with spectators, the majority of the crew belonging to the place, and it being generally known that they were bound on a longer voyage than usual. On board she had with her still the captain's son, Carl Beck, a smart young naval officer, with his sister and a small party of their friends, who meant to land out on the Torungens in the sailing-boat they had in tow. They wished to remain with her as long as possible, and for the purpose had made up a party to the islands, where the gentlemen proposed to shoot some of the sea-fowl, which are to be found out there on the rocks in swarms at the spring season of the year on their passage north along the coast.
It was about four o'clock when they passed Little Torungen; and as there were swells then bursting in white jets upon the reefs, and a line of dark fire-fringed clouds about the sunset, which looked like heavy weather coming up, the pleasure party determined to leave the vessel here, instead of going on, as they had intended, to the larger of the two islands.
As they went over the side Salvé Kristiansen was standing out on the forecastle gazing eagerly over to where the barren mass of rock lay like a dipping hull in the distance, bathed in the evening sun,