Weird Tales from Northern Seas | Page 7

where he was than in the sea.
And so he tightened his knees on the keel, and held on fast till he had no feeling left in either hand or foot.
In the coal-black gusty night he fancied he heard yells from one or other of the remaining boats' crews.
"They, too, have wives and children," thought he. "I wonder whether they have also a Jack to lay the blame upon!"
Now while he thus lay there and drifted and drifted, and it seemed to him to be drawing towards dawn, he suddenly felt that the boat was in the grip of a strong shoreward current; and, sure enough, Jack got at last ashore. But whichever way he looked, he saw nothing but black sea and white snow.
Now as he stood there, speering and spying about him, he saw, far away, the smoke of a Finn Gamme,[3] which stood beneath a cliff, and he managed to scramble right up to it.
The Finn was so old that he could scarcely move. He was sitting in the midst of the warm ashes, and mumbling into a big sack, and neither spoke nor answered. Large yellow humble-bees were humming about all over the snow, as if it were Midsummer; and there was only a young lass there to keep the fire alight, and give the old man his food. His grandsons and grand-daughters were with the reindeer, far far away on the Fjeld.
Here Jack got his clothes well dried, and the rest he so much wanted. The Finn girl, Seimke, couldn't make too much of him; she fed him with reindeer milk and marrow-bones, and he lay down to sleep on silver fox-skins.
Cosy and comfortable it was in the smoke there. But as he thus lay there, 'twixt sleep and wake, it seemed to him as if many odd things were going on round about him.
There stood the Finn in the doorway talking to his reindeer, although they were far away in the mountains. He barred the wolf's way, and threatened the bear with spells; and then he opened his skin sack, so that the storm howled and piped, and there was a swirl of ashes into the hut. And when all grew quiet again, the air was thick with yellow humble-bees, which settled inside his furs, whilst he gabbled and mumbled and wagged his skull-like head.
But Jack had something else to think about besides marvelling at the old Finn. No sooner did the heaviness of slumber quit his eyes than he strolled down to his boat.
There it lay stuck fast on the beach and tilted right over like a trough, while the sea rubbed and rippled against its keel. He drew it far enough ashore to be beyond the reach of the sea-wash.
But the longer he walked around and examined it, the more it seemed to him as if folks built boats rather for the sake of letting the sea in than for the sake of keeping the sea out. The prow was little better than a hog's snout for burrowing under the water, and the planking by the keel-piece was as flat as the bottom of a chest. Everything, he thought, must be arranged very differently if boats were to be really seaworthy. The prow must be raised one or two planks higher at the very least, and made both sharp and supple, so as to bend before and cut through the waves at the same time, and then a fellow would have a chance of steering a boat smartly.
He thought of this day and night. The only relaxation he had was a chat with the Finn girl of an evening.
He couldn't help remarking that this Seimke had fallen in love with him. She strolled after him wherever he went, and her eyes always became so mournful when he went down towards the sea; she understood well enough that all his thoughts were bent upon going away.
And the Finn sat and mumbled among the ashes till his fur jacket regularly steamed and smoked.
But Seimke coaxed and wheedled Jack with her brown eyes, and gave him honeyed words as fast as her tongue could wag, till she drew him right into the smoke where the old Finn couldn't hear them.
The Gan-Finn turned his head right round.
"My eyes are stupid, and the smoke makes 'em run," said he; "what has Jack got hold of there?"
"Say it is the white ptarmigan you caught in the snare," whispered she.
And Jack felt that she was huddling up against him and trembling all over.
Then she told him so softly that he thought it was his own thoughts speaking to him, that the Finn was angry and muttering mischief, and _j?jking_,[4] against the boat which Jack wanted to build. If Jack were to complete it, said she, the Gan-Finn would no longer