The Jonas Lie MEGAPACK ® - Jonas Lie

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he took a bed of skins with him down to the boathouse, and slept there at night; but in the daytime he perched himself on a pole on the roof, and bellowed out that now he was sailing. Sometimes he rode astraddle on the roof ridge, and dug his sheath-knife deep into the rafters, so that people might think he fancied himself at sea, holding fast on to the keel of a boat.

      Whenever folks passed by, he stood in the doorway, and turned up the whites of his eyes so hideously, that every one who saw him was quite scared. As for the people at home, it was as much as they dared to stick his meat-basket into the boathouse for him. So they sent it to him by his youngest sister, merry little Malfri, who would sit and talk with him, and thought it such fun when he made toys and playthings for her, and talked about the boat which should go like a bird, and sail as no other boat had ever sailed.

      If any one chanced to come upon him unexpectedly, and tried to peep and see what he was about in the boathouse there, he would creep up into the timber-loft and bang and pitch the boards and planks about, so that they didn’t know exactly where to find him, and were glad enough to be off. But one and all made haste to climb over the hill again when they heard him fling himself down at full length and send peal after peal of laughter after them.

      So that was how Jack got folks to leave him at peace.

      He worked best at night when the storm tore and tugged at the stones and birchbark of the turf roof, and the sea-wrack came right up to the boathouse door.

      When it piped and whined through the fissured walls, and the fine snowflakes flitted through the cracks, the model of the Draugboat stood plainest before him. The winter days were short, and the wick of the train-oil lamp, which hung over him as he worked, cast deep shadows, so that the darkness came soon and lasted a long way into the morning, when he sought sleep in his bed of skins with a heap of shavings for his pillow.

      He spared no pains or trouble. If there was a board which would not run into the right groove with the others, though never so little, he would take out a whole row of them and plane them all round again and again.

      Now, one night, just before Christmas, he had finished all but the uppermost planking and the gabs. He was working so hard to finish up that he took no count of time.

      The plane was sending the shavings flying their briskest when he came to a dead stop at something black which was moving along the plank.

      It was a large and hideous fly which was crawling about and feeling and poking all the planks in the boat. When it reached the lowest keel-board it whirred with its wings and buzzed. Then it rose and swept above it in the air till, all at once, it swerved away into the darkness.

      Jack’s heart sank within him. Such doubt and anguish came upon him. He knew well enough that no good errand had brought the Gan-fly buzzing over the boat like that.

      So he took the train-oil lamp and a wooden club, and began to test the prow and light up the boarding, and thump it well, and go over the planks one by one. And in this way he went over every bit of the boat from stem to stern, both above and below. There was not a nail or a rivet that he really believed in now.

      But now neither the shape nor the proportions of the boat pleased him any more. The prow was too big, and the whole cut of the boat all the way down the gunwale had something of a twist and a bend and a swerve about it, so that it looked like the halves of two different boats put together, and the half in front didn’t fit in with the half behind. As he was about to look into the matter still further (and he felt the cold sweat bursting out of the roots of his hair), the train-oil lamp went out and left him in blank darkness.

      Then he could contain himself no longer. He lifted his club and burst open the boathouse door, and, snatching up a big cow-bell, he began to swing it about him and ring and ring with it through the black night.

      “Art chiming for me, Jack?” something asked. There was a sound behind him like the surf sucking at the shore, and a cold blast blew into the boathouse.

      There on the keel-stick sat some one in a sloppy grey sea-jacket, and with a print cap drawn down over its ears, so that its skull looked like a low tassel.

      Jack gave a great start. This was the very being he had been thinking of in his wild rage. Then he took the large baling can and flung it at the Draug.

      But right through the Draug it went, and rattled against the wall behind, and back again it came whizzing about Jack’s ears, and if it had struck him he would never have got up again.

      The old fellow, however, only blinked his eyes a little savagely.

      “Fie!” cried Jack, and spat at the uncanny thing—and back into his face again he got as good as he gave.

      “There you have your wet clout back again!” cried a laughing voice.

      But the same instant Jack’s eyes were opened and he saw a whole boat-building establishment on the sea-shore.

      The old ’un blinked with satisfaction. His eyes became more and more glowing.

      “If I could guide you back to Helgeland,” said he, “I could put you in the way of gaining your bread too. But you must pay me a little tax for it. In every seventh boat you build ’tis I who must put in the keel-board.”

      Jack felt as if he were choking. He felt that the boat was dragging him into the very jaws of an abomination.

      “Or do you fancy you’ll worm the trick out of me for nothing?” said the gaping grinning Draug.

      Then there was a whirring sound, as if something heavy was hovering about the boathouse, and there was a laugh: “If you want the seaman’s boat you must take the dead man’s boat along with it. If you knock three times to-night on the keel-piece with the club, you shall have such help in building boats that the like of them will not be found in all Nordland.”

      Twice did Jack raise his club that night, and twice he laid it aside again.

      But the Ottring lay and frisked and sported in the sea before his eyes, just as he had seen it, all bright and new with fresh tar, and with the ropes and fishing gear just put in. He kicked and shook the fine slim boat with his foot just to see how light and high she could rise on the waves above the water-line.

      And once, twice, thrice, the club smote against the keel-piece.

      So that was how the first boat was built at Sjöholm.

      Thick as birds together stood a countless number of people on the headland in the autumn, watching Jack and his brothers putting out in the new Ottring.

      It glided through the strong current so that the foam was like a foss all round it.

      Now it was gone, and now it ducked up again like a sea-mew, and past skerries and capes it whizzed like a dart.

      Out in the fishing grounds the folks rested upon their oars and gaped. Such a boat they had never seen before.

      But if in the first year it was an Ottring, next year it was a broad heavy Femböring for winter fishing which made the folks open their eyes.

      And every boat that Jack turned out was lighter to row and swifter to sail than the one before it.

      But the largest and finest of all was the last that stood on the stocks on the shore.

      This was the seventh.

      Jack walked to and fro, and thought about it a good deal; but when he came down to see it in the morning, it seemed to him, oddly enough, to have grown in the night and, what is more, was such a wondrous beauty that he was struck dumb with astonishment. There it lay ready at last, and folks were never tired of talking about it.

      Now, the Bailiff who ruled over all Helgeland in those days was an unjust man who laid heavy taxes upon the people, taking double weight and tale both of fish and of eider-down,

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