The Jonas Lie MEGAPACK ® - Jonas Lie

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with him and sat in the stern. Wondrous fair was she!

      It was beautiful summer weather, and there was a swell upon the sea: wave followed upon wave in long bright rollers.

      The lad sat there, lost in the sight of her, and he rowed and rowed till the insucking breakers roared and thundered among the skerries; the ground-swell was strong, and the frothing foam spurted up as high as towers.

      “If thy life is dear to thee, turn back now,” said she.

      “Thou art dearer to me than life itself,” he made answer.

      But just as it seemed to the lad as if the prow were going under, and the jaws of death were gaping wide before him, it grew all at once as still as a calm, and the boat could run ashore as if there was never a billow there.

      On the island lay a rusty old ship’s anchor half out of the sea.

      “In the iron chest which lies beneath the anchor is my dowry,” said she; “carry it up into thy boat, and put the ring that thou seest on my finger. With this thou dost make me thy bride. So now I am thine till the sun dances north-westwards into the sea.”

      It was a gold ring with a red stone in it, and he put it on her finger and kissed her.

      In a cleft on the skerry was a patch of green grass. There they sat them down, and they were ministered to in wondrous wise, how he knew not nor cared to know, so great was his joy.

      “Midsummer Day is beauteous,” said she, “and I am young and thou art my bridegroom. And now we’ll to our bridal bed.”

      So bonnie was she that he could not contain himself for love.

      But when night drew nigh, and the sun began to dance out into the sea, she kissed him and shed tears.

      “Beauteous is the summer day,” said she, “and still more beauteous is the summer evening; but now the dusk cometh.”

      And all at once it seemed to him as if she were becoming older and older and fading right away.

      When the sun went below the sea-margin there lay before him on the skerry some mouldering linen rags and nought else.

      Calm was the sea, and in the clear Midsummer night there flew twelve cormorants out over the sea.

      ISAAC AND THE PARSON OF BRÖNÖ

      In Helgeland there was once a fisherman called Isaac. One day when he was out halibut fishing he felt something heavy on the lines. He drew up, and, lo! there was a sea-boot.

      “That was a rum ’un! “ said he, and he sat there a long time looking at it.

      It looked just as if it might be the boot of his brother who had gone down in the great storm last winter on his way home from fishing.

      There was still something inside the boot too, but he durst not look to see what it was, nor did he exactly know what to do with the sea-boot either.

      He didn’t want to take it home and frighten his mother, nor did he quite fancy chucking it back into the sea again; so he made up his mind to go to the parson of Brönö, and beg him to bury it in a Christian way.

      “But I can’t bury a sea-boot,” quoth the parson.

      The fellow scratched his head. “Na, na!” said he.

      Then he wanted to know how much there ought to be of a human body before it could have the benefit of Christian burial.

      “That I cannot exactly tell you,” said the parson; “a tooth, or a finger, or hair clippings is not enough to read the burial service over. Anyhow, there ought to be so much remaining that one can see that a soul has been in it. But to read Holy Scripture over a toe or two in a sea-boot! Oh, no! that would never do!”

      But Isaac watched his opportunity, and managed to get the sea-boot into the churchyard on the sly, all the same.

      And home he went.

      It seemed to him that he had done the best he could. It was better, after all, that something of his brother should lie so near God’s house than that he should have heaved the boot back into the black sea again.

      But, towards autumn, it so happened that, as he lay out among the skerries on the look-out for seals, and the ebb-tide drove masses of tangled seaweed towards him, he fished up a knife-belt and an empty sheath with his oar-blade.

      He recognised them at once as his brother’s.

      The tarred wire covering of the sheath had been loosened and bleached by the sea; and he remembered quite well how, when his brother had sat and cobbled away at this sheath, he had chatted and argued with him about the leather for his belt which he had taken from an old horse which they had lately killed.

      They had bought the buckle together over at the storekeeper’s on the Saturday, and mother had sold bilberries, and capercailzies, and three pounds of wool. They had got a little tipsy, and had had such fun with the old fishwife at the headland, who had used a bast-mat for a sail.

      So he took the belt away with him, and said nothing about it. It was no good giving pain to no purpose, thought he.

      But the longer the winter lasted the more he bothered himself with odd notions about what the parson had said. And he knew not what he should do in case he came upon something else, such as another boot, or something that a squid, or a fish, or a crab, or a Greenland shark might have bitten off. He began to be really afraid of rowing out in the sea there among the skerries.

      And yet, for all that, it was as though he were constantly being drawn thither by the hope of finding, perhaps, so much of the remains as might show the parson where the soul had been, and so move him to give them a Christian burial.

      He took to walking about all by himself in a brown study.

      And then, too, he had such nasty dreams.

      His door flew open in the middle of the night and let in a cold sea-blast, and it seemed to him as if his brother were limping about the room, and yelling that he must have his foot again, the Draugs were pulling and twisting him about so.

      At last he felt as if he were really going out of his wits, because of the great responsibility he had taken upon himself by burying the foot in the churchyard.

      He didn’t want to pitch it into the sea again, but it couldn’t lie in the churchyard either.

      It was borne in upon him so clearly that his brother could not be among the blessed, and he kept going about and thinking of all that might be lying and drifting and floating about among the skerries.

      So he took it upon himself to dredge there, and lay out by the sea-shore with ropes and dredging gear. But all that he dredged up was sea-wrack, and weeds, and star-fish, and like rubbish.

      One evening as he sat out there by the rocks trying his luck at fishing, and the line with the stone and all the hooks upon it shot down over the boat’s side, the last of the hooks caught in one of his eyes, and right to the bottom went the eye.

      There was no use dredging for that, and he could see to row home very well without it.

      In the night he lay with a bandage over his eye, wakeful for pain, and he thought and thought till things looked as black as they could be to him. Was there ever any one in the world in such a hobble as he?

      All at once such an odd thing happened.

      He thought he was looking about him, deep down in the sea, and he saw the fishes flitting and snapping about among the sea-wrack and seaweeds round about the fishing line. They bit at the bait, and wriggled and tried to slip off, first a cod, and then a ling, and then a dog-fish.

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