Chapter 24

It was so arranged then; and though Elizabeth was rather disappointed to
hear that she was not to see her tidy house at Tonsberg again, she
allowed no indication of the feeling to escape her, and Salv� went by
himself to arrange their affairs there.

When he had sold what property they had, and bought his pilot-boat, they
had still a small sum left with which to begin housekeeping afresh, and
Merd� was chosen for their future residence.

From the outside this island looks only like one of the desolate series
which form the outworks of the coast for miles here in either direction,
with many a spot of angry white marking the sunken rocks between. But
the inner side forms the well-known Merd� harbour of refuge, with its
little hamlet of fishermen's and pilots' houses on the strand; and it
was in one of these, a little red painted house with a small porch in
front and a flagged yard and garden behind, and which presently became
their own, that they eventually settled.

The coast outside Merd� is exceptionally dangerous, but the Merd� pilots
have also the reputation of being exceptionally brave and skilful. They
are also perhaps the widest known. For having no defined district they
take a wide range, and may to-day be lying off Lindesnaes, to-morrow
under the Skaw or the Holmen, and the day after board a ship from
Hamburg right away down at Horn's Reef. It is a common thing to meet one
of them with his Arendal mark, his red stripe and number on the
mainsail, trawling for mackerel far out over the North Sea, and even
down as far as the Dogger Bank, where they get information from foreign
fishing smacks of vessels from the Channel or from English or Dutch
ports. If a skipper wants news from the North Sea or Skager Rack, he
generally keeps a look-out for one of these pilot-boats, and finds a
living shipping list, and the newest too, on board, which costs him, at
the most, supposing he has nothing of interest to impart in return, a
roll of tobacco, a bottle of spirits, or a strand of rope. But it is to
the captain who, on some pitch-dark winter night, when the sea is
running mountains high, has come in beneath bare poles under the
Torungens, and who knows that he is doomed if he cannot get a pilot,
that these Merd� men are most familiar. When, perhaps, he has given up
all hope, he suddenly hears himself hailed from the darkness; a line is
thrown; and a dripping pilot stands upon the deck. When the sea is too
rough to board a vessel in any other way, they do not think twice about
taking a line round their waist and jumping overboard; and when it is a
point of honour with them to bring in a ship, boat and home and life
weigh but very little in the opposite scale.

The black-bearded Salv� Kristiansen soon came to be the best known in
Arendal of them all. The dauntless look in his keen brown eyes, his
sharp features, and his short, sudden manner and way of speaking, gave
the impression of a character of uncommon energy; and it was said that
not the very wildest weather would deter him from going to sea. He was
known to have more than once stayed alone on board a water-logged vessel
while he sent his comrade on shore for help; and in his little room at
home, with its white-painted windows, and geraniums, and Dutch
cuckoo-clock, there stood above the roll of charts and telescope on the
wall a bracket with more than one silver goblet upon it, which, like the
telescope, were presents in acknowledgment of his services in piloting
vessels into port under circumstances of unusual difficulty and danger.
But, notwithstanding the repute in which he was held, he had never yet
received the medal for saving life, nor had he yet been made a
certificated pilot of the district.

He was not a man who gathered comrades round him; and as the years
passed, his unapproachability of demeanour, which seemed intended to
convey to people with a certain bitterness that he could do very well
without them, increased. It was said up in the town that he had taken to
drink. For after selling off his mackerel down on the quay, he would
often now sit the whole day in Mother Andersen's parlour with his
brandy-glass before him; and when evening approached, and his head had
had as much as it could carry, it was just as well to keep out of his
way. He did not talk much; and what attraction he found in Mother
Andersen's parlour it was not easy to say. But they knew, at all events,
how to treat him there; and he felt, from the casual questions that
would be addressed to him after he had returned from sea, or from the
way in which a newcomer would salute him, that he was in a sympathetic
atmosphere, and that his name was in repute. It was even something more
than respect, perhaps, which he inspired, for a sailor would think twice
before sitting down beside him, unless it came natural to him to do so
from the way in which they had greeted or spoken to one other.

It was not, however, any attraction which he found in Mother Andersen's
parlour which made him spend so much of his time there; it was that he
was afraid of his own temper at home.

When he had first set up on his own account, and had had his appointment
as a duly certificated pilot for the object of his ambition, he had
never made it his habit to stay in Arendal when he returned from sea
instead of going home. But some two or three years after he had settled
out at Merd�, a couple of incidents had occurred which made a new
starting-point, as it were, in his domestic life. They were the
nomination of Captain Beck, who was now a wealthy man, to the post of
master of the pilots of the district, and who, as such, became his
superior; and the arrival of Carl Beck to live in Arendal and
superintend his father's shipbuilding yard, for which purpose he had
retired from the navy. Since the arrival of the Becks he had become more
and more difficult to get on with; and Elizabeth's secret, self-denying
struggle grew proportionately harder. Whenever she returned from a
shopping expedition to Arendal, or from seeing her aunt, she would be
sure to find him in an irritable humour, which would generally vent
itself in contemptuous remarks upon old Beck's incapacity for the post
he held; and at last, much as she longed to get a glimpse now and then
of something different from the monotony of her daily life out on Merd�,
she gave up going altogether.

Her patience and self-suppression had had the effect, as years went on,
of making a tyrant of her husband. When in one of his dark moods now, he
would not tolerate the slightest contradiction from her or from any one
in the house, and all she could do was to be quietly cheerful and
affectionate, and to try her best to avoid falling into any of the traps
which he would lay to catch her, and to make her, by some chance word or
other, or even by a slightly displeased or resigned expression, give his
bad humour an excuse for breaking out. She had to weigh every word she
uttered, and to take the most roundabout methods of avoiding his
sensitiveness, and after all, she would perhaps commit herself when she
least expected it; upon which a scene would immediately ensue, that
would be all the more unpleasant from his never expressing himself
directly. Sometimes Salv� was really desperate, and would terrify her
with all kinds of threats, not against her, but against himself--and she
knew he was just the man to carry them out. It had often happened that
for some unlucky word of hers he had gone to sea again an hour after
coming home; and once in such weather that she had not the faintest hope
of ever seeing him return.

She would sit at home and weep for hours together, striving to repress
the angry feelings of resentment which would rise from time to time when
she thought how little return she received for all she gave; how less
than little her happiness was considered; and how meagre a reward for
all she had to endure were the two or three days perhaps of occasional
happy calm and sunshine in her home, when she seemed to have him with
her as he had been in the first early days of their married life, and
when he would find it as hard to tear himself away from his home again
as she knew he had often found it to return. What a heart he had in
reality! She alone knew that--the others judged him only by his hard and
harsh exterior. And how proud she was of him when she heard the others
talking of the daring things he had done, and saw how they all looked up
to him! But it was not enough. And in the dulness and loneliness of her
life out there on Merd�, she enjoyed to the full, during these many
weary years, her woman's privilege of suffering for the man she loved.
But it was not to be so always. Brighter days--little as she now
expected them--were still in store for her.