The Visionary Part 11

The situation was desperate, for the long rope was stretched as tight as a violin string, and the middle of it scarcely touched the water. It was blowing so hard, too, that a man could hardly stand upright, but was obliged to creep along the clean-swept snow-field, so that there could be no thought of helping.

I had crept up the hill at the back of the house, and stood in the shelter of a rocky knoll, from which I could see both out over the sea and down into the bay.

West Fjord on this wintry day lay as if covered with a silvery grey smoke from the spray that was driving across the sea. Beneath the cliffs the waves came in like great, green, foam-topped mountains, breaking on the sh.o.r.e with a noise like thunder, and then retreating an immense distance, leaving a long stretch of dry beach.

At one place, where a rock went perpendicularly down to the sea, a great, broad jet of spray was sent straight up every time a wave broke, and was driven in over the land by the wind like smoke. At another place the waves stormed in a t.i.tanic way a sloping rock, which lay, now in foam, now high and dry, and I saw a poor exhausted gull, which had probably got out from its mountain cliff into the wind, fighting and battling in it, often with its wings almost twisted.

In anxious suspense I watched the yacht down in the bay. To my astonishment, I saw a man on board, and recognised the stalwart Jens, who had ventured out with one of the men, from the windward side, in a six-oared boat. After a short stay on board he stepped down alone into the boat with a rope round his waist, and began the dangerous work of hauling the boat against the waves, along the tight land-rope, out towards the rock.

I expected every instant that the boat would fill, and it seemed to me that the waves washed in several times. As the boat slowly worked its way along, father and all the servants followed it anxiously with their eyes, from the beach.

When Jens had got up on to the rock, over which the waves washed one after another, so that he often stood in water up to his knees, he secured the boat, and began to haul in the line, drawing after it through the water a thick cable, which the man on board was paying out gradually. He had just begun to fasten it to the mooring ring, and had only the last two knots in the rope to make, when we all became aware of three tremendous waves that would infallibly break over the rock.

Jens's life was evidently in danger, and the yacht too, which, with her one overstrained rope, would scarcely be able to bear the pressure.

I saw French Martina, his _fiancee_, clasp her hands above her head and run out into the surf, almost as if she thought of throwing herself into the water to go to him, and I think that not one of the others looking on dared to draw breath.

It appeared that Jens had noticed the danger himself; he hastened down to the boat, in which he could still shelter himself, but it was only to take up from it the line, which he calmly wound several times round his body and through the mooring ring, as he could no longer rely upon his own giant strength.

He had scarcely completed these preparations, when the first wave, which he faced with bent head, broke right over him and the rock. The interval before the second came he employed in making another knot in the land-rope.

Again came a wave, and again Jens stood firm, and he now made the final knot in the rope that saved the yacht.

He had now made trial of what the force of a wave could be. He threw the line from his back up round his great broad shoulders, turned his strong pale face towards our house for a moment, as if it were quite possible that he was now bidding it farewell, and bent his head towards the third and last wave, which was advancing with a foaming crest, as usual, larger than its two predecessors.

When the wave had broken in foam, and gone by, no Jens stood on the rock.

I ran down in horror to the others. When I got there, they had recovered, besides the boat, which had been torn from the rock, the apparently lifeless body of Jens, and were now carrying it to the house.

The wave had dragged him along, the line that he had round his shoulders having slipped up to his neck, and taken clothes and skin with it. He now lay unconscious from the pressure of the water, and with one arm, torn and bleeding from the line, in a twisted position: it was laid bare, at one place even to the bone.

Father walked with a pale face and supported him while they carried him up and put him to bed.

When he recovered consciousness, he began spitting blood, and had a difficulty in speaking; but father, who examined his chest, said joyfully that there was no danger.

By this exploit of saving the yacht Jens became famed as a hero far and wide; from that day forward, he was one of my father's trusted men, and in the following summer he and French Martina were married.

CHAPTER XI

_CONCLUSION_

I can now calmly write down the little, for me so much, that remains to be told--for many years it would have been impossible.

The storm lasted from Sat.u.r.day midday until Sunday night, when towards morning the wind gradually subsided into complete stillness, although the sea continued restless.

The same day, Monday, at midday, there landed at the parsonage landing-place, not the minister's white house-boat, that was expected home, but an ordinary tarred, ten-oared boat, with a number of people in it.

From it four of the men slowly bore a burden between them up to the house, while a big man and a little woman went, bowed down, hand in hand, after them. It was the minister and his wife.

I understood at once what had happened, and my heart cried with despair.

The dreadful message, which came to us directly after, told me nothing new--it only confirmed my belief that it was the minister's daughter Susanna they had borne up.

The parsonage boat had been only a little more than three-quarters of a mile away from home that Sat.u.r.day morning when the storm came on so suddenly. A "windfall" had come down with terrible force from the mountains into the Sound, and had capsized the boat, which was not far from land.

The minister had quickly helped his wife up on to the boat, and the men held on round the edge, while they drifted before the wind the short distance in to the sh.o.r.e. But he searched in vain for his child, to find her and save her.

With the sea seething round the boat, the strong man three times in his despair let go his hold in order to swim to the place where he imagined he saw her in the water. He was going to try again, but his wife, in great distress, begged his men to hinder him, and they did so.

They said afterwards that they saw drops of perspiration running down the minister's forehead, as he lay there on the boat in the wintry-cold sea, and that they believed he even thought of purposely letting go his hold that he might follow his daughter.

Too late they found out that Susanna was under the boat. She had become entangled in a rope, so that she could not rise to the surface.

Her death had at any rate been quick and painless.

The whole of Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, while the storm lasted, they were compelled to lie weatherbound at a peasant's house in the neighbourhood, where the minister's wife had kept her bed from exhaustion and grief.

The minister had sat nearly the whole time in the large parlour where they had laid Susanna, and talked with his G.o.d; and on Monday morning, when they were to go home, he was resigned and cairn, arranged everything, and comforted his poor, weeping wife.

I had lain in dumb, despairing sorrow the whole afternoon and throughout the long night, and determined to go the next day and see Susanna for the last time.

Early in the forenoon, the minister unexpectedly entered our parlour, and asked to speak to my father. He looked pale and solemn as he sat on the sofa, with his stick in front of him, and waited.

When my father came in at the door, the minister rose and took his hand, while the tears stood in his eyes.

After a pause, as if to recover himself, he said that my father saw before him an unhappy but humble man, whom G.o.d had to chasten severely before his will would bend to Him. He wanted now, because of his unhappiness, to ask my father not to deny him his old friends.h.i.+p any longer.

Of the matter that had caused the estrangement he would not now speak; he had acted to the best of his judgment. There was, however, something else which now lay on his heart, and here he put his hand on my shoulder and drew me affectionately to him, as he once more sat down on the sofa.

His daughter Susanna, he continued, sighing at the name, a few days before G.o.d took her to Himself, had admitted him into her confidence, and told him that she had loved me from the time she was a child, and that we two had already given each other our promise, with the intention of telling our parents when I became a student.

At first he had been strongly opposed to the engagement for many reasons, first and foremost my health and our youth. But Susanna had shown such intense earnestness in the matter and expressed such determined will, that, knowing her nature, it became clear to him that this affection had been growing for many years and could not now be rooted up. And it was now the greatest comfort he had in the midst of his sorrow, that the same morning on which they were to start on their ill-fated journey home, he had given in, and had also promised to use his influence in getting my father to give his consent.

Instead of this he now stood without a daughter, and only as one bringing tidings that the disaster had fallen on my father's house too, and struck his only child. He wished, he hoped with my father's permission, henceforth to regard me as his son.

My father sat a long time, surprised and pale; he seemed to have great difficulty in taking in what was said.

At last he rose and in silence gave his hand to the minister. Then he laid it on my shoulder so that I felt its pressure, looked into my eyes and said, in a low, wonderfully gentle voice:

"The Lord be with you, my son! Sorrow has visited you young; only, do not be weak in bearing it!"

He was going out to leave us alone together, but bethought himself in the doorway, and said that I had better go with the minister and take a last farewell of Susanna.