The boat shipped some water, but righted herself. What mattered now was reaching Raftsundet.

August hadn’t much to say now. He looked despairingly at Edevart and shouted: “The Lord wants to punish me!”

“What do you mean?” Edevart’s face seemed to ask.

“Well, Edevart, you see I hadn’t enough to rent the boat and I lied when I said I wanted to buy it.”

“Ah!” said Edevart. “So you didn’t have the money?”

“No!” answered August. “And now God help us!”

Edevart decided there had been something wrong with the steering. They were taking in a lot of water; the sea had risen. “Go up forward!” he ordered his comrade; and the sixteen-year-old lad took the tiller himself. He pulled it in and pushed it out twice for every wave, splashing a drop or two of water over August’s back, but nothing into the boat.

“You were steering like a clot and getting your skins soaking wet,” he said with an experienced air. He allowed himself the comment.

“I don’t care about the skins, just as long as we stay alive,” answered August.

Edevart shouted: “Take in the third reef!”

August did so, perfectly content to take orders. This he was used to. Sure, August had been to sea, as he had never tired of telling people; he had lived a precarious yet carefree life aboard ship, had been patient and submissive, and had enjoyed celebrating ashore. But he had also changed his job and his livelihood many times. He excused himself by saying that he had no particular mission in life, and could therefore turn his hand to anything on earth—indeed, for that matter, under the earth, mining. This is what he said, at all events; and it all sounded very modest. But deep down he could well have been boasting. Here he had followed the plow, there he had had a town job, often in a tavern, very occasionally in church. Everywhere he’d been one among many, it seemed; a common man, a subordinate. At times he had known happy days. He had been ashore on coasts where scarcely any clothes were needed and where your food could be shaken off the trees; at other times he might have wandered about a cold town where a proper meal was too dear for him, and where liver was the cheapest meat. Should one then expect all that much of him? Like other lads similarly placed, he was reduced now and then to living on his wits, he would confess with a laugh. But August never killed anybody! No, no, never killed anybody! It all sounded honest and innocuous, and perhaps he was right. He suffered for his sins later every time he found himself in danger, for then he was afraid.

They took in one reef after another, finally running before the wind so that the boat scarcely answered the rudder. August sat on the forward deck, pale and wet. There were more and more things outstanding with God. There were these gold teeth. He confessed that he hadn’t paid for them, only a little on account, and then he’d fled the country. “I’d be happy to see them at the bottom of the sea!” he said, and tried to wrench the teeth out of his mouth.

“You’d do better to bail the boat!” said Edevart, being very adult. He probably felt a little superior at his companion’s humiliation. He sat at the tiller like one in command.

“What should I bail for?” said August in despair. “It’s getting worse, not better.