United States or Chad ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And right outside the boulders there, just where they had seen the eider-duck, lay a long and narrow boat, with high prow and stern; and the tar-boards were mirrored plainly in the clear water below; there was not so much as a single knot in the wood. "I would be thankful for any such guidance," said Jack. When Seimke heard this, she began to cry and take on terribly.
The Finn girl, Seimke, couldn't make too much of him; she fed him with reindeer milk and marrow-bones, and he lay down to sleep on silver fox-skins. Cosy and comfortable it was in the smoke there. But as he thus lay there, 'twixt sleep and wake, it seemed to him as if many odd things were going on round about him.
Suddenly the snow-shoes stood stock still, and he was standing just outside the entrance of the Gan-Finn's hut. There stood Seimke. She was looking for him. "I sent my snow-shoes after thee," said she, "for I marked that the Finn had bewitched the land so that thou should'st not find the boat.
He was now so poor that he would very soon have to go about and beg his bread. And of all his reindeer he had only a single doe left, who went about there by the house. Then Seimke crept behind Jack, and whispered to him to bid for this doe.
But Seimke coaxed and wheedled Jack with her brown eyes, and gave him honeyed words as fast as her tongue could wag, till she drew him right into the smoke where the old Finn couldn't hear them. The Gan-Finn turned his head right round. "My eyes are stupid, and the smoke makes 'em run," said he; "what has Jack got hold of there?"
But in the summer time Jack and Seimke sat together on the headland in the warm evenings, and the gnats buzzed and the fishes spouted close ashore in the stillness, and the eider-duck swam about. "If only some one would build me a boat as swift and nimble as a fish, and able to ride upon the billows like a sea-mew!" sighed and lamented Jack, "then I could be off."
Then the Gan-Finn laughed till he nearly split. He thought the reindeer would cost the purchaser a pretty penny. But Jack lifted Seimke up, and sprang down with her to his boat, and held the reindeer-skin behind him, against the Gan-Finn. And they put off from land, and went to sea. Seimke was so happy, and smote her hands together, and took her turn at the oars.
He couldn't help remarking that this Seimke had fallen in love with him. She strolled after him wherever he went, and her eyes always became so mournful when he went down towards the sea; she understood well enough that all his thoughts were bent upon going away. And the Finn sat and mumbled among the ashes till his fur jacket regularly steamed and smoked.
Her black hair lay right over him, and she was as soft and warm to the touch as a ptarmigan when it is frightened and its blood throbs. Jack put the reindeer-skin over Seimke, and the boat rocked them to and fro on the heavy sea as if it were a cradle. They sailed on and on till night-fall; they sailed on and on till they saw neither headland nor island nor sea-bird in the outer skerries more.
They were to bring pain and sickness to a cottage down in the swamps, and spread abroad the Finn disease, which was to strike down a young bride at Bodö with consumption. But Jack thought of nothing else night and day but how he could get the better of the Gan-Finn. The lass Seimke wheedled him and wept and begged him, as he valued his life, not to try to get down to his boat again.
Word Of The Day