Chapter 2

After old Jacob had fallen into ill health, lighterman Kristiansen used
to come out oftener to Torungen with provisions and other necessaries;
and his visits now became periodical.

He was accompanied one autumn by his son Salvé, a black-haired,
dark-eyed, handsome lad, with a sharp, clever face, who had worked in
the fishing-boats along the coast from his childhood almost, and had, in
fact, been brought up amongst its sunken rocks and reefs and breakers.
He was something small in stature, perhaps; but what he wanted in
robustness he made up in readiness and activity--qualities which stood
him in good stead in the many quarrels into which his too ready tongue
was wont to bring him. He was eighteen years old at this time; had been
already engaged as an able seaman; and was in great request at the
Sandvigen and Vraangen dances,--a fact of which he was perfectly well
aware. Old Jacob's granddaughter, being a little girl of only fourteen
years of age, was of course altogether beneath his notice, and he didn't
condescend to speak to her. He merely delivered himself of the witticism
that she was like a heron; and with her thick, checked woollen
handkerchief tied with the ends behind her waist, the resemblance was
not so very far-fetched. At any rate, he declared on the way home that
such a specimen of womankind he, for his part, had never come across
before, and that he would give anything to see her dancing in the public
room with her thin arms and legs--it would be like a grasshopper.

The next time he came, she took out her grandfather's watch in its
silver case and showed it to him, and some conversation passed between
them. His first impression of her was that she was stupid. She asked
questions about every sort of thing, and seemed to think that he must
know everything. And finally, she wanted to know what it was like on
shore among the great folk of Arendal, and particularly how the ladies
behaved. It afforded him much amusement at the time to see with what
simple credulity she took in everything he chose to invent on the
subject; but after he had left he was not sure that he wasn't sorry for
what he had done, and at the same time he made the discovery that the
girl, in her way, was anything but silly.

His remorse was to be brought home to him presently, for old Jacob had
had duly recounted to him over again all his cock-and-bull stories, and
was in high dudgeon. When he came again the old man was very snappish to
him, and he found it so unpleasant in the house that he made all the
haste he could to get his business done. While he was thus occupied, the
little girl told him all about the Naiad, and the part her grandfather
had taken in the action. Salvé, who was ruffled, and thought the