Chapter 22

Elizabeth carried out her intention of accompanying him to Amsterdam,
where she paid a visit of several days to the Garvloits, and the
pleasure of the trip was only alloyed for her by the change which had
come over Salvé's manner, and to which she had now to try and accustom
herself as one does to a less brilliant light after having seen the sun.

They were on their way home again, sailing before a light breeze, and
under a soft blue sky, out of the busy, shallow Zuyder Zee. Elizabeth
was sitting on deck with little Gjert, blooming as a rose, and asking
animated questions of the pilot, whom they had been compelled to take on
board, about the various flat sandy islands and towns which came in
sight from time to time, Salvé occasionally stopping in his walk to
listen.

By Terschelling the channel from the Zuyder Zee to the North Sea is
marked out like a narrow strait with black and red buoys; and even in
that calm weather there were foaming breakers the whole way close to the
ship on either side. "What must it be like," Elizabeth asked, in a sort
of terror, "in a storm, when the whole sea was driving in?"

"That is a sight it's better not to see," replied the pilot.

"But you have to be out, storm or not, pilot?"

"It is my way of getting a living," he answered, shortly.

Salvé stood and listened, as the conversation took this turn.

"We have pilots in Norway, too," she said, "who don't mind a wet jacket
either. It is a fine life!"

The Dutchman merely observed, coldly, in reply--

"In two successive years--it is three years ago now--they lost out here
off Amland a total of fifty pilots."

"Still, it is a fine life!" she said; and Salvé resumed his walk.

A couple of evenings after, the Apollo was pitching out on the
Doggerbank in the moonlight, with a reef in her topsails. Elizabeth had
not yet gone below, and was sitting with her child warmly wrapped up on
her lap, while Salvé paced the deck and looked at her from time to time.
A little farther off, near the main-hatch, Nils Buvaagen (whom Salvé had
met again at Notterö, and persuaded to take service with him) and a
couple of the crew who were off duty were engaged in story-telling, the
others lounging about near them to listen. Elizabeth, too, was
listening.

They had crossed that day a long stretch of dead water, and the
carpenter had several mysterious incidents, of which he declared he had
been an eyewitness, to recount on the head of it. Meeting dead water
like that out in the open sea generally meant that something was going
to happen.

Nils Buvaagen, like all