Chapter 24

It was so arranged then; and though Elizabeth was rather disappointed to
hear that she was not to see her tidy house at Tonsberg again, she
allowed no indication of the feeling to escape her, and Salvé went by
himself to arrange their affairs there.

When he had sold what property they had, and bought his pilot-boat, they
had still a small sum left with which to begin housekeeping afresh, and
Merdö was chosen for their future residence.

From the outside this island looks only like one of the desolate series
which form the outworks of the coast for miles here in either direction,
with many a spot of angry white marking the sunken rocks between. But
the inner side forms the well-known Merdö harbour of refuge, with its
little hamlet of fishermen's and pilots' houses on the strand; and it
was in one of these, a little red painted house with a small porch in
front and a flagged yard and garden behind, and which presently became
their own, that they eventually settled.

The coast outside Merdö is exceptionally dangerous, but the Merdö pilots
have also the reputation of being exceptionally brave and skilful. They
are also perhaps the widest known. For having no defined district they
take a wide range, and may to-day be lying off Lindesnaes, to-morrow
under the Skaw or the Holmen, and the day after board a ship from
Hamburg right away down at Horn's Reef. It is a common thing to meet one
of them with his Arendal mark, his red stripe and number on the
mainsail, trawling for mackerel far out over the North Sea, and even
down as far as the Dogger Bank, where they get information from foreign
fishing smacks of vessels from the Channel or from English or Dutch
ports. If a skipper wants news from the North Sea or Skager Rack, he
generally keeps a look-out for one of these pilot-boats, and finds a
living shipping list, and the newest too, on board, which costs him, at
the most, supposing he has nothing of interest to impart in return, a
roll of tobacco, a bottle of spirits, or a strand of rope. But it is to
the captain who, on some pitch-dark winter night, when the sea is
running mountains high, has come in beneath bare poles under the
Torungens, and who knows that he is doomed if he cannot get a pilot,
that these Merdö men are most familiar. When, perhaps, he has given up
all hope, he suddenly hears himself hailed from the darkness; a line is
thrown; and a dripping pilot stands upon the deck. When the sea is too
rough to board a vessel in any other way, they do not think twice about
taking a line round their waist and jumping overboard; and when it is a
point of honour with them to bring in a ship, boat and home and life
weigh but very little in the opposite scale.

The