Chapter 26

Gjert was now ten years old; and whilst his father was sitting over his
glass in Mother Andersen's parlour, he used generally to amuse himself
out in the harbour with a number of the Arendal boys with whom he had
struck up an acquaintanceship, and who understood very little about
differences of social position.

The brown-haired, brown-eyed little lad, with his sharp, intelligent
face, was the wildest of them all, and enjoyed a certain consideration
among them at the same time as his father's son--an honour which he
evidently thought it incumbent upon him to maintain by every kind of
break-neck exploit. His proper business, of course, was to look after
his father's boat in his absence; but as it was safely moored, and could
be seen just as well from any of the yards in the harbour, he used
generally to wait in some such conspicuous position till his friends
came streaming down to the quay from school, and throwing their books
down, sailed out in some punt or other to join him. Most of the boys had
been expressly warned by their mothers against the reckless
Kristiansen's son, but cross-trees and mast-heads became thereby only
the more attractive.

Old Beck's grandson, Frederick, who was going to be a naval cadet, had
fancied one day that he would escape observation from the windows at
home by climbing up to join his friend at the mast-head, on the other
side of the mast; but the slender spar was not sufficient to protect him
from the master-pilot's keen eye, and the latter came himself on board
in full grandfatherly indignation against the skipper for allowing such
pranks to be played on board his craft, thrashed Gjert for being the
cause of his grandson's disobedience, and told him that it was very
clear what he would come to some day--that he came of a bad stock, and
took after it. His own little scion, although a couple of years older
than Gjert, escaped punishment altogether--the other lads, however,
determining among themselves that he should have it the next time they
met. And he would have had it, if Gjert, who should have been the one
more particularly to desire revenge, had not unexpectedly taken his
part.

It was only as they were sailing the cutter home that the pilot heard
how Beck had thrashed his son, and cast his horoscope. His smurched face
grew white as a sheet. But when Gjert went in to tell him how, all the
same, he had taken Frederick Beck's part, his father looked at him in
surprise, and then muttered something about "telling this to his
mother."

Elizabeth had seen the boat pass Merdö for Arendal the day before, and
she was sitting indoors now expecting her husband, having commissioned
their youngest and only other son, Henrik, to keep a look-out, and