Ketil sat by the peat fire and listened to the noise of the breakers echoing in the hillside. ‘There ought to be an oar timber among the stuff thrown up in West Bay tonight,’ he said.
‘Are you short of oars?’ asked his wife.
‘I certainly am – I can’t take our boat out till I get one. And I’d have to pay the store a good sum if I bought it there.’
‘Well then,’ said his wife, ‘go over to West Bay, and you’ll find timber for your oar right enough.’
‘I’d certainly like to,’ Ketil replied, ‘but how can I? I don’t own any share in the foreshore rights.’
‘Don’t be such a fool. Who bothers about things like that any more? Does Klávus?’
‘Klávus, that old thief! Do you think I’m going to walk in unlawful paths just because he does?’
‘Go over to the pastor, then, and ask him for leave to search for driftwood.’
Ketil’s spirits rose. He decided to go over to the pastor right away. He sprang up and asked his wife to pass him his skin shoes.
‘You’d better tidy yourself up before you go,’ his wife warned him.
But he thought this quite unnecessary; he just pulled a few strands of chewing tobacco off his beard. There were three dead spiders clinging to the front of his sweater, and he brushed these away too. Then off he went.
When he reached the rectory, the pastor was sitting there in his shirt sleeves, reading the Book of Job. He asked Ketil what he could do for him.
‘I wanted to ask your permission to search for driftwood. I happen to be in great need of a piece of timber for an oar.’
‘Search and welcome,’ replied the pastor, ‘and the peace of God go with you.’
So Ketil went away, full of good will towards the pastor. ‘I’ll grant him one thing – he’s not so stuck up he won’t talk with humble folk,’ he thought. But he reflected that the pastor’s words about the peace of God would certainly be of little avail, for Klávus was a real brute, and would be bound to show his teeth if the two of them should meet on the beach. Nowadays, nobody else here in the village except Klávus was in the habit of searching for driftwood, so he might well take the view that anyone else coming to West Bay was poaching on his preserves. But Ketil didn’t intend to be elbowed out. He had now received permission to search the beach. Klávus certainly had not.
The weather got worse and worse. It was pitch dark, the heavens were black, and the air howling with squalls. Flashes of pale green lightning momentarily lit up the line of the hills and the foaming waterfalls, while the thunder crashed among the mountains.
Later, Ketil and Kálvur opened the door of their house. A sudden squall ripped it from their hands. ‘Poof, the northeaster is pretty rough this morning,’ said Ketil. And they battled their way into it.
They had to walk with care, for the wind was treacherous. At times it would be dead calm; then a rumbling would be heard from far off, like the rolling of a mighty wheel, and a whirlwind would be upon them, ripping the grass from the hillside, blasting the water out of the streams, and lashing the village unmercifully with spray from the sea, while the houses creaked and shook to their foundations.
Ketil and Kálvur went forth on their search for driftwood. They took a line with them, and a gun, and each had a spiked staff in his hand. ‘Ugh, how dark it is,’ said Kálvur. ‘I’m scared of it.’
‘Don’t be so foolish. At your age you shouldn’t be afraid. It only draws the evil down upon you. Pray that Jesus may be with us, and that through His help we will find an oar timber.’
Kálvur agreed to do this.
It was hard finding the way. Ketil went first. He walked with bent knees, but taking long strides, and feeling his way with his staff. Now and then he stumbled in peat holes or dips, but he never fell far, for he was bent forward so much, and he was soon on his feet again. But he grumbled constantly.
‘Now, up we get again, and the Lord watch over me! This business will be the death of me,’ he would mutter, every time he fell down.
The young man fared rather better, for he heard the thumps when the old man fell, and looked out for himself. He was very much afraid. He thought that the Devil was out there in the darkness, and he felt that something was following close behind him, something with talons that wanted to seize hold of him. It was worst when the foaming torrents slashed through the darkness ahead of him, as the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled among the mountains. Then he would shiver right down his spine, and he would be on the point of crying out for help, but he would check himself, and pray inwardly, ‘Be with us, Jesus, and help us to find an oar timber!’
But as they went on their way, the darkness faded and a new day was born – a morning hungry for light, full of windswept clouds and frothing streams. Kálvur regained his courage. ‘There, now, we didn’t die after all,’ he thought. He gaped up at the darker part of the sky, to the westward. Now he only prayed, ‘Jesus, help us to find an oar timber.’
They reached a sheep shelter and sat down to recover their strength. Now was a good time to have a bite to eat. They had with them an ember-baked loaf and a piece of dried mutton. Ketil said, ‘Kálvur, it’s better if you have the mutton, you poor lad. Young folk need good food. All I need is a bit of the bread.’
But Kálvur would not agree. ‘It’s better if you have the mutton,’ he answered, ‘because I’m stronger than you are.’
Then Ketil had to laugh. ‘Yes, I think you are the stronger of us – you’ve grown up before we noticed it. How old are you now?’
‘Twenty-four.’
‘About right for getting married, then.’
Kálvur blushed and turned aside his face. Of course, now and then he had done a bit of courting with Klávus’s daughter, but as for getting married, he would never be able to bring himself to the point of doing that.
They had to carry on, to prevent themselves freezing, wet through as they were. ‘Oh, the Lord help me,’ groaned Ketil, ‘I’m as stiff as a board every time I get up. If only there’s an oar timber down there, when we get to the beach!’
They reached the point where they could look down into the bay. Their good humour returned, and they made themselves merry about Klávus. ‘He’ll just be setting out from his house,’ they said. ‘Whatever will he say when he sees us here?’
A haze of spray was hanging over the bay. The foam-crested breakers rolled in from the sea, smashing up between the rocks and boulders, and flooding over the beach and the foot of the cliff right up to the grass; and then, their power spent, they ran back in gentle, muddy streams. The spray shot high up the narrow clefts and gaps in the foot of the cliffs, while the storm whipped the top parts away in great flecks, and blew them far in over the moorland.
When they got down from the hillside, they lowered their voices, and broke into a trot. Their faces became serious, and they clenched their fists inside their mittens. They pressed on towards the shore, almost feeling their way forwards as they struggled down the slope. Their eyes protruded with eagerness for their quarry, but they trembled a little at the knees lest the inscrutable sea should have cast up something frightful onto the beach.
Kálvur wiped cold sweat from his forehead. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘if we found a dead body down here, what should we do?’
‘Let us pray God that it will not happen; but if it should, then we must carry it home and report the matter.’
‘Would you dare to move a dead body, Father? It might haunt you.’
‘You can’t always avoid doing what you wouldn’t dare to do,’ replied the old man. ‘But it would be worse to walk away and leave it lying helpless on the shore.’
‘Would it haunt worse then, Father?’
‘Of course, what would you expect, if it was left lying here, and was never laid to rest in the churchyard?’
Kálvur trembled until his teeth chattered, and he wondered about human life. If it had occurred to him that they might possibly find a dead body, he would never have come along. To be haunted by ghosts, whether you took the body home or left it lying there, was dreadful. He felt already as though something were rustling along behind him.
They went down to the water’s edge. There was no corpse there, and Kálvur took courage again. He found a lump of pumice, which the Faroe Islanders believe will protect a house from being struck by lightning. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘shall I take this home?’
‘Certainly,’ replied the old man, ‘but there should be a piece there already. Your grandfather put one into the foundation, when he built the house.’
Kálvur thought he would take it along all the same. He had often thought that in a thunderstorm, it would be good to have one under his pillow.
They found a few codfish and some scraps of driftwood. ‘We might as well gather them up,’ said Ketil, ‘they can all be used.’ So they carried everything to a little hollow on the eastern side of the bay. Then they walked westward, right round the bay, but without finding any real piece of timber. ‘A piece can still turn up,’ they said, consoling themselves. ‘The day is long enough.’ And their journey had not been altogether fruitless. Fish, and fragments of wood were all around the place, and now and then they shot a bird or two.
Later, when they came eastward again, they saw a man standing by their hollow. It was Klávus, who was filling his creel with their fish. They were astonished at this, and stopped. But when Klávus saw them, he chuckled at them in a friendly manner. ‘Oh, it’s you two who have come here, is it? I was just thinking that your fish were lying so near the sea that the breakers might easily wash them away again. If you’ll help me up with this creel, I’ll carry them a bit higher up.’
Ketil laughed inwardly. ‘The way this fellow wriggles out of difficulties,’ he thought. He said, ‘It won’t do any harm to leave the fish lying here, I shouldn’t think.’ And he took the creel and emptied the fish back into the hollow.
‘Maybe not, maybe not,’ chuckled Klávus. ‘In any case there are now three of us to look after them. I had a few fish as well, that I threw into this heap, so perhaps it would be best if I put them back into the creel.’ He stooped down again towards the heap of fish.
‘No, you’d better leave them alone, Klávus,’ said Ketil. ‘I think that what’s here, we’ll count as ours.’
‘Yes, of course – Oh, no, I wasn’t thinking of taking anything away – I just thought I’d, er – Anyway, have you had any luck out here today? Has any decent bit of wood been thrown ashore?’
‘No, we’ve found nothing but scraps.’
‘Yes, yes – it’s just as usual then. You don’t often get anything much, except a few bits to put on the fire. If Jesus will only watch over us, so that we reach home in safety, that’s all we can hope for on this trip, my friends. It cannot be so many more days, I’m sure of it, before we reach the last time, when there will be signs in the sun and in the moon. See how the windows of heaven are filled, and ready to discharge their waters upon this vale of misery. Behold: the rivers shall overflow their banks, and the sea shall swallow up the whole world.’ Then Klávus left them.
Ketil roared with laughter. ‘That’s put him in a bad mood all right! He didn’t like having to give up his plunder.’
But Kálvur was astonished. It was the first time he had seen anybody steal anything, and he was disappointed when he saw no misfortune come upon Klávus as a consequence. His face did not become black, neither did the Devil come and run off with him.
The next time they saw Klávus, he was carrying a great plank over his shoulder.
‘That fellow has the Devil’s own luck,’ grumbled Ketil and Kálvur. ‘That was just the plank we were looking for.’
‘But where did he get the plank from?’ they asked each other. ‘We’ve walked around the bay from end to end, and it couldn’t have been floating in the water, because we’d have spotted it quite as quickly as Klávus.’ They agreed that it must be that Klávus knew how to search better than they did. ‘But wait a minute,’ said Ketil, ‘and we’ll find out what tricks he uses.’ And they hid themselves among the stones.
They saw Klávus walked down to the shore line again. He walked slowly forward, climbed onto a great boulder, and looked out over the sea; then he got down again, and poked with his stick into the seaweed and scraps of rubbish thrown up by the tide. ‘Well, we can do that ourselves,’ thought Ketil and Kálvur. But now Klávus came to a great bank of foam, and poked his stick into that. They were astounded when they saw him actually walk into the foam, feeling his way forward with his stick, and disappear. A little later he came out again with a piece of wood and a catfish. Then Ketil and Kálvur realised where the plank had come from, and hurried down. ‘The fellow’s cute and clever all right, but just wait till another day.’ And they set about digging into the foam banks.
The weather improved, though the wind remained the same. The day gradually wore on. Kálvur was beginning to get bored, and wanted to get back home. ‘We’ve walked about ever such a long time, and had nothing but bread to eat,’ he said. ‘I want some whale meat and a dry change of clothes.’
‘You shouldn’t be the first of us two to give up,’ said Ketil sharply. ‘I wasn’t afraid of being wet through when I was your age. I think we ought to stay here as long as we can see. The weather’s clearing up, and it won’t be so dark as to make it difficult for us to find our way home, even after sunset.’
‘Yes, but I shall want something to eat.’
‘We’ve got bread.’
But no, Kálvur did not want bread. ‘I want a proper meal.’
‘What proper meal do you suppose we can get in this wilderness? Go down to the water and see if you can find any mussels, and I’ll see whether I can get a fire going.’
So they baked mussels and ate their fill of them.
Later, in the evening, Ketil and Kálvur heard a cry for help. Kálvur turned pale, and trembled at the knees. ‘It’s a dying man, Father, thrown up by the sea! I wouldn’t dare go near him!’
‘Oh, hold your noise,’ hissed Ketil. ‘I suppose you’d sooner risk letting him die in the surf – and then he’d haunt us as long as we lived.’ The old man went toward the noise. Kálvur followed him, a cable’s length behind.
The cry was coming from a bank of foam on the east side of the bay. There were no words, only cries and groans. Ketil supposed it must be some foreigner who was thrown ashore, and he shouted into the foam, in a mixture of Danish and Faroese, ‘Hang on, my friend, I can hear you, and I’m on my way to help!’ So Ketil dived into the foam, threatening and urging Kálvur to follow him. But in the foam bank they fell to squabbling, for Kálvur was so frightened that sometimes he lost his grip, and sometimes he fell over, while they were carrying the man out. Ketil begged the man not to take it ill. They were trying to help him, but his son was so young – ‘and he sometimes makes mistakes through lack of experience.’
When they emerged, they saw that it was Klávus they had rescued, and they stood there disconcerted. ‘Lord bless us, Klávus. Whatever happened to you?’ They could see that he had broken his leg.
But Klávus said nothing about that. He was fussing about a beast, The Beast, which had risen up out of the sea, and that now, the end of the world was close at hand.
‘No need to talk like that,’ Ketil consoled him. ‘You’ve broken your leg, and now we’re going to look after you. No Beast has risen up. As for the end of the world, that rests in God’s hands, and when it does come, it’ll be no good flinching from it.’
Then Klávus raised himself from the grass on his elbow, and stared wild-eyed down towards the foam bank. ‘It has, it has! The Beast has risen up! It’s down there in that foam bank. I fell over it and I heard it snorting.’ He crossed himself, with both hands, and fell back onto the grass, weeping bitterly.
Ketil stood there thinking it out. He must have encountered something in there. The old man became more and more inquisitive. ‘Klávus,’ he said, ‘just calm down now, and tell me what it was you felt. What was it like? Was it big, and was it alive?’
But Klávus was utterly distraught, and fussed the whole time about how the sun would now fall from the heavens, and the moon would be darkened, and how it would rain brimstone. ‘And oh, that lovely plank of mine – I was going to put it to ever such a good use – and now all this is coming to pass!’
Ketil stood digging his fingers into his beard, and looking seriously at the foam bank. He had no desire to step into it before he got to know what it was that Klávus was fussing about. It might be something that he could put to good use. He took his gun and loaded it. ‘It can’t be as frightful as all that,’ he thought. And he went down.
Kálvur followed anxiously behind, creeping along with his arms full of stones, and crouched behind a boulder.
Ketil stuck the muzzle of the gun into the foam, rooted around, and went forwards. But then he turned back again. It was a serious matter going in, because the foam was so deep that you couldn’t see a thing, and Klávus was lying there on the grass groaning away in the utmost distress. But then he became eager once again, for he thought that perhaps there was a good catch, and he turned back in once more. He put one hand to his nose, so that he could breathe, while in the other he held his gun, and felt his way forwards.
Now he got right into the cleft, as far as he dared go toward the breakers. With the muzzle of the gun he felt something soft, which moved. Before he thought what he was doing, he took the gun in both hands and fired. The barrel was so short, the recoil knocked him over on his back when it went off. And as he lay there, he began to have misgivings. ‘What was it I felt, now?’ he asked himself. ‘Perhaps it was a man.’ And he was so startled, that he burst out crying, ‘Oh, Jesus have mercy on me!’
You would have thought that Kálvur had grown wings, the way he flung the stones away from him and fled from the beach blubbering. Klávus began to sing the hymn, ‘To Thy mercy do I fly.’
Ketil lay there a little while recovering his breath. Then he got up again. There was nothing to be done about it; he had not had any evil intentions – and it was God’s hand at work, if he had wounded a man. But he must know what had happened, so he groped his way forward. First he encountered a head, then a neck behind it, and a flank with a wound in it, through which warm blood was oozing. At last he found a fin. ‘Thank God,’ he said, ‘it’s only a seal!’
Gradually, it dawned on him that he had made a good kill. He felt a sudden glow of pride, and at once his manner became playful. As he waded out of the foam bank again, he started singing the ballad of ‘Regin the Smith’:
High in the air his pinions spread,
But low his body hung;
And Sjúrður faced that dragon fierce
And his sword against him swung.
Kálvur was at this moment running at top speed up the hillside. Ketil cupped his hands in front of his mouth and shouted to him to come down again. ‘I’ve shot a seal!’
When Klávus heard about the seal, he raised himself up from the grass a little again. Now he piped another tune. His lower lip fell, and he stopped crossing himself. ‘Well, I’m damned,’ he said, ‘they’ve pulled off something this time.’
When they were dragging the seal well above high-water mark, it was all very jolly. Ketil laughed so much that every now and then he had to stop pulling. He thought about Klávus, who lay there with his broken leg, devouring the seal with his eyes. ‘He’s never had such a mortification in all his born days,’ Ketil thought.
Now they had the job of getting Klávus home. The seal would have to wait, and they would come back for it later.
Kálvur said, ‘There’s no other way but taking turns carrying him on our backs.’
‘We wouldn’t get far with him that way,’ replied Ketil. ‘Carrying a burden that way is very hard going. We need to fix him in some way so that we can carry him between us.’
‘It’s a shame about my plank,’ Klávus groaned. ‘Now, it’s going to be left lying out here. It’ll be long enough before I can come over here again to fetch it in, I should think.’
‘We’ll come across this evening, and take it to your storehouse.’
‘Thank you very much; but the storehouse is locked up.’
They did not reply to this one. If Klávus was afraid to let the key out of his hands for that brief length of time, his plank could stay where it was.
‘I suppose I couldn’t sit on the plank while you carried me? I think it would be easier for you.’
‘We could manage your weight well enough that way,’ said Ketil. ‘But could you bear to sit there on the plank, with your broken leg?’
‘Yes, why not? I should think I could.’
When they had got Klávus on the plank, and were ready to set off, he said to Kálvur, ‘Just pass me my catfish, old chap, and I’ll carry it in my hand. You can fetch the bits of wood home for me when you come out here again.’ Then they set off.
When they reached Klávus’s storehouse, they were ready to drop with exhaustion. Klávus asked them to carry him up to the door, as he was used to the lock and could lock it up himself. So they laid Klávus down on the grass and put the plank inside.
‘There should be one of those carrying frames we use for big stones, somewhere in there,’ said Klávus. ‘Can you see it? It would be best if I sat in that, and it would make it easier for you.’
Ketil and Kálvur agreed that this would be best. Klávus was extremely accommodating, it had to be admitted; he sat exactly as they wanted him to sit. But he would not let the catfish out of his hands. ‘It doesn’t do to come home without bringing something back for supper,’ he remarked.
There was no more talk on the way home. Ketil and Kálvur became very weary, taking turns carrying the heavy burden. And by degrees, Klávus’s injury became more and more painful. A couple of times they had to stop and give him water, for he nearly fainted when Kálvur stumbled with him, and his broken leg jarred on the ground.
When they reached the village, Klávus asked them, ‘How do you think the seal ought to be shared, seeing it was I who found him in the first place?’
But Ketil and Kálvur replied that they did not intend to share it. ‘We intend to keep that seal for ourselves.’
Then they carried Klávus to his house.