riving like smoke before it, so that he could fitfully distinguish
objects over the deck, even to the look-out man's looming figure out
upon the forecastle.

Upon the capstan bar sat a sailor in oilskin clothes, who had probably
been on shore the previous night and not closed his eyes, and who was
making great efforts to keep awake. His head, however, would still keep
nodding; and from time to time he stood up and tried to keep himself
warm by exercising his arms. He sang, or more often took up afresh upon
each recovery of consciousness a verse of a half-Swedish ballad about a
"girl so true," that he wished he then had by his side, for the time
without her seemed so long. Now and then the spray of a sea would bring
him more sharply to himself, but it did not last long; and so the ditty,
which was melancholy to the last degree, would begin afresh.

Salve was far too restless to have any desire to sleep, and as he paced
to and fro by the fore-hatch, lost in his dreams, and listened to the
song, it seemed to him a most touching one.

The nodding sailor little thought that he was performing before a
deeply-moved audience.

CHAPTER V.

The party, meanwhile, that had left the ship, were passing the night
with old Jacob on Torungen. They had tried first to beat out to the
larger island, but the sea had risen, darkness had set in, and it had
soon become evident that it was no longer pleasure-sailing for a boat
with ladies in it. They had determined, therefore, rather than go about
for home, and lose the whole sporting expedition, which was to have
lasted for two or three days, to spend the night on Little Torungen and
see what the morning would do for them.

Great was old Jacob's astonishment, it may readily be supposed, when
there came in the late evening a knocking at the door, and he saw by the
light from the hearth no less than six grand folk come streaming in,
with two ladies amongst them. He shaded his eyes with his hand, and
looked at them in mute amazement.

As for Elizabeth, if it had been a train of fairies that had suddenly
appeared, they could not have occasioned her more terror and curiosity.
It was getting near bedtime, and she had been sitting half-asleep over
the fire, and perhaps her suddenly awakened excitement lent a more than
usual animation and attraction to a pair of eyes and a face that would
nowhere have passed unnoticed; for Carl Beck, who was at the head of the
party, seemed positively