aps, 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 black-bearded Salve Kristiansen soon came to be the best known in
Arendal of them all. The dauntless look in his keen brown eyes, his
sharp features, and his short, sudden manner and way of speaking, gave
the impression of a character of uncommon energy; and it was said that
not the very wildest weather would deter him from going to sea. He was
known to have more than once stayed alone on board a water-logged vessel
while he sent his comrade on shore for help; and in his little room at
home, with its white-painted windows, and geraniums, and Dutch
cuckoo-clock, there stood above the roll of charts and telescope on the
wall a bracket with more than one silver goblet upon it, which, like the
telescope, were presents in acknowledgment of his services in piloting
vessels into port under circumstances of unusual difficulty and danger.
But, notwithstanding the repute in which he was held, he had never yet
received the medal for saving life, nor had he yet been made a
certificated pilot of the district.

He was not a man who gathered comrades round him; and as the years
passed, his unapproachability of demeanour, which seemed intended to
convey to people with a certain bitterness that he could do very well
without them, increased. It was said up in the town that he had taken to
drink. For after selling off his mackerel down on the quay, he would
often now sit the whole day in Mother Andersen's parlour with his
brandy-glass before him; and when evening approached, and his head had
had as much as it could carry, it was just as well to keep out of his
way. He did not talk much; and what attraction he found in Mother
Andersen's parlour it was not easy to say. But they knew, at all events,
how to treat him there; and he felt, from the casual questions that
would be addressed to him after he had returned from sea, or from the
way in which a newcomer would salute him, that he was in a sympathetic
atmosphere, and that his name was in repute. It was even something more
than respect, perhaps, which he inspired, for a