ll events not be absolutely reckless; and Gjert
always took care that she should have news of them by other pilots or
fishermen from Merdoe, from the different places they put in to. If the
boy was not with his father she would sometimes send him in to Arendal
to look for him.

This time the pilot made a long stay at home, and during the whole time
not a single domestic jar occurred. For a couple, indeed, who had been
married as long as they had, such unbroken harmony would, under any
circumstances, have been remarkable. Little Henrik had even had his
father as a companion on one of his shrimping expeditions; and much of
Salve's time had since been taken up in rigging a little brig for his
delighted son.

The only point upon which a harmless little difference occurred was the
question of Gjert's schooling. They were very fairly well-to-do people
for their position, and his mother had one day, as if the idea had
suddenly occurred to her, asked why they should not send him to school
in Arendal; he would be able to lodge with her aunt there, she said. His
father, however, would not hear of it, and dismissed the subject very
shortly by saying that when Gjert was old enough, he intended him to go
to Tergesen's rigging-loft in Vraangen and learn to rig.

His mother could not, however, so easily dismiss the ambitious scheme
from her mind, and it became, a few days after, the occasion of the most
violent scene which had ever yet put her strength of purpose to the
test, but from which there ensued eventually the very happiest results.

A man-of-war had lately come up to Arendal from a cadet cruise to the
Mediterranean, and Gjert had been allowed to go over with one of the
other pilots to see her.

Apart from the sensation which her lofty rig, the shining brass stoppers
protruding from her gunports, her swarm of sailors, and the sound of the
shrill whistle and occasional beat of drum on board, suggestive of
man-of-war discipline, created, curiosity had been further excited by
some rumours which were in circulation about her cruise having been a
flogging cruise; and among Gjert's friends, and indeed among the harbour
people generally, she was so much the object of awe, that whenever the
whistle sounded, it would darkly suggest the thought that another
flogging was going to take place, and any boats that were near at the
moment would sheer off to a more comfortable distance. There was just so
much truth in all this that there