lost.

"Then it would be all over with me and Martin too!"

This thought passed through Jurgen's mind one day while they
were out at sea, where his foster-father had been taken suddenly
ill. The fever had seized him. They were only a few oars' strokes from
the reef, and Jurgen sprang from his seat and stood up in the bow.

"Father-let me come!" he said, and he glanced at Martin and across
the waves; every oar bent with the exertions of the rowers as the
great wave came towards them, and he saw his father's pale face, and
dared not obey the evil impulse that had shot through his brain. The
boat came safely across the reef to land; but the evil thought
remained in his heart, and roused up every little fibre of
bitterness which he remembered between himself and Martin since they
had known each other. But he could not weave the fibres together,
nor did he endeavour to do so. He felt that Martin had robbed him, and
this was enough to make him hate his former friend. Several of the
fishermen saw this, but Martin did not--he remained as obliging and
talkative as ever, in fact he talked rather too much.

Jurgen's foster-father took to his bed, and it became his
death-bed, for he died a week afterwards; and now Jurgen was heir to
the little house behind the sand-hills. It was small, certainly, but
still it was something, and Martin had nothing of the kind.

"You will not go to sea again, Jurgen, I suppose," observed one of
the old fishermen. "You will always stay with us now."

But this was not Jurgen's intention; he wanted to see something of
the world. The eel-breeder of Fjaltring had an uncle at Old Skjagen,
who was a fisherman, but also a prosperous merchant with ships upon
the sea; he was said to be a good old man, and it would not be a bad
thing to enter his service. Old Skjagen lies in the extreme north of
Jutland, as far away from the Hunsby dunes as one can travel in that
country; and this is just what pleased Jurgen, for he did not want
to remain till the wedding of Martin and Else, which would take
place in a week or two.

The old fisherman said it was foolish to go away, for now that
Jurgen had a home Else would very likely be inclined to take him
instead of Martin.

Jurgen gave such a vague answer that it was not easy to make out
what he meant--the old man brought Else to him, and she said:

"You have a home now; you ought to think of that."

And Jurgen thought of many things.

The sea has heavy waves