a bad job.

Whilst they two thus sat all alone on the bottom of the boat, Elias said
to Bernt he must now needs believe that he too was about to be "along o'
mother!"[10] but that he had a strong hope that Bernt, at any rate,
would be saved, if he only held out like a man. Then he told him all
about the _Draug_, whom he had struck below the neck with the
_Kvejtepig_, and how it had now revenged itself upon him, and certainly
would not forbear till it was "quits with him."

It was towards nine o'clock in the morning when the grey dawn began to
appear. Then Elias gave to Bernt, who sat alongside him, his silver
watch with the brass chain, which he had snapped in two in order to drag
it from beneath his closely buttoned jacket. He held on for a little
time longer, but, as it got lighter, Bernt saw that his father's face
was deadly pale, his hair too had parted here and there, as often
happens when death is at hand, and his skin was chafed off his hands
from holding on to the keel. The son understood now that his father was
nearly at the last gasp, and tried, so far as the pitching and tossing
would allow it, to hold him up; but when Elias marked it, he said, "Nay,
look to thyself, Bernt, and hold on fast. I go to mother--in Jesus'
Name!" and with that he cast himself down headlong from the top of the
boat.

Every one who has sat on the keel of a boat long enough knows that when
the sea has got its own it grows much calmer, though not immediately.
Bernt now found it easier to hold on, and still more of hope came to him
with the brightening day. The storm abated, and, when it got quite
light, it seemed to him that he knew where he was, and that it was
outside his own homestead, Kvalholm, that he lay driving.

He now began again to cry for help, but his chief hope was in a current
which he knew bore landwards at a place where a headland broke in upon
the surge, and there the water was calmer. And he did, in fact, drive
closer and closer in, and came at last so near to one of the rocks that
the mast, which was floating by the side of the boat all the time,
surged up and down in the swell against the sloping cliff. Stiff as he
now was in all his limbs from sitting and holding on, he nevertheless
succeeded, after a great effort, in clambering up the cliff, where he
hauled the mast ashore, and made the _Femboering_ fast.

The Finn girl, who was alone in the house, had been thinking, for the
last two hours, that she had hear