Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen (343 page)

Then fell a weight on the seaman’s mind;
 
He was conscious of youth and strength,
He came from shores where the sun was kind,
A world of life and light lay behind,
 
And ahead the dull winter’s length.

They anchored; off went his mates, full cry,
 
Ashore for a gay carouse;
He followed their path with a longing eye
 
As he stood by his quiet house.
He took a peep through the window pane, —
 
There were two in the small abode!
His wife sat winding yarn on a skein,
But there in the cradle — he saw it plain —
 
Lay a sweet wee lassie, and crowed.

They say that Terje, from that first peep,
 
Grew suddenly quiet and grave.
He loved to rock his baby to sleep;
 
He toiled like a willing slave.
When the dance rang loud from the neighbouring farm
Through the Sunday evening air,
He trolled sea-chanties at home, to charm
Little Annie, who lay on his arm,
 
Or played with his dark-brown hair.

So time drew on to the year of war
 
In eighteen hundred and nine.
‘Tis a date men kept long memories for,
 
When the people were made to pine.
By English cruisers the ports were barred;
 
There were dearth and sickness sore;
The poor went hungry, the rich fared hard,
Two brawny arms were of small regard,
 
And death stood at every door.

So Terje grieved for a day or two,
 
Then shook his broad shoulders free;
He turned to his friend both tried and true —
 
The vast and billowy sea. —
On the western coast it is still their boast,
 
As the boldest of deeds afloat:
“When the wind,” they say, “blew a bit less wild,
Terje Vigen rowed, for his wife and child,
 
Oversea in an open boat!”

The smallest coble that he could find
 
He chose for the daring quest.
Mast and canvas he left behind;
 
So he deemed his chances best.
He reckoned she would weather and steer
 
Tho’ a bit of a beam-sea ran;
One risk was the Jutland reef to clear,
But the English ships were a far worse fear,
 
And the eyes of the look-out man.

So Terje bent his strength to the oar,
 
And trusted himself to fate.
He came safe and sound to the Flatstrand shore,
 
And loaded his precious freight.
God knows, his cargo was nothing grand,
 
And yet to him it was life;
For Terje came from a poor’s man’s land,
And twelve good bushels of barley in hand
 
Meant succour for child and wife.

He toiled at the oar three nights and days
Stout-hearted, with arm as stout;
 
As the fourth day broke, with the sun’s first rays
The mist seemed to open out.
Aye, peaks and scaurs — they were mountains true,
 
Not shifting cloud-banks grey;
But high over all the heights he knew
Imeness saddle, broad and true,
 
And recognised where he lay.

Near home he was: yet a little stress
 
He well could hold out and bear.
His heart leapt up in its thankfulness,
 
He was ready to lift a prayer.
Then he stopped: he stared: yes, right in his track,
 
As the prayer froze on his lips,
In Hesnaze Sound, through the lifting wrack,
A corvette lay pitching with sails aback:
 
‘Twas one of the English ships.

A signal sounded, — they had him in sight,
 
And his nearest course was barred.
But with sunrise the failing airs blew light,
 
And Terje rowed westward hard.

Then dame to his ears the sailors’ cheers
 
As a boat from the war-ship sped;
With feet that thrust at the thwart he rowed
Till his wake like a foaming mill-race flowed
 
And the straining fingers bled.

They call it the Gosling, a hidden shoal
 
Just eastward of Homborg Sound;
In a sea-wind, heavy the breakers roll;
 
At two feet deep there is ground.
On the calmest day there’s a cloud of spray
 
With a yellow gleam from below; — .
And let the swell roar loud as it may,
In-shore there is mostly a sheltered bay
 
Unswept by the undertow.

For this Terje Vigen’s coble shot
 
Amidst the surf and the shoals;
But still in his wake pursuit was hot
 
With fourteen men at the tholes.
Then he cried to God through the breakers’ roar,
 
For his soul was hard bested:
“In the cottage down upon yonder shore
My wife with the little babe she bore
 
Sits starving, and waits for bread!”

But the fifteen men still louder cried,
 
It was Lingsands over again;
The odds were on the Englishman’s side
 
Who harried the northern main.
As Terje himself struck the sunken shelf
 
The jolly-boat grounded too:
The officer heaved an oar, and smote
So hard in the bottom of Terje’s boat
 
That he drove it the timbers through.

In came the sea like an angry spate.
 
As the shattered timbers start;
In two feet of water the precious freight
 
Sank — but not Terje’s heart.

Despite their weapons, he dashed through the crew
 
And over the gunwale sprang.
He dived, he swam and he dived anew;
But the boat got clear; where he came in view
 
Flashed cutlass and musket rang.

They hauled him up; a salute-gun roared
 
For triumph from the corvette.
Tall and proud, when they took him aboard,
 
Stood the captain, a stripling yet.
The boat in his eyes was his maiden prize
 
So he stood there with stiffened neck.
But Terje barely his senses kept;
The strong man prayed for release and wept
 
As he knelt on the quarter-deck.

With tears he purchased nought but a flout;
 
They smiled at his misery.
Soon England’s conquering son stood out,
 
With the freshening wind, to sea.
Then Terje was silent. The die was cast.
 
No words had his sorrow now —
His captors wondered to see how fast
A look that loured like a tempest passed
 
And left but a clouded brow.

Long years in the prison Terje spent;
 
As many as five, they say.
He dreamed of home till his back grew bent
 
And his dark-brown hair grew grey.
He held the one hope that yet was his,
 
In silence with stubborn grip.
Then came eighteen hundred and fourteen, with peace;
The captive Norsemen got their release,
 
And went home in a Swedish ship.

With a pilot’s licence home he ran, —
 
What news of his child and wife?
But few now knew him, the grizzled man
 
Who had left in the prime of life.
‘Twas a stranger’s now, the familiar hearth,
 
And this was his answer thence;”
“The husband deserted them in the dearth.
They died in want, and were laid in earth
 
At the parish’s expense.”

THE PILOT’S REVENGE

Years passed, and the pilot plied his skill
 
On the bare isle furthest out.
‘Tis certain, he used no creature ill,
 
Afloat or the coast about;
Yet at times in his eyes a hard light played,
 
When the sea lashed the reefs in wrath;
And then folk fancied his wits were strayed,
And they were not many that unafraid
 
Crossed Terje Vigen’s path.

One evening, the pilots were all alive:
 
There was wind, and the moonbeams lit
An English yacht that threatened to drive
Ashore with her canvas split.
The fluttering signal told her tale,
And mutely for succour cried;
There crept towards her a boat under sail;
Tack by tack it beat up the gale,
 
Till a pilot climbed up her side.

He grasped the wheel with a strong, calm hand
 
That the old sea-fighter showed.
She answered the helm, she stood out from land,
 
While astern his boat was towed.
My lord, with his lady and babe, drew near;
The pilot touched hand to brim;
“I will make you rich for many a year
If out of the breakers you get us clear!” —
 
But the pilot stared at him.

He paled, — then he smiled, like one who found
 
Some clue that he long had sought;
He let the wheel slip, and fast aground
 
Lay the beautiful English yacht.
“She would never answer the rudder more.
 
No saving her here, — she will break.
To your boats! I know a safe channel inshore,
Let my lord and my lady with me go before,
 
And the others follow my wake!”

The boat cut a phosphorescent track
 
Towards land, with its precious freight.
Astern stood the pilot, tall and black;
In his eyes were triumph and hate.
To leeward the Gosling, his glance could note:
 
To windward, the Sound in view;
He let sheet and tiller go, and smote
With an oar so hard in the little boat
 
That he drove it the bottom through.

In came the sea, all surging white;
 
There was struggle and wild alarm.
But the mother lifted, though pale with fright,
 
Her daughter high on her arm.
“Annie, my darling child!” cried she. —
 
Then Terje shook to his soul!
He caught the sheet, put the helm alee,
And the boat like a sea-bird took the sea
 
As she swam on the hidden shoal.

She grounded, she sank; but the surf itself
 
Seemed a boündary-line to keep;
Then came smooth water; a hidden shelf
 
Gave footing; they stood knee-deep.
Then the Englishman seemed to stagger and reel-
 
He cried “‘Tis but shifting sand!”
But the pilot smiled “Nay, ye guess but ill:
A sunken boat with three barrels of meal
 
Is the rock on which we stand.”

Through the other’s mind then a memory swept
 
Of a deed he ne’er thought to reck;
He knew the seaman who once had wept
 
As he knelt on the quarter-deck.
Then cried Terje Vigen, “You flung away
 
My all for a triumph sweet; —
A moment more, and the debt I pay!”
Ah, then ‘twas the proud lord’s turn to pray
 
At the poor Norse pilot’s feet.

But Terje, grasping the oar, stood still;
 
Erect as in youth he seemed.
In his eyes burned strength and dauntless will;
 
His hair to the sea-wind streamed.
“You sailed in your great corvette,” he said,
 
“I rowed in my tiny craft;
For dear ones at home I toiled, half dead,
And you thought it a jest to take their bread —
 
At my bitter tears you laughed.

“She’s as fair as a flower, is your lady grand,
 
And her hand is silken fine;
Hard work had roughened my goodwife’s hand,
 
But still she was dear, and mine.
A golden head has your blue-eyed maid
 
Like a little guest from the Lord;
My daughter was nothing to gaze upon:
The bairns, God help us! are pinched and wan
 
That eat at a poor man’s board.

“But mark you, these were my riches on earth;
 
They were all that I called my own.
It weighed with you as of little worth,
 
What I set such store upon.
Now strikes the hour of our settlement;
 
You shall pay, with a moment’s stress,
The long account of the years I spent
That greyed my hair, and my shoulders bent,
 
And made wreck of my happiness!”