to the present time, and
Consul Garman had given orders that nothing should be spared to make it
a model of perfection.

Tom Robson was thus only able to get drunk by fits and starts, which he
did when they came to any important epoch in the building. On that day,
for instance, the time had just arrived for beginning to lay the
planking upon the timbers.

As Gabriel neither found his friend nor saw anything of the carriage
from Sandsgaard, which generally met him on his way from school, he set
off to walk homewards, down the long avenue which led to the family
property. It was a good half-hour's walk, and while he sauntered along,
swinging his heavy burden of the books he so cordially hated, he was
lost in gloomy thought. Every day, on his way from school, he met the
younger clerks going to their dinner in the town. They looked tired and
weary, it is true; still, he envied them their permission to sit working
the whole day in the office--a paradise with which he, although his
father's son, had no connection whatever. He was obliged to confine his
energy to the building-yard, where there were plenty of hiding-places,
and where the Consul was seldom seen of an afternoon. The ship on the
stocks was at once his joy and his pride; he crept all over her, inside
and out, above and below, scrutinizing every plank and every nail. At
length he had begun to have quite a knowledge of the art of
ship-building, and had gained the friendship of Tom Robson, Anders
Begmand, and the other shipwrights. The ship was to be the finest the
town had yet produced, and when this fact came into his thoughts it
almost enabled him to forget his burden of Greek and Latin.

From conversations he had partly overheard at home, Gabriel knew that
there had been a difference of opinion between his father and Morten,
the eldest son, who was a partner in the firm, ever since the building
of this ship was first mentioned.

Morten maintained that they ought to buy an iron steamer in England,
either on their own account or in partnership with some of the other
houses of the town. He insisted, particularly, that the time could not
be far distant when sailing ships would be entirely superseded by
steamers. But the father held by sailing ships on principle; and,
moreover, the idea that Garman and Worse should have anything in common
with the mushroom houses of the town was to him quite unbearable. In the
end, the will of the elder prevailed; the ship was buil