d to all
this, for nobody loved him. This was how the world treated Anne
Lisbeth's boy, and how could it be otherwise. It was his fate to be
beloved by no one. Hitherto he had been a land crab; the land at
last cast him adrift. He went to sea in a wretched vessel, and sat
at the helm, while the skipper sat over the grog-can. He was dirty and
ugly, half-frozen and half-starved; he always looked as if he never
had enough to eat, which was really the case.

Late in the autumn, when the weather was rough, windy, and wet,
and the cold penetrated through the thickest clothing, especially at
sea, a wretched boat went out to sea with only two men on board, or,
more correctly, a man and a half, for it was the skipper and his
boy. There had only been a kind of twilight all day, and it soon
grew quite dark, and so bitterly cold, that the skipper took a dram to
warm him. The bottle was old, and the glass too. It was perfect in the
upper part, but the foot was broken off, and it had therefore been
fixed upon a little carved block of wood, painted blue. A dram is a
great comfort, and two are better still, thought the skipper, while
the boy sat at the helm, which he held fast in his hard seamed
hands. He was ugly, and his hair was matted, and he looked crippled
and stunted; they called him the field-laborer's boy, though in the
church register he was entered as Anne Lisbeth's son. The wind cut
through the rigging, and the boat cut through the sea. The sails,
filled by the wind, swelled out and carried them along in wild career.
It was wet and rough above and below, and might still be worse.
Hold! what is that? What has struck the boat? Was it a waterspout,
or a heavy sea rolling suddenly upon them?

"Heaven help us!" cried the boy at the helm, as the boat heeled
over and lay on its beam ends. It had struck on a rock, which rose
from the depths of the sea, and sank at once, like an old shoe in a
puddle. "It sank at once with mouse and man," as the saying is.
There might have been mice on board, but only one man and a half,
the skipper and the laborer's boy. No one saw it but the skimming
sea-gulls and the fishes beneath the water; and even they did not
see it properly, for they darted back with terror as the boat filled
with water and sank. There it lay, scarcely a fathom below the
surface, and those two were provided for, buried, and forgotten. The
glass with the foot of blue wood was the only thing that did not