re
to take it in turns to bail out.

They had eight miles of sea to sail over, and when they got into the
open, it was plain that the boat would be tested pretty stiffly on its
first voyage. A gale was gradually blowing up, and crests of foam began
to break upon the heavy sea.

And now Elias saw what sort of a boat he really had. She skipped over
the waves like a sea-mew; not so much as a splash came into the boat,
and he therefore calculated that he would have no need to take in all
his clews[7] against the wind, which an ordinary _Femboering_ would have
been forced to do in such weather.

Out on the sea, not very far away from him, he saw another _Femboering_,
with a full crew, and four clews in the sail, just like his own. It lay
on the same course, and he thought it rather odd that he had not noticed
it before. It made as if it would race him, and when Elias perceived
that, he could not for the life of him help letting out a clew again.

And now he went racing along like a dart, past capes and islands and
rocks, till it seemed to Elias as if he had never had such a splendid
sail before. Now, too, the boat showed itself what it really was, the
best boat in Ranen.

The weather, meantime, had become worse, and they had already got a
couple of dangerous seas right upon them. They broke in over the
main-sheet in the forepart of the boat where Bernt sat, and sailed out
again to leeward near the stern.

Since the gloom had deepened, the other boat had kept almost alongside,
and they were now so close together that they could easily have pitched
the baling-can from one to the other.

So they raced on, side by side, in constantly stiffer seas, till
night-fall, and beyond it. The fourth clew ought now to have been taken
in again, but Elias didn't want to give in, and thought he might bide a
bit till they took it in in the other boat also, which they needs _must_
do soon. Ever and anon the brandy-flask was brought out and passed
round, for they had now both cold and wet to hold out against.

The sea-fire, which played on the dark billows near Elias's own boat,
shone with an odd vividness in the foam round the other boat, just as if
a fire-shovel was ploughing up and turning over the water. In the bright
phosphorescence he could plainly make out the rope-ends on board her. He
could also see distinctly the folks on board, with their sou'westers on
their heads; but as their larboard side lay nearest, of course they all