open it. And there was a stretching of hands towards the latch ever
higher and higher.

But Jack only lay there and laughed. "The _Femboerings_ that are built at
Sjoeholm don't go down before the first blast that blows," mocked he.

Then the latch chopped and hopped till the door flew wide open, and in
the doorway stood pretty Malfri and her mother and brothers. The
sea-fire shone about them, and they were dripping with water.

Their faces were pale and blue, and pinched about the corners of the
mouth, as if they had just gone through their death agony. Malfri had
one stiff arm round her mother's neck; it was all torn and bleeding,
just as when she had gripped her for the last time. She railed and
lamented, and begged back her young life from him.

So now he knew what had befallen them.

Out into the dark night and the darker weather he went straightway to
search for them, with as many boats and folk as he could get together.
They sailed and searched in every direction, and it was in vain.

But towards day the _Femboering_ came drifting homewards bottom upwards,
and with a large hole in the keel-board.

Then he knew who had done the deed.

But since the night when the whole of Jack's family went down, things
were very different at Sjoeholm.

In the daytime, so long as the hammering and the banging and the planing
and the clinching rang about his ears, things went along swimmingly, and
the frames of boat after boat rose thick as sea fowl on an
_AEggevaer_.[14]

But no sooner was it quiet of an evening than he had company. His mother
bustled and banged about the house, and opened and shut drawers and
cupboards, and the stairs creaked with the heavy tread of his brothers
going up to their bedrooms.

At night no sleep visited his eyes, and sure enough pretty Malfri came
to his door and sighed and groaned.

Then he would lie awake there and think, and reckon up how many boats
with false keel-boards he might have sent to sea. And the longer he
reckoned the more draug-boats he made of it.

Then he would plump out of bed and creep through the dark night down to
the boathouse. There he held a light beneath the boats, and banged and
tested all the keel-boards with a club to see if he couldn't hit upon
the _seventh_. But he neither heard nor felt a single board give way.
One was just like another. They were all hard and supple, and the wood,
when he scraped off the tar, was white and fresh.

One night he was so