Page:Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1888).djvu/525

 and quick at work. He was full of life; he knew how to swim and dive, and could turn over and tumble in the strong tide. They often warned him to beware of the sharks, who could easily seize the best swimmer, draw him down, and devour him; but such was not to be Jurgen’s fate.

At a neighbour’s house on the down was a boy named Martin, with whom Jurgen was very friendly; they had served together on board a ship sailing to Norway, and also on another sailing to Holland, without even having quarrelled. But a person can be easily excited to quarrel, when he is naturally hot-tempered, for he often shows it in many ways; and this is just what Jurgen did one day, when they had fallen out about the merest trifle.

They were sitting behind the cabin door, eating out of a delf plate, which they had placed between them. Jurgen held his pocket-knife in his hand, and lifted it towards Martin, and at the same time became ashy pale, and there was an ugly look in his eyes.

Martin only said, “Ah! you are one of that sort, are you, accustomed to use a knife?”

The words were scarcely spoken, when Jurgen’s hand sank down. He answered not a syllable, but went-on eating, and afterwards returned to his work.

When they were resting again he stepped up to Martin, and said, “You may hit me in the face, I deserve it; but I feel sometimes as if something inside me was boiling over.”

“There, let it pass,” said Martin, and after that they were almost better friends than ever. And when they got back to the dunes, and began telling their adventures, this was told also. Martin said Jurgen was certainly very hasty, but a good fellow after all. They were both young and healthy, well grown and strong, but Jurgen was the more clever of the two.

In Norway the peasants, in spring, lead out their cattle to graze on the mountains. In Jutland the fishermen live during the spring amid the sand-hills, where huts have been erected for them. They are built of pieces of wrecks, and roofed with heather and turf; there are sleeping-places within, ranged against the walls, and here they live and sleep during the fishing season. Every fisherman has a female helper, or manager, as she is called, who baits his hooks, prepares warm beer for him when he comes on shore, and gets the dinner cooked and ready for him by the time he comes back to the hut, tired and hungry. Besides this, the housekeepers bring up the fish from the boat, cut them open, and prepare them, and have generally a great deal to do. Jurgen, his father, and several other fishermen and their house-keepers, inhabited the same hut. Martin occupied the next one. One of the girls, named Elsie, had known Jurgen from childhood. They were glad to meet again, and in many things were of the same mind, but in out-ward appearance there was great contrast between them, for he was dark, and she was pale and fair, and had flaxen hair, and eyes as blue as the sea in sunshine.

One day as they were walking together, and Jurgen holding her hand