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Page 9
He did not get any further, for at the sight of the long-legged master,
who stalked down from the desk, quite scandalized at this disturbance of
order, the head suddenly stopped in its harangue, and with a hearty,
"Well, I'm blest! what a ghost!" disappeared, closing the door after it.
It did not take very much to provoke the laughter of the boys, and when
at the same moment the bell rang to announce that the school-hour was
over, the class broke up in confusion, and the master hastened, fuming
with rage, to complain to the rector.
Gabriel hurried off as fast as he could, in hopes of catching up his
friend who had caused the disturbance, but he had already disappeared;
he had probably gone down to the town to continue his libations. This
friend was a foreman shipwright, who, since his return from America, had
borne the name of Tom Robson. His real name when he left home was Thomas
Robertsen, but it had got changed somehow in America, and he kept to it
as it was.
Tom Robson was the cleverest foreman on the whole west coast, but his
drinking propensities tried to the utmost both the patience and the
firmness of his employers. He had already built several vessels for
Garman and Worse, but he was determined that the one he was now
superintending at Sandsgaard should be his masterpiece.
This vessel was of about nine hundred tons burden, and was the largest
craft that had been built at that port up 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 built of their own
materials, in their own ship-yard, and by the workmen who from
generation to generation had worked for Garman and Worse.
When Gabriel reached the point from which he could see down into the bay
on which lay the property of Sandsgaard, the ship was the first thing
which caught his eye. She stood on the slip below the house, and he
could not help remarking the beauty of her bow, and the elegant rake of
her stern. It was the dinner-hour, and all the workmen were either at
home, in the cottages which stretched along the west side of the bay, or
lay asleep among the shavings. As he stood on the crest of the rising
ground, which sloped gradually down towards the buildings, and gazed at
all these dominions, which from time out of mind had belonged to Garman
and Worse, Gabriel became more and more out of spirits.
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