And every boat that Jack turned out was lighter to row and swifter to sail than the one before it.

But the largest and finest of all was the last that stood on the stocks on the shore.

This was the seventh.

Jack walked to and fro, and thought about it a good deal; but when he came down to see it in the morning, it seemed to him, oddly enough, to have grown in the night and, what is more, was such a wondrous beauty that he was struck dumb with astonishment.  There it lay ready at last, and folks were never tired of talking about it.

Now, the Bailiff who ruled over all Helgeland in those days was an unjust man who laid heavy taxes upon the people, taking double weight and tale both of fish and of eider-down, nor was he less grasping with the tithes and grain dues.  Wherever his fellows came they fleeced and flayed.  No sooner, then, did the rumour of the new boats reach him than he sent his people out to see what truth was in it, for he himself used to go fishing in the fishing grounds with large crews.  When thus his fellows came back and told him what they had seen, the Bailiff was so taken with it that he drove straightway over to Sjoeholm, and one fine day down he came swooping on Jack like a hawk.  “Neither tithe nor tax hast thou paid for thy livelihood, so now thou shalt be fined as many half-marks of silver as thou hast made boats,” said he.

Ever louder and fiercer grew his rage.  Jack should be put in chains and irons and be transported northwards to the fortress of Skraar, and be kept so close that he should never see sun or moon more.

But when the Bailiff had rowed round the Femboering, and feasted his eyes upon it, and seen how smart and shapely it was, he agreed at last to let Mercy go before Justice, and was content to take the Femboering in lieu of a fine.

Then Jack took off his cap and said that if there was one man more than another to whom he would like to give the boat, it was his honour the Bailiff.

So off the magistrate sailed with it.

Jack’s mother and sister and brothers cried bitterly at the loss of the beautiful Femboering; but Jack stood on the roof of the boat-house and laughed fit to split.

And towards autumn the news spread that the Bailiff with his eight men had gone down with the Femboering in the West-fjord.

But in those days there was quite a changing about of boats all over Nordland, and Jack was unable to build a tenth part of the boats required of him.  Folks from near and far hung about the walls of his boat-house, and it was quite a favour on his part to take orders, and agree to carry them out.  A whole score of boats soon stood beneath the pent-house on the strand.

He no longer troubled his head about every seventh boat, or cared to know which it was or what befell it.  If a boat foundered now and then, so many the more got off and did well, so that, on the whole, he made a very good thing indeed out of it.  Besides, surely folks could pick and choose their own boats, and take which they liked best.