One morning in January, while he was out fishing in his boat with two other men, he heard, in the dark, a voice from a skerry at the very entrance of the creek.  It laughed scornfully, and said, “When it comes to a Femboering,[4] Elias, look to thyself!”

But there was many a long year yet before it did come to that; but one autumn, when his son Bernt was sixteen, Elias knew he could manage it, so he took his whole family with him in his boat to Ranen,[5] to exchange his Sexaering for a Femboering.  The only person left at home was a little Finn girl, whom they had taken into service some few years before, and who had only lately been confirmed.

Now there was a boat, a little Femboering, for four men and a boy, that Elias just then had his eye upon—­a boat which the best boat-builder in the place had finished and tarred over that very autumn.  Elias had a very good notion of what a boat should be, and it seemed to him that he had never seen a Femboering so well built below the water-line. Above the water-line, indeed, it looked only middling, so that, to one of less experience than himself, the boat would have seemed rather a heavy goer than otherwise, and anything but a smart craft.

Now the boat-master knew all this just as well as Elias.  He said he thought it would be the swiftest sailer in Ranen, but that Elias should have it cheap, all the same, if only he would promise one thing, and that was, to make no alteration whatever in the boat, nay, not so much as adding a fresh coat of tar.  Only when Elias had expressly given his word upon it did he get the boat.

But “yon laddie"[6] who had taught the boat-master how to build his boats so cunningly below the water-line—­above the water-line he had had to use his native wits, and they were scant enough—­must surely have been there beforehand, and bidden him both sell it cheaply, so that Elias might get it, and stipulate besides that the boat should not be looked at too closely.  In this way it escaped the usual tarring fore and aft.

Elias now thought about sailing home, but went first into the town, provided himself and family with provisions against Christmas, and indulged in a little nip of brandy besides.  Glad as he was over the day’s bargain, he, and his wife too, took an extra drop in their e’en, and their son Bernt had a taste of it too.

After that they sailed off homewards in their new boat.  There was no other ballast in the boat but himself, his old woman, the children, and the Christmas provisions.  His son Bernt sat by the main-sheet; his wife, helped by her next eldest son, held the sail-ropes; Elias himself sat at the rudder, while the two younger brothers of twelve and fourteen were 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.