The only point upon which a harmless little difference occurred was the question of Gjert’s schooling.  They were very fairly well-to-do people for their position, and his mother had one day, as if the idea had suddenly occurred to her, asked why they should not send him to school in Arendal; he would be able to lodge with her aunt there, she said.  His father, however, would not hear of it, and dismissed the subject very shortly by saying that when Gjert was old enough, he intended him to go to Tergesen’s rigging-loft in Vraangen and learn to rig.

His mother could not, however, so easily dismiss the ambitious scheme from her mind, and it became, a few days after, the occasion of the most violent scene which had ever yet put her strength of purpose to the test, but from which there ensued eventually the very happiest results.

A man-of-war had lately come up to Arendal from a cadet cruise to the Mediterranean, and Gjert had been allowed to go over with one of the other pilots to see her.

Apart from the sensation which her lofty rig, the shining brass stoppers protruding from her gunports, her swarm of sailors, and the sound of the shrill whistle and occasional beat of drum on board, suggestive of man-of-war discipline, created, curiosity had been further excited by some rumours which were in circulation about her cruise having been a flogging cruise; and among Gjert’s friends, and indeed among the harbour people generally, she was so much the object of awe, that whenever the whistle sounded, it would darkly suggest the thought that another flogging was going to take place, and any boats that were near at the moment would sheer off to a more comfortable distance.  There was just so much truth in all this that there was one very hot-tempered officer on board who was very much hated by the crew, and who had been unfortunate enough to single out for flogging just the man whom, if he had been better advised, he would have left alone—­the song-maker, namely, of the ship.  The result had been that ever since a mystic refrain, sufficiently significant, however, had been sung at the capstan, and had found its way on shore, where it was in the mouth now of every boy about the harbour.

Gjert’s curiosity about everything connected with the vessel was unbounded, and Frederick Beck, with whom he had established a close friendship since that little affair with the other’s grandfather, when Gjert had saved him from punishment, could not tell him half enough.  “Fancy,” he thought, “to be able to go about in a uniform all covered with gold like the officers there on board!” He could think and talk of nothing else all the time they were sailing home next day.