At last the general mirth of the class burst out in sundry half-stifled noises, which roused the master from his reverie, and he again resumed the book, to continue the examination.  As ill luck would have it, he once more repeated, “Avoir, avant,” and then half abstractedly, “avu.”  “Ah, you young idiot!” cried he, in a discordant voice, “can’t you manage avoir yet?  Whatever is to become of you?”

“Merchant,” answered Gabriel, bluntly.

“What do you say?  You dare to answer your master?  Are you going to be impertinent?  I’ll teach you!  Where’s the persuader?” and the master strode up to his seat, and, diving down into his desk, began routing about in it.

At this moment the passage door opened, and an extraordinary and most unscholarly looking head intruded itself into the room.  The head had a red nose, and wore a long American goat’s-beard and a blue seaman’s cap.  “Are you there?” said the head, addressing Master Gabriel in a half-drunken voice.  “Is that where you are, poor boy?  Bah! what an atmosphere!  I only just came in to tell you to come down to the ship-yard when you get out of school; we are just beginning the planking.”

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.