Tidemand's tar steamer was ready to weigh anchor. He had come down himself to see it off. Hanka was with him; they stood there quietly arm in arm. They glanced at each other every few moments with eyes that were filled with youth and happiness; the harbour saluted them with a swirl of flags. When the steamer at last was under way, Tidemand swung his hat in the air and Hanka waved with her handkerchief. Somebody on the ship waved back a greeting. The steamer slid quietly out into the fiord.
"Shall we go?" he asked.
And she clung to him closer, and said: "As you will."
Just then another steamer entered the harbour, an enormous leviathan from whose funnels smoke poured in billowy masses. Tidemand had goods aboard; he had been waiting for this steamer the last two days, and he said in great good humour:
"She is also bringing us goods!"
"Yes?" she answered quietly. But he felt, as she looked into his face, that a quivering joy shot through her being; her arm trembled in his.
And they went home.
Pan
Glahn's Death A Document of 1861
I
These last few days I have been thinking and thinking of the Nordland summer, with its endless day. Sitting here thinking of that, and of a hut I lived in, and of the woods behind the hut. And writing things down, by way of passing the time; to amuse myself, no more. The time goes very slowly; I cannot get it to pass as quickly as I would, though I have nothing to sorrow for, and live as pleasantly as could be. I am well content withal, and my thirty years are no age to speak of.
A few days back someone sent me two feathers. Two bird's feathers in a sheet of note-paper with a coronet, and fastened with a seal. Sent from a place a long way off; from one who need not have sent them back at all. That amused me too, those devilish green feathers.
And for the rest I have no troubles, unless for a touch of gout now and again in my left foot, from an old bullet-wound, healed long since.
Two years ago, I remember, the time passed quickly—beyond all comparison more quickly than time now. A summer was gone before I knew. Two years ago it was, in 1855. I will write of it just to amuse myself—of something that happened to me, or something I dreamed. Now, I have forgotten many things belonging to that time, by having scarcely thought of them since. But I remember that the nights were very light. And many things seemed curious and unnatural. Twelve months