She still kept a few kroner hoarded up, thinking to spend them in America; but all at once it came to her to approach Captain Gull, who had appeared so sprightly and kind back at home. Perhaps money would save the Pedersons. Instructing Ingigerd to guard what remained of her property, Kristina ascended to the deck. She found the master standing smilingly at the bow, while the helmsman dismantled the wheel. Before she could speak, he laid a hand upon her shoulder, and once again it came to her how fine he was. — Still you refuse to trust in me? was all he said. Have faith, Kristina; everything will come out for the best.
Too soon, they reached their next narrowing. Ice-walls rose ahead like terraces of frozen waves, riddled with electric-blue cracks.
It’s my duty to go this time, said Reverend Johansen. And I’d like to leave three things behind for your help, but the captain informs me there’s only room for one. So choose, dear friends!
But quickly, please, said the purser. We’re coming to a particularly narrow part.
What are the three things, reverend?
Faith, hope and charity, of course. Now, I can’t help but wish you’ll choose faith—
Hope, said Kristina, and nobody contradicted her.
So be it, said the reverend, and withdrawing a sky-blue jewel from his waistcoat pocket, he slipped it into her hand, perhaps because he liked her best. It was a lovely stone which reminded her of the many-ledged glacier wall above the milk-blue sea.
He was smiling at her. Gazing into his face, she murmured: Did I choose wrongly?
Well, from my own selfish point of view, hope was the easiest to give up. I wouldn’t be much good in my vocation without faith, and charity comes in handy just now—
All right, sir, come along! said the purser, and the two tall sailors grabbed the doomed man under his arms and heaved him over the side. He sank instantly. His killers sat down with their mates. Slipping their oars into the crutches, they began to pull, so that the blue terraces on the dull white glacier passed slowly by.
A broad low cave now opened in the wall of whitish-blue ice-teeth, and with uncouth gestures the nameless helmsman guided the rowers in. Down went the Hyndla, far beneath the bottom of the greeny-grey sea.
As you can well suppose, the emigrants’ situation had become as narrow as the square entrance to a turf-roofed mound, all square inside. Remembering his old nightmare of suffocation, Øistein found himself in need of unceasing efforts (not unlike a rower determined to go forward) to keep his horror at bay. Sometimes the nausea in his throat or the cold wet constriction in his chest grew indistinguishable from panic, and when the last children still remaining began to scream, goggle-eyed like the old wooden-carved gods, he was tempted to violence, just to quiet them, because their cries bore the timbre of his own soul’s desperate voice, the useless wailing of life itself when death’s fingers close about our throats. Gasping in deep moldy draughts of darkness, he reminded himself that there was no hope in any event, so that to act ignobly could not purchase him a single extra breath. He had sought to persuade the other passengers to keep watch night and day upon the deck, so as not to be tricked anymore, but they were too terrified to creep abovedecks, even the Sigvatssons, from whom he would have expected better help. The last of the Suldal men concealed themselves beneath some planks, hoping to be forgotten, but they too disappeared. Well, after all, even the narrow passage must reach an end. Determined to retain his evenness, Øistein reminded himself that in every ancient barrow, so it was said, one must worm-crawl through the entrance tunnel, but once inside, it grew possible to stand, and perhaps even with outstretched arms remain unconfined by the dank dome of darkness overhead. Perhaps the passage would be like that. Chewing a plug of tobacco, he comforted himself with the parable of the thread within the needle’s eye. He surrendered as well as he was able to the Lord’s will. But what helped most of all was Kristina’s strength for him, and her need. They had married until death. Well enough. He would not be so cowardly as to let the earth cave in on him first, so that his wife must die alone.
Now the sailors set to their oars, which were actually spades, of course; and the Hyndla proceeded like a millipede through the dark earth. Actually it was not as dark as one might have imagined, the ceiling being thick with glowworms, which gave the Stavanger people comfort, reminding them of when racks of head-skewered brislings and of herring like long silver jewels illuminated the old days of the canneries. Well, never again would they hear winches and chains bearing that treasure of silver tins. No, this narrow passage was not the pleasantest place, but it would surely end soon enough; and even now there was something merry in Captain Gull’s flittering blue eyes. So they sailed blackly under the worm-stars, and the loudest thing they heard was the singing in their own skulls. Einar Sigvatsson whispered into Kristina’s ear the rumor that trolls had been heard coming on board in great numbers, but she turned away, declining to listen. From time to time the cook opened the harness cask, from which he fed the crew a meat of salted dead men. The passengers for their part had almost nothing to eat; most of their food had been cached on that island in the dark lake. Beside his wife Øistein sat quiet, clenching his fists. His horror and terror of asphyxiation kept fingering him, in much the same way that in the sagas that blind and treacherous prisoner-king Rörek continually explored his cousin, King Olaf, to find out whether he were armored; for what he wished above all was to stab him. In this situation, Øistein, who yet half believed in the treasure beyond price which Captain Gull had promised him, sometimes found it helpful to row along with the sailors, not least because, good son to his father, he hated idleness. But presently anxiety for his wife arose in him, so, laying by his oar (at which the sailors shot him wolfish grimaces), he returned into the darkness where the passengers lay, and there was Kristina with her hands across her breast, silently praying, the drops of sweat on her face as richly silver as the hordes which once came to light in the dark water back in the days when the nets rose up full. Again her beautiful desperation strengthened him.
There were hardly any passengers left. Einar Sigvatsson remained, with his youngest son Arnvid, but his wife and daughter and all his brother’s people had been taken, with ogres and trolls now snatching people right and left. Katrina felt very sad about little Ingigerd, but most likely the child was in heaven. Einar appeared half crazed. Øistein said to him: Now we know for certain that they mean us ill, so I propose that we attack them before they thin us out again.
Einar answered: That’s all right for you to say, because you have no children, and your wife could get through life without you, but some people prefer not to leave their dependents alone in the world.
Then Kristina said: Let me go and speak again with Captain Gull, which everyone approved, even Øistein, because it postponed the moment when something must be risked.