Soren Braaten, rowing out over the fjord to meet the steamer, passed close by his old ship _Birkebeineren_. He cast a loving glance at the dear old piece of timber, and wished he had accepted any freight, however poor, so he had kept out of all this new-fangled business with engine-power and steam. He felt like a traitor to his class, and to all the old things he loved.
He passed the _Eva Maria_, and there was Bernt Jorgensen standing aft. Bernt had declined to take up shares in the steamer; on the contrary, he had argued earnestly against the project, declaring that Strandvik owed too much to the old sailing ships not to hold by them to the last.
"Aren't you coming on board the steamer?" cried Soren as he came within hail.
"No, thankye, I've no mind for it. I'm better where I am," answered Bernt, and, crossing over, sat down on the half-deck.
He hoisted his flag with the rest, though he felt little inclined to; but it would look strange if the _Eva Maria_ were the only one to refrain. But the bunting was only half-way up when the halliards broke, and the flag remained at half-mast.
Bernt felt it was something of an ill-omen. He went into his cabin, but through the porthole he could see the _Henrik Ibsen_ come gliding into the harbour amid general salutation.
The steamer was bright with brass work and new paint; the great gilt letters of her name at the stern shone over the water. On the bridge stood Skipper Abrahamsen, with three gold bands on his cap, and all the crew were in uniform--blue jerseys, with the name worked in red.
Bernt Jorgensen looked round his own cabin; the worn, yellow-painted walls, the square of ragged canvas that did duty as a tablecloth, the sofa with its old cracked covering of American cloth--it was all poor enough, but would he change with the dandified newcomer over yonder?
He struck his fist on the table. "Let's see if he's as smart at earning money as you've been, _Eva Maria_. It'll take him all his time, I fancy."
The cheering sounded across the water, as he sat bowed over the table with his head in his arms, thinking of old times, from the day he first went to sea with Uncle Gjermundsen, on board the _Stjerna_. Three shirts, a pair of canvas breeches, a straw-stuffed mattress and a rug were all his kit. But what a clipper she was in those days, with her twelve knots close hauled. And Uncle Gjermundsen was the man to get the best out of her too. No gold-braided cap for him, and not much of a man to look at, little, dry and crooked-backed as he was; but when he went overboard with a line that black November night to save the crew of an English brig on the reef and sinking, there was many an upstanding man might have been proud to know him. But he and his ship were gone now, and both the same way. He stood by his ship too long, last man on his own deck he would be, and so the rest were saved and he went down. But it was all in the papers about it, the speech that was made in his honour at the Seamen's Union, and the verse: