Jens

“ Thoralf dozed off occasionally, and tried gently to extricate himself from his frightened brother's embrace; but Jens lay with wide-open eyes, staring into the dark, and now and then sliding the trapdoor aside and peeping out, until a blinding shower of ashes would again compel him to slip his head under the sheepskin coverlet. When at last he summoned courage to peep out, he could not help shuddering. It was terribly cheerless and desolate. And all the time, his father's words kept ringing ironically in his ears: "Iceland is the most beautiful land the sun doth shine upon." ”

“ Sigurd smiled, and, patting the younger boy on the head, entered the cottage.
"You shouldn't talk so to Father, Thoralf," said Jens, with superior dignity; for his father's caress made him proud and happy. "Father works so hard, and he does not like to see any one discontented." ”

“ The foreman’s young woman came running in; she absolutely must have her young lady’s shoes; they were promised for Monday. The master had quite forgotten them. “They are in hand now,” he said, undaunted. “To the devil with you, Jens!” And Jens had hastily thrust a pair of lasts into the shoes, while Master Andres went outside with the girl, and joked with her on the landing, in order to smooth her down. “Just a few nails, so that they’ll hang together,” said the master to Jens. And then, “Pelle, out you go, as quick as your legs will carry you! ”

“ He was rather a handsome lad, though his features were square and weather-beaten, and he looked prematurely old. Jens, the younger boy, was fourteen years old, and was his mother’s darling. For even up under the North Pole mothers love their children tenderly, and sometimes they love one a little more than another ”

“ Did those who took their lives on account of unhappy love feel any different? His grief, to be sure, was not very stupendous; when the young master made a joke or cursed in his funny way he could laugh quite heartily still. That, with his disgrace, was the worst of all.
“You ought to get yourself a young woman,” said Jens. “She’s as soft as a young bird, and she warms you through your clothes and everything!”
But Pelle had something else on hand. He wanted to learn to swim. ”

“ Morten would come up into the workshop as soon as work was over, or wait for Pelle at the corner. They always ran when they were going to meet. If Pelle had to work overtime, Morten did not go out, but sat in the workshop and amused him. He was very fond of reading, and told Pelle about the contents of many books.
Through Morten, Pelle drew nearer to Jens, and found that he had many good qualities under his warped exterior. Jens had just that broken, despondent manner which makes a child instinctively suspect a miserable home. ”

“ One evening, when matters were quite at their worst, they took Pelle home with them. They lived in the east, by the great clay-pit, where the refuse of the town was cast away. Their mother was busy warming the supper in the oven, and in the chimney-corner sat a shrivelled old grandmother, knitting. It was a poverty-stricken home.
“I really thought that was father,” said the woman, shivering. “Has any of you heard of him?”
The boys related what they had heard; some one had seen him here, another there. “People are only too glad to keep us informed,” said Jens bitterly. ”

“ When Jens had got up on to the rock, over which the waves washed one after another, so that he often stood in water up to his knees, he secured the boat, and began to haul in the line, drawing after it through the water a thick cable, which the man on board was paying out gradually. He had just begun to fasten it to the mooring ring, and had only the last two knots in the rope to make, when we all became aware of three tremendous waves that would infallibly break over the rock. ”

“ Icelandic mothers are so constituted that when one child is a little weaker and sicklier than the rest, and thus seems to be more in need of petting, they are apt to love their little weakling above all their other children, and to lavish the tenderest care upon that one. It was because little Jens had so narrow a chest, and looked so small and slender by the side of his robust brother, that his mother always singled him out for favors and caresses. ”

“ It was consequently no common masquerade, but a grand, elegant masked ball, to which a true lady could repair. The clock was at eleven, the appointed hour: he waited anxiously the pressing five minutes; then she came and extended him the fine hand in the finest straw-colored glove—
"Letter to the Counsellor of Justice," said Jens, with strong Funen accent, and short, soldierly pronunciation.
It is so uncommon that what one longs for comes just at the moment of most earnest desire ”

“ It grew darker and darker and Karl cried in earnest now, and wanted to smash all the windows with the clasped book. [Pg 168] The only thing that gave me comfort was Jens' tin pail. It lay on the ground shining through the dark. I reasoned that Jens was sure to come back to get his pail. Finally I heard footsteps and voices, a key was put in the lock, and there at the open door stood the deacon, Jens, and the deacon's eight children.
"Who is this disturbing the peace of the church?" asked the deacon with the corners of his mouth drawn down. ”

“ Jens, in turning his back to the Court, gave Alf and Karen and the bear a fierce glance, as if to say that he would make them smart, if they dared in any way to compromise him. Then, to their surprise, he stooped down and talked with them earnestly for several minutes.
“Your Honor,” he resumed, rising and facing the judge; “these boys are, as you supposed, Dutch. They are utterly destitute, and have no money wherewith to buy a license for their bear. In other words, they are vagrants ”

“ Or is it some sixteen- year-old apprentice, a scandal to his pastor and schoolmaster, whose hands he has only just left?
Then Jens goes forth with his concertina, and Pelle makes haste with his tidying up, and he and Morten hurry up to Gallows Hill, hand-in- hand, for Morten finds it difficult to run so quickly. All that the town possesses of reckless youth is there; but the Swedish girls take the lead. They dance and whirl until their slippers fly off, and little battles are fought over them. ”

“ Added to that, he was not very clear as to his position; and as the gale increased, he began to pace restlessly backwards and forwards, addressing, every now and then, a word down to one of the helmsmen, whose forms could be seen by the gleam from the binnacle.
"How's her head, Jens?"
"Sou'-west, sir; she'll lay no higher."
"H'm! more and more on land!" he muttered, the perspiration coming out upon his forehead under his fur cap, which, in spite of the rain, he had to push back to get air. Both life and ship would soon be at stake.
"What says the look-out-man, mate?" ”

“ After that we lay on our backs and panted for some time, but after finishing the whisky and a large portion of the iceberg lake 268 we recovered sufficiently to skin our prize and cut him up. He is a most splendidly fat “stor bock,” Jens says by far the best that has been killed in these parts this year; a beautiful skin, and, best luck of all, his horns have got rid of the velvet, and are fit to take home: and they have fourteen points. ”

“ The ghostly spirit which ran through our house, first had free outlet down in the servants' hall, when the men and maids, and the wayfarers who were putting up for the night, sat in the evening in the red glow from the stove, and told all kinds of tales about shipwrecks and ghosts.
On the bench in the space between the stove and the wall, sat the strong, handsome man Jens with his carpentering and repairs; he used to do his work, and listen in silence to the others. By the stove "Komag-Nils" busied himself with greasing komags [Komag—a peculiar kind of leather boot used by the Fins.] ”

“ Johannes V. Jensen, whose work is new to English readers, was born in 1873 in Himmerland, the district of North Jutland which is richest in memories of the past. He has been recognised for the last thirty years as an independent force in Danish literature, where his production marks a revolt against the French influences prevalent at the close of the nineteenth century and a return to old Scandinavian motives, with a strong leaning towards the English school of imaginative writing. ”

“ Nowadays we are demanding a more positive assertion, a more creative musicianship. Jensen did far better than this in later songs. Some of his vigorous lyrics are admirable, notably the Bolero, ‘In the Shadow,’ ‘On the Bank of the River,’ and ‘Old Heidelberg,’ the last an excellent essay in popular counterpoint. The formal often attains charming results in Jensen’s songs, witness, ‘Mother, I Have Two Little Eyes,’ which is a miniature symphony allegretto. But on the whole it is in his nature-songs that he is most at ease. ”

“ Jensen is perhaps the most fertile of modern German writers of fiction, more than one hundred works having proceeded from his pen; but only comparatively few of them have caught the public taste; such are the novels, Karin von Schweden (Berlin, 1878) ”

“ Then Jensen disappeared under the water again. He was down what seemed an interminable time, and they thought that surely this time he was gone for good. But he came up again, and this time he had his long rubber boots in his left hand. He caught his sou'wester in his teeth again, and, swimming with his right hand and holding his boots in his left, and pushing his coat with his brawny chest, he struck out comfortably for the whaleboat that was rapidly bearing down on him. ”

“ Jensen dropped his eyes, picking nervously at his coat. “You see, I am the eldest brother; a man does not like to admit failure. I may be sold up any time now. I wanted Adolph not to guess, so I—wrote—him—differently.” He flushed painfully again. Stefan was silent, too taken aback for speech.
“I tell you, Mr. Byrd,” Jensen stammered on, striking his hands together impotently, “for all its wealth, this is a city of dead hopes. It's been a long fight, but it's over now.... Yes, you are Adolph's friend, and I can't so much as buy a sketch from you. ”

“ But it seemed to me then, or perhaps I imagine—judging by the light of later times—that it seemed to me then that their behaviour showed that they looked upon Jensen rather than my Captain as the centre of authority in the ship. Certainly most of them were more of the kidney of Cornelys Jensen than of Marmaduke Amber.
I ventured to break something of my thought to Captain Amber, but he laughed at me for my pains, saying that Jensen was a proper man and very trustworthy, and a man with a better eye for a good seaman than any other man in the kingdom. ”

“ They found Captain Horst already at his place at the table in the charthouse. It was significant of the unexpressed but clearly felt antipathy which in the past few days had grown up between the skipper and his passengers that he had commenced his meal without waiting for them. Jensen, however, was a level-headed young man who had not the least intention of jeopardizing the enterprise for which he was responsible by ill-timed open bad-temper. He nodded a greeting with a smile which totally ignored the strained circumstances of their last meeting. ”

“ I am glad to remember that good order prevailed in the face of our common peril. Our colonists, men and women, kept very quiet, and the sailors, under Cornelys Jensen, acted with untiring zeal. I must say to his credit that Jensen proved a cool hand in the midst of a misfortune which must have come as a special misfortune to himself. It is a curious fact, and I know not how to account for it, unless by the smart knock on my head and the confusion of events that followed upon it, but all memory of what I had seen and heard In Jensen’s cabin had slipped from my mind. ”

“ He glanced across to Horst who sat speechless, his face gray, his eyes terrified. “Not Swedish!—Take it down, Lyngstrand, while I spell it out!”
The young man feverishly produced pencil and paper from his pocket. “Listen!” he cried. “Good God! Do you catch it?”
Three sharp taps—three more widely spaced—three sharp taps again—the series was reiterated insistently—S—O—S!—S—O—S!—S—O—S!
“Ready, Lyngstrand?” queried Jensen in the sharp tone of a man concentrating himself for action. His comrade nodded.
Jensen rapped sharply upon the table the wireless operator’s signal of reception. ”

“ And the life of her husband is a very hard and, as it seems to me, a very thankless one. Strange as it may seem, Jensen came here to seek his fortune. The little money that he had saved up from my expedition of 1860-’61, enabled him to return to Denmark, and there to marry, and come back to Greenland and set up for himself. He had been promised the charge of this remote settlement of Tessuisak, which is fifty miles above Upernavik, and on the very confines of the great ice-barrier. He was always a fine shot, an active man, and an expert hunter ”

“ Jensen. The devil he has! He been a lieutenant?
Pettersen. That he has. But then he went into the timber trade or something of the sort. They say he played Mr. Werle a very dirty trick once. For the two were partners then up at the Hojdal Works, you know. Ah, I know good old Ekdal, I do. We drink many a good bottle of beer and bitters together at Mrs. Ericksen’s.
Jensen. Surely he hasn’t got much to stand treat with?
Pettersen. Lord, Jensen, of course you understand that I pay. For I think one should be polite to better people who’ve come down in the world. ”

“ Perhaps I am like Carrie Jensen, the sister of one of my hired men. She had never been out of the cornfields, and a few years ago she got despondent and said life was just the same thing over and over, and she didn’t see the use of it. After she had tried to kill herself once or twice, her folks got worried and sent her over to Iowa to visit some relations. Ever since she’s come back she’s been perfectly cheerful, and she says she’s contented to live and work in a world that’s so big and interesting. She said that anything as big as the bridges over the Platte and the Missouri reconciled her. ”