We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [28]
Our favorite naval hero was Tordenskjold, who spent a whole night g, off the shores of Ærø and Als chasing the White Eagle, a Swedish frigate equipped with thirty cannons, though his own ship, the Løvendals Galej, had only twenty. We knew all about his triumphs at the battles of Dynekilen, Marstrand, Gothenburg, and Strömstad, where so many of his brave men perished, while he survived, safe and sound, though he always gave his utmost.
"Not this time!" we yelled, recalling the day when Tordenskjold found himself alone on Torekov beach in Scania, surrounded by three Swedish dragoons: he'd hacked his way past them and swum through the surf, with his sharp rapier clenched between his teeth.
Then there was the story of how, having fought an English captain for nearly twenty-four hours, with just a brief pause between midnight and dawn, Tordenskjold announced to his wounded foe that he'd run out of gunpowder and coolly asked for the loan of some more so the battle could continue. Upon which the English captain had appeared on deck, raised a glass of wine, and saluted his Danish opponent with seven hurrahs. Then Tordenskjold too found a glass and they'd toasted each other.
Another story we liked was about the time he'd lost the foremast overboard on the Løvendals Galej in a howling storm, but managed to stoke fresh courage in his men by yelling "We're winning, boys!" through the gale.
We walked home across the headland, on the other side of which lay the wide inlet we called the Little Ocean. In the distance you could see the ships tied to the black-tarred mooring posts in the harbor: a couple of old luggers, two cutters, a ketch, and the fore-and-aft schooner Johanne Karoline, affectionately known as the Incomparable. Distinguishing one type of ship from another with the skill of an experienced sailor was something we'd learned long before Isager started drumming the alphabet into our heads. We often swam in the harbor, egging one another on to dive deeper and deeper, right down to the shell-encrusted ships' keels. Then we'd surface with our hands full of mussels.
Behind the harbor wharf rose the town, where from the church rose the thin spire that reached skyward like the bare mast of a ship. Just then, the church bells started tolling a long-drawn-out farewell; a funeral procession was coming down Kirkestræde, led by girls strewing greenery across the cobbles. They were burying old Ermine Karlsen from Snaregade. She'd outlived her husband and both her sons. Death was a certainty for all of us, but whether the bells of Marstal would ever toll for us, there was no knowing. If we drowned at sea, there'd be only silence.
THE FIRST WEEK OF the new school term, Isager paid us little attention. His movements and speech gave him the automatic, dazed quality of a man who has risen before truly waking and is floating in a pleasant dream. Still in dressing gown and slippers, he'd shuffle to the school from his house, the thrashing rope coiled in his pocket like a viper drowsy from the heat. Isager had been a schoolteacher for thirty years, so most of our fathers had felt the snake's lash, and many still bore the scars, like marks of their initiation into manhood.
The good weather lasted well into September—and so did Isager's benign mood. He didn't bother us with revision questions and on the rare occasions when he hit us, it was never hard enough to draw tears or blood, and the infamous thrashing rope stayed in his pocket. He read aloud from Balle's Textbook, heedless that some of us had only just started school while others had been there five years. He'd concentrate on the first three chapters: "God's Powers," "God's Works," and "Mankind's Corruption Through the Fall," but he'd stop at the fourth chapter, "Mankind's Redemption Through Jesus Christ." There was no need for all that, he said. It was hogwash—as was everything that followed. Then he'd move on to the Old Testament.