By the hut stood a woman--Eva. She had a rope in her hand; she was going
to fetch wood. There was the morning of life in the young girl's figure
as she stood there, all golden in the sun.
"You must not think..." she stammered out.
"What is it I must not think, Eva?"
"I--I did not come this way to meet you; I was just passing..."
And her face darkened in a blush.
XXI
My foot continued to trouble me a good deal. It often itched at nights,
and kept me awake; a sudden spasm would shoot through it, and in
changeable weather it was full of gout. It was like that for many days.
But it did not make me lame, after all.
The days went on.
Herr Mack had returned, and I knew it soon enough. He took my boat away
from me, and left me in difficulties, for it was still the closed
season, and there was nothing I could shoot. But why did he take the
boat away from me like that? Two of Herr Mack's folk from the quay had
rowed out with a stranger in the morning.
I met the Doctor.
"They have taken my boat away," I said.
"There's a new man come," he said. "They have to row him out every day
and back in the evening. He's investigating the sea-floor."
The newcomer was a Finn. Herr Mack had met him accidentally on board the
steamer; he had come from Spitzbergen with some collections of scales
and small sea-creatures; they called him Baron.
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