But no sooner was it quiet of an evening than he had company.  His mother bustled and banged about the house, and opened and shut drawers and cupboards, and the stairs creaked with the heavy tread of his brothers going up to their bedrooms.

At night no sleep visited his eyes, and sure enough pretty Malfri came to his door and sighed and groaned.

Then he would lie awake there and think, and reckon up how many boats with false keel-boards he might have sent to sea.  And the longer he reckoned the more draug-boats he made of it.

Then he would plump out of bed and creep through the dark night down to the boathouse.  There he held a light beneath the boats, and banged and tested all the keel-boards with a club to see if he couldn’t hit upon the seventh.  But he neither heard nor felt a single board give way.  One was just like another.  They were all hard and supple, and the wood, when he scraped off the tar, was white and fresh.

One night he was so tormented by an uneasiness about the new Sekstring,[15] which lay down by the bridge ready to set off next morning, that he had no peace till he went down and tested its keel-board with his club.

But while he sat in the boat, and was bending over the thwart with a light, there was a gulping sound out at sea, and then came such a vile stench of rottenness.  The same instant he heard a wading sound, as of many people coming ashore, and then up over the headland he saw a boat’s crew coming along.

They were all crooked-looking creatures, and they all leaned right forward and stretched out their arms before them.  Whatever came in their way, both stone and stour,[16] they went right through it, and there was neither sound nor shriek.

Behind them came another boat’s crew, big and little, grown men and little children, rattling and creaking.

And crew after crew came ashore and took the path leading to the headland.

When the moon peeped forth Jack could see right into their skeletons.  Their faces glared, and their mouths gaped open with glistening teeth, as if they had been swallowing water.  They came in heaps and shoals, one after the other:  the place quite swarmed with them.

Then Jack perceived that here were all they whom he had tried to count and reckon up as he lay in bed, and a fit of fury came upon him.

He rose in the boat and spanked his leather breeches behind and cried:  “You would have been even more than you are already if Jack hadn’t built his boats!”

But now like an icy whizzing blast they all came down upon him, staring at him with their hollow eyes.

They gnashed their teeth, and each one of them sighed and groaned for his lost life.

Then Jack, in his horror, put out from Sjoeholm.

But the sail slackened, and he glided into dead water.[17] There, in the midst of the still water, was a floating mass of rotten swollen planks.  All of them had once been shaped and fashioned together, but were now burst and sprung, and slime and green mould and filth and nastiness hung about them.