Sven and his Friends. Hans K. Maeder

Sven thought it was rather like water-skiing. He volunteered for extra duty at hay making whenever another boy dropped out.

      He didn’t have to wait long. Next morning at breakfast, Jim Hutchinson, the leader of Sven’s group, told the boys that Hans Koenig needed a lot of help that day – as many teams of boys as he had pairs of horses.

      "Why, Jim?" asked Francisco.

      "Well, as a matter of fact," replied Jim rather slowly, "I think Hans is afraid we may have a spot of bad weather."

      Sven’s mind flashed back to the journey on the boat and the old fisherman’s yarns.

      "Oh Jim!" he gasped, "do you mean a storm?"

      Jim laughed. "Well, maybe."

      As soon as the sun had cleared away the last wisp of morning mist, the boys went racing across the meadow to meet Hans. After the first chorus of good mornings, Sven asked the question he had been wondering about ever since breakfast.

      "Hans," he asked, "are we going to have a storm?"

      Hans screwed up his light blue eyes and looked out to sea.

      "Yes, I think so, but not for some hours yet.”

      "But what will happen to us, Hans? Will the sea come right over the island?"

      Hans’ voice sounded very calm and reassuring. "Oh no, I don’t think we’ll have a bad storm. We hardly ever do, in the summer. In fact, it may not come to anything at all, if the wind changes. But I don’t like the looks of it, and if we get some rain and a rather high sea, all this good hay will get wet and then we’d have to start spreading and drying it all over again. So come on boys, let’s get to work!"

      And work they did. Load after load was piled up beside the house and pitched up into the attic, or made into a neat haystack and covered with a tarpaulin.

      It was a terribly hot day, still and sultry. As Sven bumped along on the pole, he could feel little trickles of sweat running down his back, and soon prickly little bits of hay had got inside his shirt too. He longed to rush down to the beach and dash into the cool blue water. Instead he threw himself down for a few moments, on a soft pile of hay. That felt hotter still, but it was so soft and comfortable that Sven would soon have been asleep if George hadn’t called out to him: "Come on Sven, you old slacker, it’s your turn with the rope!"

      At last Hans called a halt. Most of the hay was in and the dew was falling, so they had to stop. Sven looked away across the acres of bare meadow and turned to Börge.

      "Now the storm can come if it wants to!" he cried, "We’ve got our hay in."

      That evening after supper the boys all begged Herman to tell them a story. He was a splendid story-teller. They all sprawled out on the floor and waited for him to begin.

      Herman had been out all day haymaking with the boys, but he didn’t seem tired. While he was considering which story he should tell he looked all round the room. They were in a place everybody called the "lamp-room"; its wooden beams were hung with old lamps and gleaming brass lanterns from ships - many of them from ships that had been wrecked. Herman pointed to a heavy round lantern hanging in one corner. "That lantern belonged to a Swedish coasting vessel, the "Christiania," he began, "and I’m going to tell you her story. It happened about ten years ago....”

      Herman spoke slowly, in German. Now and then he would put in a sentence of French or English to help all the boys to understand. There was a tense silence in the lamp-room as Herman told of the Christiania. One wild night she was stranded on the sand bar which runs out from Suederoog towards the open sea. The pounding waves soon turned her over and cast her crew of seven into the sea.

      The men had nothing but their lifebelts to keep them afloat and in the darkness they couldn’t tell which way the land laid. Enormous waves swept over them and their shouts were drowned in the whistling wind. Just as they began to lose all hope of being saved one of the men saw a light and they all struggled towards it. When they got nearer they found they were at the foot of a sort of tower. All they could make out in the darkness was a ladder leading upwards. They pulled themselves up, the stronger helping the exhausted ones, until they found themselves in a little wooden room. It stood there above the storm like a little house on stilts, and the light from its lantern streamed out in all directions across the tossing water. Here Herman paused.

      "Can you guess where that house is?" he asked. Anton spoke up; "I think I saw it yesterday when I walked across to the other side of the island.”

      "That’s right, Anton" replied Herman, "and one day when it’s calm we’ll ask Hans if we may go and see it. We’ll have to walk across the sand spit at low tide." And Herman went on to tell the boys how the people of the island always kept this little safety-tower stocked with food and candles for shipwrecked sailors, and how one of the islanders went out every few days to fill the lamp and make sure it was still burning.

      As Sven fell asleep that night he thought he heard the wind howling in the rigging and his comfortable little bunk seemed to sway and toss on an angry sea.