The Winter Night. 339 



Andreas and me, and I sat up in the berth and 

 laughed, listening to him yelling. I wouldn't waken 

 him, not I. I thought it was fun to hear him getting 

 paid out a little.' 



" ' It was bad of you. Peter, to have any part in that 

 horrid plundering of dead bodies.' 



" ' Oh, I never did anything to them, you know. Just 

 once I broke up a coffin to get wood to make a fire for 

 our coffee ; but when we opened it the body just fell to 

 pieces. But it was juicy wood, that, better to burn than 

 the best fir-roots such a fire as it made ! ' 



" One of the others now remarked, ' Wasn't it the 

 devil that used a skull for his coffee-cup ? 



" ' Well, he hadn't anything else, you see, and he just 

 happened to find one. There was no harm in that, was 

 there ? 



" Then Jacobsen began to hold forth : ' It's not 

 at all such an uncommon thing to use skulls for shooting 

 at, either because people fancy them for targets, or 

 because of some other reason ; they shoot in through 

 the eyeholes,' etc., etc. 



i( I asked Peter about ' Tobiesen's ' coffin if it had 

 ever been dug up to find out if it was true that his 

 men had killed him and his son. 



" ' No, that one has never been dug up.' 



" ' I sailed past there last year,' begins Jacobsen, 

 again ; ' I didn't go ashore, but it seems to me that I 

 heard that it had been dug up. ; 



Z 2 



