CHAPTER XXII.
Elizabeth carried out her intention of accompanying him to Amsterdam, where she paid a visit of several days to the Garvloits, and the pleasure of the trip was only alloyed for her by the change which had come over Salve's manner, and to which she had now to try and accustom herself as one does to a less brilliant light after having seen the sun.
They were on their way home again, sailing before a light breeze, and under a soft blue sky, out of the busy, shallow Zuyder Zee.

Elizabeth was sitting on deck with little Gjert, blooming as a rose, and asking animated questions of the pilot, whom they had been compelled to take on board, about the various flat sandy islands and towns which came in sight from time to time, Salve occasionally stopping in his walk to listen.
By Terschelling the channel from the Zuyder Zee to the North Sea is marked out like a narrow strait with black and red buoys; and even in that calm weather there were foaming breakers the whole way close to the ship on either side.

"What must it be like," Elizabeth asked, in a sort of terror, "in a storm, when the whole sea was driving in ?" "That is a sight it's better not to see," replied the pilot.
"But you have to be out, storm or not, pilot ?" "It is my way of getting a living," he answered, shortly.
Salve stood and listened, as the conversation took this turn.
"We have pilots in Norway, too," she said, "who don't mind a wet jacket either.

It is a fine life!" The Dutchman merely observed, coldly, in reply-- "In two successive years--it is three years ago now--they lost out here off Amland a total of fifty pilots." "Still, it is a fine life!" she said; and Salve resumed his walk.
A couple of evenings after, the Apollo was pitching out on the Doggerbank in the moonlight, with a reef in her topsails.

Elizabeth had not yet gone below, and was sitting with her child warmly wrapped up on her lap, while Salve paced the deck and looked at her from time to time.
A little farther off, near the main-hatch, Nils Buvaagen (whom Salve had met again at Notteroe, and persuaded to take service with him) and a couple of the crew who were off duty were engaged in story-telling, the others lounging about near them to listen.