Skipper Arne once lived in Soknadal. He sailed across all seas and fjords on his schooner, carrying timber. It even happened to him to go to China and other distant countries. Whatever Arne undertakes, luck accompanies him in everything. No one went further into the sea than him. And there was always a fair wind for him. It was even rumored that wherever the skipper turns his southwester1, that’s where the wind will blow. No one had such profitable deals as he did, and no one raked in so much money: dalers and crowns seemed to float into his hands.
But no one envied the skipper. People loved Arne like a brother or a father. He helped everyone in the parish, and he also did not offend the shipmen on his schooner.
Here is a skipper sailing one day in the North Sea. It sails with full sails, as if it were a schooner, and the cargo is not his own, but stolen goods. It’s clear: he wants to leave someone. You just can’t run away from the one who was chasing him. And there was this terrible devil nicknamed Old Eric.
Do you want to know how it all happened? In the old days, when the skipper and the Soknadal people lived in poverty, Arne decided to help his fellow countrymen and entered into an agreement with Old Eric. Well, what kind of deal is there with the devil? You know it yourself: for money and luck, give him your soul in return!
The day came when the contract expired. The skipper is sailing across the North Sea and waiting: Old Eric is about to appear for his soul. That's why I went with all sails.
I didn’t want to fall into Arne’s clutches, oh, how I didn’t want to! The skipper racked his brain and racked his brain and this is what he came up with.
He climbed onto the deck and looked out to sea to see if he could see Old Eric. No, not yet! Then Arne called the shipbuilders and said:
- Get down into the hold quickly and make two holes in the bottom. And as soon as the water in the hold closes the holes, carry the pumps and drive them into the holes more tightly. No one will notice the deception.
The shipmen marveled:
- Wonderful work!
But they did everything as the skipper ordered: they punched two holes in the bottom, drove the pumps in more tightly so that not a single drop of water would leak into the place where the luggage lay.
They had just finished the work, just had time to throw the shavings overboard, when a storm arose, the sea began to boil, and the schooner rocked. Old Eric rushed along with the wind, grabbed skipper Arne by the collar and wanted to rush away with him. And he says to him:
- Stop, master! There's no rush!
Here Old Eric launched his claws into the skipper’s gate, but Ar waved him away, lashed his claws with all his might and said:
- Do you remember our agreement? Didn't you promise that there would never be a leak on the schooner? And he deceived me. Look, the hold is filled with water, there is seven feet of water in the pumps! You can measure it yourself! Well, pump out the water, devil! If you pump me dry, then take my soul!
Damn back and forth, but nothing to do. He began to pump out the water. He rocks and rocks, sweat pours from him like a stream, and the shipmen make fun of him:
“If only we could fit the mill wheel lower on his back, it would start working right away!”
Old Eric doesn’t even look at them, but he tries his best. It's all to no avail; It only pumps water from sea to sea, but the water in the hold never decreases. The devil was tired, completely exhausted, and barely alive and furious and despising, he trudged off to his great-grandmother the devil to rest.
Since then, Old Eric left the skipper alone. And if Arne has not yet died, then it is true that to this day he is sailing the seas on a schooner. Wherever the southwester turns, that’s where the wind will blow.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru