Young Ofeg's Ditties/Ditty 8

​One evening in late autumn I steered out into the fjord. My sails were snow white, but the sunset stained them with a hectic tinge, so that they looked as if they had been dipped in wine, so I sailed out alone to sea when all the others were going to bed in their homes.

Then I saw an enormous black hand stretch down over the fjord. It set an ugly black mark on my sail, and then it drew back again. And a voice pierced the lovely stillness of the autumn evening, sharp as a knife thrust, rough as a drunkard's bass:—

"He has a stain on his sail! He has a stain on his sail! Come hither, good folk, and see! He is not ashamed to shew his dirty tackle!"

And when I turned about the strand was densely packed with people. They pointed, they jeered, they threatened. And above my head the black stain darkened my sail as a cloud in the time of roses. Then I felt my ​conscience prick me, for although I knew my hands were clean, still the stain was there on my sail, and it cast a shadow over my soul as if it were a real crime, and the unknown voices seemed to me to be so convincing, and I was so alone upon the water, and the people on the shore were so many. The wind lulled, and the sails hung slack like withered leaves after the passage of a venomous wind, too, as if they shared my mood, and I was about to scuttle my boat and sink.

Then came the miracle that saved me. High above the people on the strand hung a hand, enormous as the one that had set the mark upon my sail, but white, white, and it held a light, and the reflection of it fell like a sudden white dawn over the countless black multitude.

And I saw by its light men's forms with wasps' stings, men's forms with foxes' tails, men's forms with hounds' heads, bloodhounds' heads, with red maws and lolling tongues. . . . And the wind freshened, and I steered right merrily out to sea with the black mark in the centre of my sail, as the sun rose up over the waters.