But at the same time he had been shocked, and went down shortly after without saying a word.
Salve still remained aloft, the dull consciousness of Elizabeth's engagement with the captain's son alternating with a more active desire for revenge upon the captain himself for the manner in which he had conveyed the information; and the result of his brooding up there upon the yard was a determination to desert as soon as the Juno arrived at Rio.

He would never go back to Arendal; and he would no longer tread the same deck with the father of Carl Beck.
Later on in the night, when the moon had risen, Nils, who had not been able to sleep in his hammock, came up to Salve again, and drew him aside behind the round-house, as if for a private conversation.
"What would I have done?
you asked.

I'll tell you," he said, after a short pause, and his honest face seemed to express a vivid realisation of the whole misery of the situation.

"I would have died upon the doorstep!" Salve stood and looked at him for a moment.

There came a strange pallor over his face in the moonlight.
"Look you," he said, ironically, laying his hand upon the other's shoulder, "I have never a wife; but all the same, I am dead upon the doorstep--" Then, in the next breath, and with a sudden change of tone, he said, "Of course I am only joking, you know," and left him, with a hard, forced laugh.
Nils remained where he was, and pondered, not knowing exactly how to take it.