“Yes, yes, then I think his nose should tell him, when people start washing their wool in his vicarage garden the first time. Now see, a barrel of that kind stood in the garden, and Kristoffur took the lady and threw her into the barrel and gave her such a washing that she was left in no doubt that he was the perfect candidate to wash wool.”

The skipper laughed loudly, but Petur was hardly put into a good mood by hearing all these stories. Not without trembling did he compare his own quiet home, where his old mother, Durita, had doted on his father and himself, to this hell’s nest that seemed to await him at Jansagerði.