They do not know what to do with themselves, and are always getting
in the way; and the sailors chase them with oaths from side to side
of the vessel, or throw hatches and packages without warning at
their feet. "Look out, you Swedish devil!" cries a sailor who has
to open the iron doors. The Swede backs in bewilderment, but his
hand involuntarily flies to his pocket and fingers nervously his
big pocket-knife.

The gangway is down, and the two hundred and fifty passengers stream
down it--stone-masons, navvies, maid-servants, male and female
day-laborers, stablemen, herdsmen, here and there a solitary little
cowherd, and tailors in smart clothes, who keep far away from the
rest. There are young men straighter and better built than any that
the island produces, and poor old men more worn with toil and want
than they ever become here. There are also faces among them that
bear an expression of malice, others sparkling with energy, and
others disfigured with great scars.

Most of them are in working-clothes and only possess what they stand
in. Here and there is a man with some tool upon his shoulder--a
shovel or a crowbar. Those that have any luggage, get it turned
inside out by the custom-house officers: woven goods are so cheap in
Sweden. Now and then some girl with an inclination to plumpness has
to put up with the officers' coarse witticisms. There, for instance,
is Handsome Sara from Cimrishamn, whom everybody knows. Every autumn
she goes home, and comes again every spring with a figure that at
once makes her the butt of their wit; but Sara, who generally has
a quick temper and a ready tongue, to-day drops her eyes in modest
confusion: she has fourteen yards of cloth wrapped round her under