In the evenings, when all the drengs have gone to bed in the kleven—two and two in each bunk—there is always someone who tells stories. Exciting stories, about faraway seas and dangerous journeys. Tonight Hans listens especially carefully, because one of the older boys is telling about something he heard on one of the Nordland boats lying in Vågen right now.

“A man disappeared from that boat on the way south,” he says. “Gone without a trace! Nobody knows how it happened. There was a terrible storm and huge waves along the way, so maybe he was washed overboard. But the Nordlanders believe it was the draug who took him.”

“Draug?” the other boys ask. They’ve never heard of such a creature before. In Germany, they believe in elves and goblins, and in the North Sea there are mermaids who try to lure sailors with their singing. But the draug? What sort of being is that?

“He’s dreadful!” the boy says, jumping down onto the floor. He pulls a horrible face, bends his back, and begins to creep slowly around with dragging steps. “The draug is a man in tattered leather clothes, and instead of a head he has a slimy, tangled mass of seaweed. The draug sails across the sea in half a boat, searching for people to drag down into the deep with his long, thin fingers. And if you think you’re safe on land, think again. He follows you there too, grabbing at your clothes. If he catches hold of even a mitten, then he gets his way: next time, it’s YOU who will vanish at sea!”

One of the youngest boys starts to cry softly. “Why are you crying?” Hans asks.
“I’m… I’m scared… scared the draug will take me,” the boy sobs. “We’re down by the sea all the time!”

“Oh, you don’t need to be afraid,” says the big boy with a hollow laugh. “You see, the draug always warns you before he comes. You can hear his terrible screams. They chill you to the bone—and if the screams sound extra gurgly, then he takes your best friend toooo!”

He growls the last words in a deep voice, stretching out his arms toward the skinny little boy, as if to drag him out of his bunk and drown him in the sea.

“Stop it!” Hans shouts. “You’re scaring him half to death!”
The big boy laughs. “I’m only joking! Nobody believes in that old superstition anyway.”

But just as he says this, a gurgling howl echoes outside! The big boy jumps back into his bunk at lightning speed. Everyone turns pale and silent, pulling their blankets slowly over their heads.

“It was probably just an owl,” Rattus whispers to Hans from his nest in the wall.

No more stories are told in the kleven that night.