LITMIR.BIZ

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he saw there what he couldn’t take his eyes off. It looked like the back of a man in leather clothes, with one sleeve caught beneath the grapnel of a Femböring.33

      Then a heavy white halibut came up and gulped down the hook, and it became pitch dark.

      “You must let the big halibut slip off again when you pull up tomorrow,” something said, “the hook tears my mouth so. ’Tis of no use searching except in the evening, when the tide in the sound is on the ebb.”

      Next day he went off, and took a piece of a tombstone from the churchyard to dredge the bottom with; and in the evening, when the tide had turned, he lay out in the sound again and searched.

      Immediately he hauled up the grapnel of a Femböring, the hooks of which were clinging to a leather fisherman’s jacket, with the remains of an arm in it.

      The fishes had got as much as they could of it out of the leather jacket.

      Off to the parson he rowed straightway.

      “What! read the service over a washed-out old leather jacket!” cried the parson of Brönö.

      “I’ll throw the sea-boot into the bargain,” answered Isaac.

      “Waifs and strays and sea salvage should be advertised in the church porch,” thundered the parson.

      Then Isaac looked straight into the parson’s face.

      “The sea-boot has been heavy enough on my conscience,” said he; “and I’m sure I don’t want to be saddled with the leather jacket as well.”

      “I tell you I don’t mean to cast consecrated earth to the winds,” said the parson; he was getting wroth.

      Isaac scratched his head again. “Na, na!” said he.

      And with that he had to be content and go home.

      But Isaac had neither rest nor repose, there lay such a grievous load upon him.

      In the night time he again saw the big white halibut. It was going round and round so slowly and sadly in the selfsame circle at the bottom of the sea. It was just as if some invisible sort of netting was all round it, and the whole time it was striving to slip through the meshes.

      Isaac lay there, and gazed and gazed till his blind eye ached again.

      No sooner was he out dredging next day, and had let down the ropes, than an ugly heavy squid came up, and spouted up a black jet right in front of him.

      But one evening he let the boat drive, as the current chose to take it, outside the skerries, but within the islands. At last it stopped at a certain spot, as if it were moored fast, and there it grew wondrously still; there was not a bird in the air or a sign of life in the sea.

      All at once up came a big bubble right in front of the jib, and as it burst he heard a deep heavy sigh.

      But Isaac had his own opinion about what he had seen.

      “And the parson of Brönö shall see to the funeral too, or I’ll know the reason why,” said he.

      From henceforth it was bruited abroad that he had second sight, and saw many things about him which were hid from other folks.

      He could tell exactly where the fish were to be found thick together by the sea-banks, and where they were not; and whenever they asked him about such things, he would say—

      “If I don’t know it, my brother does.”

      Now one day it chanced that the parson of Brönö had to go out along the coast on a pious errand, and Isaac was one of them who had to row him thither.

      Off they went with a rattling good breeze.

      The parson got quickly there, and was not very long about his business, for next day he had to hold divine service in his own parish church.

      “The firth seems to me a bit roughish,” said he, “and ’tis getting towards evening; but as we have come hither, I should think we could get back again also.”

They had not got very far on their homeward journey when the rising gale began to whistle and whine, so that they had to take in four clews.34

      And away they went, with the sea-scud and the snow-flakes flying about their ears, while the waxing rollers rose big as houses.

      The parson of Brönö had never been out in such weather before. They sailed right into the rollers, and they sailed out again.

      Soon it became black night.

      The sea shone like mountain snow-fields, and the showers of snow and spray rather waxed than waned.

      Isaac had just taken in the fifth clew also when one of the planks amidships gave way, so that the sea foamed in, and the parson of Brönö and the crew leaped upon the upper deck, and bawled out that the boat was going down.

      “I don’t think she’ll founder this voyage,” said Isaac; and he remained sitting where he was at the rudder.

      But as the moon peeped forth from behind a hail-shower, they saw that a strange foremastman was standing in the scuppers, and baling the water out of the boat as fast as it poured in.

      “I didn’t know that I had hired that fellow yonder,” said the parson of Brönö; “he seems to me to be baling with a sea-boot; and it also seems to me as if he had neither breeches nor skin upon his legs, and the upper part of him is neither more nor less than an empty fluttering leather jacket.”

      “Parson has seen him before, I think,” said Isaac.

      Then the parson of Brönö grew angry.

      “By virtue of my sacred office,” said he, “I adjure him to depart from amidships.”

      “Na, na!” answered Isaac; “and can parson also answer for the plank that has burst?”

      Then the parson bethought him of the evil case he was in.

      “The man seems to me mortally strong, and we have great need of him,” said he; “nor is it any great sin, methinks, to help a servant of God’s over the sea. But I should like to know what he wants in return.”

      The billows burst, and the blast howled around him.

      “Only some two or three shovels of earth on a rotten sea-boot and a mouldy skin-jacket,” said Isaac.

      “If you’re able to gad about again here below, I suppose there’s nothing against your being able to enter into bliss again, for all that I know,” bawled the parson of Brönö; “and you shall have your shovelfuls of earth into the bargain.”

      Just as he said this, the water within the skerries all at once became quite smooth, and the parson’s boat drove high and dry upon the sandbank, so that the mast cracked.

32 I.e., at nothing—a house having usually only four walls.

33 See “The Fisherman and the Draug.”

34 See “The Fisherman and the Draug.”

      THE WIND-GNOME

      There was once a skipper of Dyrevig called Bardun. He was so headstrong that there was no doing anything with him. Whatever he set his mind upon, that should be done, he said, and done it always was.

      If he promised to be at a dance, the girls could safely rely upon his being there, though it blew a tempest and rained cats and dogs.

He would come scudding along on a Færing35

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