and forwards, and fidgetting upon the bench, while he talked. With his
sharp nose, and round, reddish little eyes, he resembled a restless
sea-bird on a rock. Every now and then he broke off to dive down into
his provision box, as if every time he did so he took out of it a fresh
piece of his story. The story was as follows:

On Kvalholmen, in Helgeland, there lived a poor fisherman named Elias,
with his wife Karen, who had formerly been servant at the minister's
over at Alstadhaug. They had put up a cottage at Kvalholmen, and Elias
was now in the Lofoten fishing-trade, working for daily wages.

It was pretty evident that lonely Kvalholmen was haunted. When the
husband was away, the wife heard many dismal noises and cries, which
could not come from anything good. One day when she was up on the
mountain, cutting grass for winter fodder for the two or three sheep
they owned, she distinctly heard the sound of talking on the beach
below, but dared not look to see who was there.

Every year there came a child, but the parents were both industrious.
When seven years had passed there were six children in the cottage; and
that same autumn the man had scraped together so much that he thought he
could afford to buy a six-oared boat, and henceforward sail to the
fishing in his own boat.

One day as he was walking along with a halibut pike [A long wooden pole
with a barbed iron point to spear halibut with.] in his hand, meditating
over his intention, he stumbled unexpectedly, upon an immense seal,
which lay sunning itself behind a rock down on the shore. The seal was
quite as little prepared for the man as the man for it. Elias, however,
was not slow; from the rock where he stood he thrust the long heavy pike