After a while the companion boat appeared again; as before, it had been
absent for a time. Now, too, Elias saw more of the big man who sat in
the stern in the same place as himself. Out of his back, below the
sou'wester, when he turned, stuck a six-inch-long iron spike which Elias
thought he ought to know. And now, in his own mind, he had come to a
clear understanding upon two points: one was that it was no other than
the sea-goblin himself who was steering his half-boat by his side and
was leading him to destruction, and the other, that it was so ordained
that he was sailing his last voyage that night. For he who sees the
goblin on the sea is a lost man. He said nothing to the others for fear
of making them lose courage; but he silently committed his soul to God.

For the last few hours he had been obliged to go out of his course for
the storm; the air too became thick with snow, and he saw that he would
have to wait for dawn before he could find out his whereabouts. In the
meantime they sailed on. Now and then the boys in the stern complained
of the cold, but there was nothing to be done in the wet, and moreover
Elias's thoughts were of very different things. He had such an intense
desire for revenge, that, if he had not had the lives of his three
remaining children to defend, he would have attempted by a sudden turn
of his own boat to run into and sink the other, which still, as if in
mockery, kept by his side, and whose evil object he understood only too
well. If the halibut pike could wound the goblin before, then surely a
knife or a landing-hook might now, and he felt that he would gladly give
his life for a good blow at the monster who had so unmercifully taken
his dearest from him, and still wanted more victims.

Between three and four in the morning Elias saw, advancing through the
dark, another foam-crest, so high that at first he thought they must be
near breakers, close to land. But he soon saw that it really was an