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
into its back, just below the head.

And then there was a scene! All at once the seal raised itself upon its
tail straight up in the air, as high as a boat-mast, showed its teeth
and looked at Elias with two bloodshot eyes, so maliciously and
venomously, that he was nearly frightened out of his senses. Then the
seal rushed straight into the sea, leaving a track of blood-tinged foam
behind it. Elias saw nothing more of it; but the same afternoon the
halibut pike, with the iron point broken off, was washed up at the
landing-stage in Kval creek where the house stood.

Elias thought no more of the affair. The same autumn he bought his
six-oared boat, for which he had put up a little boat-house during the
summer.

One night as he lay thinking about this new boat of his, it struck him
that in order to make it thoroughly secure he ought, perhaps, to put one
more plank to support it on each side. He was so fond of the boat, that
it was nothing but a pleasure for him to get up and go with a lantern to
look at it.

While he stood holding the light up over the boat, he suddenly caught
sight of a face in the corner, upon a heap of fishing-net, that exactly
resembled the seal's. The creature showed its teeth angrily at him and
the light, its mouth seeming the whole time to grow wider and wider, and
then a huge man rushed out through the boat-house door, but not too
quickly for Elias to see, by the light of the lantern, that out of his
back there stuck a long iron spike. Now Elias began to understand a
little; but still he was more afraid on account of his boat than for his
own life, and he sat in the boat himself, with the lantern, and kept
guard. When his wife came to look for him in t