it, and wriggled and
tried to slip off, first a cod, and then a ling, and then a dog-fish.
Last of all, a haddock came and stood still there, and chewed the water
a little as if it were tasting before swallowing it.

And 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 _Femboering_.[2]

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
to-morrow," 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 _Femboering_, 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 Broenoe.

"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 t