n his own boat.

One day, as he was walking along with a _Kvejtepig_[3] in his hand, and
thinking the matter over, he unexpectedly came upon a monstrous seal,
which lay sunning itself right behind a rock on the strand, and was as
much surprised to see the man as the man was to see the seal. But Elias
was not slack; from the top of the rock on which he stood, he hurled the
long heavy Kvejtepig right into the monster's back, just below the neck.

The seal immediately rose up on its tail right into the air as high as a
boat's mast, and looked so evilly and viciously at him with its
bloodshot eyes, at the same time showing its grinning teeth, that Elias
thought he should have died on the spot for sheer fright. Then it
plunged into the sea, and lashed the water into bloody foam behind it.
Elias didn't stop to see more, but that same evening there drifted into
the boat place on Kvalcreek, on which his house stood, a Kvejtepole,
with the hooked iron head snapped off.

Elias thought no more about it, but in the course of the autumn he
bought his _Sexaering_, for which he had been building a little boat-shed
the whole summer.

One night as he lay awake, thinking of his new _Sexaering_, it occurred
to him that his boat would balance better, perhaps, if he stuck an extra
log of wood on each side of it. He was so absurdly fond of the boat that
it was a mere pastime for him to light a lantern and go down to have a
look at it.

Now as he stood looking at it there by the light of the lantern, he
suddenly caught a glimpse in the corner opposite, on a coil of nets, of
a face which exactly resembled the seal's. For an instant it grinned
savagely at him and the light, its mouth all the time growing larger and
larger; and then a big man whisked out of the door, not so quickly,
however, but that Elias could catch a glimpse, by the light of the
lantern, of a long iron hooked spike sticking out of his back. And now
he began to put one and two together. Still he was less anxious about
his life than about his boat; so he there and then sat him down in it
with the lantern, and kept watch. When his wife came in the morning, she
found him sleeping there, with the burnt-out lantern by his side.

One morning in January, while he was out fishing in his boat with two
other men, he heard, in the dark, a voice from a skerry at the very
entrance of the creek. It laughed scornfully, and said, "When it _comes
to a Femboering_,[4] Elias, look to thyse