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 the current chose to take it, outside the skerries, but within the islands.  At last it stopped at a certain spot, as if it were moored fast, and there it grew wondrously still; there was not a bird in the air or a sign of life in the sea.

All at once up came a big bubble right in front of the jib, and as it burst he heard a deep heavy sigh.

But Isaac had his own opinion about what he had seen.

“And the parson of Broenoe shall see to the funeral too, or I’ll know the reason why,” said he.

From henceforth it was bruited abroad that he had second sight, and saw many things about him which were hid from other folks.