“If you’re able to gad about again here below, I suppose there’s nothing against your being able to enter into bliss again, for all that I know,” bawled the parson of Broenoe; “and you shall have your shovelfuls of earth into the bargain.”

Just as he said this, the water within the skerries all at once became quite smooth, and the parson’s boat drove high and dry upon the sandbank, so that the mast cracked.

* * * * *

[1] I.e., at nothing—­a house having usually only four walls.

[2] See “The Fisherman and the Draug.”

[3] See “The Fisherman and the Draug.”

* * * * *

THE WIND-GNOME

[Illustration:  THE WIND-GNOME.]

THE WIND-GNOME

There was once a skipper of Dyrevig called Bardun.  He was so headstrong that there was no doing anything with him.  Whatever he set his mind upon, that should be done, he said, and done it always was.

If he promised to be at a dance, the girls could safely rely upon his being there, though it blew a tempest and rained cats and dogs.

He would come scudding along on a Faering[1] to his father’s house through storm and stress.  Row upon row of girls would be waiting for him there, and he spanked the floor with every one of them in turn, and left their gallants to cool their heels as best they might.

Cock-of-the-walk he always must be.

He would go shark-fishing too, and would venture with his fishing gaff into seas where only large vessels were wont to go.

If there was anything nobody else dared do, Bardun was the man to do it.  And, absurd and desperate as the venture might be, he always succeeded, so that folks were always talking about him.

Now, right out at sea, beyond the skerries, lay a large rock, the lair of wild-fowl, whither the merchant who owned it came every year to bring away rich loads of eider-down.  A long way down the side of this lofty rock was a cleft.  Nobody could tell how far into the rock it went, and so inaccessible was it there that its owner had said that whoever liked might come and take eider-down from thence.  It became quite a proverb to say, when anything couldn’t be done, that it was just as impossible as taking eider-down from Dyrevig rock.

But Bardun passed by the rock, and peeped up at the cleft, and saw all the hosts of the fowls of the air lighting upon it so many times that he felt he needs must try his hand at it.

He lost no time about it, and the sun was shining brightly as he set out.

He took with him a long piece of rope, which he cast two or three times round a rocky crag, and lowered himself down till he was right opposite the cleft.  There he hung and swung over it backwards and forwards till he had got a firm footing, and then he set about collecting eider-down and stuffing his sacks with it.