So they sat for some time pretty silently, and drank glass after glass, till Eilert began to think that they had had quite enough.  So, when it came to his turn again, he said no, he would rather not; whereupon the Merman put the keg to his own mouth and drained it to the very dregs.  Then he stretched his long arm up to the shelf, and took down another.  He was now in a better humour, and began to talk of all sorts of things.  But every time he laughed, Eilert felt queer, for the Draug’s mouth gaped ominously wide, and showed a greenish pointed row of teeth, with a long interval between each tooth, so that they resembled a row of boat stakes.

The Merman drained keg after keg, and with every keg he grew more communicative.  With an air as if he were thinking in his own mind of something very funny, he looked at Eilert for a while and blinked his eyes.  Eilert didn’t like his expression at all, for it seemed to him to say:  “Now, my lad, whom I have fished up so nicely, look out for a change!” But instead of that he said, “You had a rough time of it last night, Eilert, my boy, but it wouldn’t have gone so hard with you if you hadn’t streaked the lines with corpse-mould, and refused to take my daughter to church”—­here he suddenly broke off, as if he had said too much, and to prevent himself from completing the sentence, he put the brandy-keg to his mouth once more.  But the same instant Eilert caught his glance, and it was so full of deadly hatred that it sent a shiver right down his back.

When, after a long, long draught, he again took the keg from his mouth, the Merman was again in a good humour, and told tale after tale.  He stretched himself more and more heavily out on the sail, and laughed and grinned complacently at his own narrations, the humour of which was always a wreck or a drowning.  From time to time Eilert felt the breath of his laughter, and it was like a cold blast.  If folks would only give up their boats, he said, he had no very great desire for the crews.  It was driftwood and ship-timber that he was after, and he really couldn’t get on without them.  When his stock ran out, boat or ship he must have, and surely nobody could blame him for it either.

With that he put the keg down empty, and became somewhat more gloomy again.  He began to talk about what bad times they were for him and her.  It was not as it used to be, he said.  He stared blankly before him for a time, as if buried in deep thought.  Then he stretched himself out backwards at full length, with feet extending right across the floor, and gasped so dreadfully that his upper and lower jaws resembled two boats’ keels facing each other.  Then he dozed right off with his neck turned towards the sail.

Then the girl again stood by Eilert’s side, and bade him follow her.

They now went the same way back, and again ascended up to the skerry.  Then she confided to him that the reason why her father had been so bitter against him was because he had mocked her with the taunt about church-cleansing when she had wanted to go to church—­the name the folks down below wanted to know might, the Merman thought, be treasured up in Eilert’s memory; but during their conversation on their way down to her father, she had perceived that he also had forgotten it.  And now he must look to his life.