He was quite a young chap, who had never been out fishing before.  But there was some sense in what he said for all that, thought the head-fisherman.

And so they set their sails northwards.

On the next fishing-ground they fared no better than before, but they toiled away so long as their food held out.

And now they all insisted on giving it up and turning back.

“If there’s none here, there’s sure to be some still higher up towards the north,” opined Jack; “and if they had gone so far, they might surely go a little further still,” quoth he.

So they tempted fortune from fishing-ground to fishing-ground, till they had ventured right up to Finmark.[2] But there a storm met them, and, try as they might to find shelter under the headlands, they were obliged at last to put out into the open sea again.

There they fared worse than ever.  They had a hard time of it.  Again and again the prow of the boat went under the heavy rollers, instead of over them, and later on in the day the boat foundered.

There they all sat helplessly on the keel in the midst of the raging sea, and they all complained bitterly against that fellow Jack, who had tempted them on, and led them into destruction.  What would now become of their wives and children?  They would starve now that they had none to care for them.

When it grew dark, their hands began to stiffen, and they were carried off by the sea one by one.

And Jack heard and saw everything, down to the last shriek and the last clutch; and to the very end they never ceased reproaching him for bringing them into such misery, and bewailing their sad lot.

“I must hold on tight now,” said Jack to himself, for he was better even where he was than in the sea.

And so he tightened his knees on the keel, and held on fast till he had no feeling left in either hand or foot.

In the coal-black gusty night he fancied he heard yells from one or other of the remaining boats’ crews.

“They, too, have wives and children,” thought he.  “I wonder whether they have also a Jack to lay the blame upon!”

Now while he thus lay there and drifted and drifted, and it seemed to him to be drawing towards dawn, he suddenly felt that the boat was in the grip of a strong shoreward current; and, sure enough, Jack got at last ashore.  But whichever way he looked, he saw nothing but black sea and white snow.

Now as he stood there, speering and spying about him, he saw, far away, the smoke of a Finn Gamme,[3] which stood beneath a cliff, and he managed to scramble right up to it.

The Finn was so old that he could scarcely move.  He was sitting in the midst of the warm ashes, and mumbling into a big sack, and neither spoke nor answered.  Large yellow humble-bees were humming about all over the snow, as if it were Midsummer; and there was only a young lass there to keep the fire alight, and give the old man his food.  His grandsons and grand-daughters were with the reindeer, far far away on the Fjeld.