One night as he lay thinking about this new boat of his, it struck him that in order to make it thoroughly secure he ought, perhaps, to put one more plank to support it on each side.  He was so fond of the boat, that it was nothing but a pleasure for him to get up and go with a lantern to look at it.

While he stood holding the light up over the boat, he suddenly caught sight of a face in the corner, upon a heap of fishing-net, that exactly resembled the seal’s.  The creature showed its teeth angrily at him and the light, its mouth seeming the whole time to grow wider and wider, and then a huge man rushed out through the boat-house door, but not too quickly for Elias to see, by the light of the lantern, that out of his back there stuck a long iron spike.  Now Elias began to understand a little; but still he was more afraid on account of his boat than for his own life, and he sat in the boat himself, with the lantern, and kept guard.  When his wife came to look for him in the morning she found him sleeping, with the extinguished lantern by his side.

One morning in the following January when he put out to fish with two men in his boat besides himself, he heard in the dark a voice that came from a rock at the entrance to the creek.  It laughed scornfully, and said:  “When you get a ten-oared boat, take care, Elias!”

However, it was many years before anything happened to the ten-oared boat, and by that time his eldest son, Bernt, was seventeen.  That autumn Elias went into Ranen with his whole family in the six-oared boat, to exchange it for a ten-oared boat.  Only a newly confirmed Fin girl, whom they had taken in some years before, was left at home.

Elias had in his eye a half-decked ten-oared boat, which the best boat-builder in Ranen had finished and tarred that very autumn.  Elias knew very well what a boat should be, and thought he had never seen one so well built under the water-line.  Above, on the contrary, it was only fairly good, so that to any one less experienced it looked heavy, and with no beauty to speak of.

The builder knew this just as well as Elias.  He said he believed it would be the first boat in Ranen for sailing; but that, all the same, Elias should have it cheap, if he would only promise one thing, and that was, not to make any alteration in it, not so much as to put a line on the tar.  Only when Elias had expressly promised this did he get the boat.

But “the fellow,” who had taught the builder the shape for his boats below water-line—­above it, he was obliged to work as he could by himself, and that was often poorly enough—­had probably advised him beforehand, to sell it cheaply, so that Elias should have it, and also to make it a condition that the boat should not be marked in any way.  The cross [Customary with fishermen in Nordland to keep evil spirits away.] usually painted fore and aft, did not, therefore, appear on the boat.

Elias now thought of sailing home, but first went to the shop and laid in a supply of Christmas goods including a little keg of brandy for himself and his family.  Delighted as he was with his purchase, both he and his wife took that day a little more than was good for them, and Bernt, the son, also had a taste.