A pilot who was with him as oarsman, soon became tired of giving explanations, when he saw that the commissioner by means of chart, sounding lead and other different instruments, found out facts that he had never thought of. Where the shoals lay was known to the pilot, and he also knew on which shoal the stromling nets should be set, but the commissioner was not satisfied with this and began to dredge at different depths, taking up small creatures and vegetable slime on which he believed the stromling fed. He lowered the lead to the bottom and drew up samples of clay, sand, mud, mold and gravel, which he assorted, numbered and placed in small glasses with labels.
Finally he took out a big spyglass which resembled a speaking trumpet, and looked down into the sea. The pilot had never dreamed that one could gaze into the water with an instrument and in his astonishment asked permission to place his eye to the glass and look down into the mysteries.
The commissioner on the one hand would not play wizard, and on the other did not desire hastily to solve the problem which time would clear up, or to inspire too high hopes about the results, he therefore granted the pilot's entreaty and gave some popular explanation of the living pictures which were unfolding down in the depths.
"Do you see that seaweed upon the shoal?" began the commissioner, "and do you see that it is first olive yellow, lower down liver colored and at the bottom red? That comes from the diminution of light!"
He took a few pulls at the oars, off the shallow, and kept constantly to lee of the rock so as to keep free from the drifting ice.
"What do you see now?" he asked the man who lay on his stomach.
"Oh Jesus! I think it is stromling, and they are standing close, as close as cards in a pack."
"Do you see now that the stromling go not on the shallows only, and do you understand now that one could catch them from the depths, and do you believe now when I tell you that one ought never to fish them on the shallows where they only go up to spawn where the eggs are reached by the sun's heat better than in deep water?"
The commissioner rowed on until he saw the water become greenish gray on account of the nature of the clay bottom.
"What do you see now?" he continued, meanwhile resting on the oars.