“Not even so much as a single feather?”
“No.”
“Well, then,” said the fisherman, “I wish I’d not come.”
But the old man tied the handkerchief tightly around his eyes, and then he was as blind as a bat.
“Now,” said the old man, “throw your leg over what you feel and hold fast.”
The fisherman reached down his hand, and there felt the back of something rough and hairy. He flung his leg over it, and whisk! whizz! off he shot through the air like a sky-rocket. Nothing was left for him to do but grip tightly with hands and feet and to hold fast. On they went, and on they went, until, after a great while, whatever it was that was carrying him lit upon the ground, and there the fisherman found himself standing, for that which had brought him had gone.
The old man whipped the handkerchief off his eyes, and there the fisherman found himself on the shores of the sea, where there was nothing to be seen but water upon one side and rocks and naked sand upon the other.
“This is the place for you to cast your nets,” said the old magician; “for if we catch nothing here we catch nothing at all.”
The fisherman unrolled his nets and cast them and dragged them, and then cast them and dragged them again, but neither time caught so much as a herring. But the third time that he cast he found that he had caught something that weighed as heavy as lead. He pulled and pulled, until by-and-by he dragged the load ashore, and what should it be but a great chest of wood, blackened by the sea-water, and covered with shells and green moss.
That was the very thing that the magician had come to fish for.