“O thou lively Ahti,” then cried the Minstrel, “lean far over the gunwales and look below. See what it is that keeps us moveless. Is it some rock, or is it the snaggy trunk of some forest tree lying deep beneath the waves?”
The long-armed hero obeyed. Holding fast with one hand to the vessel’s edge, he let himself down into the water. He looked under the ship’s hull, he peered closely at her keel, and then he leaped quickly back among the rowers.
“It is not a rock,” he shouted, “neither is it a tree! It is a fish, a mighty pike that has stopped the vessel. Never have I seen so large a fish. It lies in the water silent, motionless, asleep, like a senseless mountain. The ship is wedged against its back fin—a fin as large as the [[313]]sail upon our mast. If the fish should sink, it will drag our vessel down into the depths; if it should rise, it will tumble us all headlong into the sea.”
“Too much talk will never save us,” said Wainamoinen. “Never yet was pike slain by idle words. Draw your sword and wield it valiantly with your long, ungainly arms. Sever in twain the fish on which we are grounded.”
“Surely I will do so,” answered Ahti. “I will carve him into a thousand pieces.”
He drew his fish-knife from his belt, he reached downward with his long arms, he slashed furiously this way and that; but nothing did he cut save the yielding water.
Up leaped Ilmarinen from his seat among the rowers. He seized the boaster by the hair and thrust him back among the benches. “Easy it is to brag,” he said, “but to do is quite another story.”
Then with his sword of truest metal he reached down—deep down beneath the ship’s round hull. With all his strength he struck at the fish, thinking to cleave it in twain. But the scales of the monster were like iron plates lapping one upon another. The sword was shivered [[314]]in pieces, it fell from the hero’s hand, and the pike still slept unharmed in the quiet water.
“This is no boy’s work!” cried Wainamoinen. “A man is needed—a man’s sense, a man’s strength, a man’s skill. Stand aside, and see what a real man can do.”
Then, drawing the sword—the keen-edged sword, Faultless, which the Smith had forged for him—he leaped into the sea, he dived deep down to the fish’s resting-place. With one tremendous stroke he severed the mighty pike in twain, with another he hewed off its head. The monstrous body sank to the bottom; but the Minstrel dragged the head up to the surface, and with Ahti’s help he hoisted the mighty jaws into the vessel.