"Alfa dwelt with the merman, till one night as he was sporting about in the moonbeams amid the waters of the strait, Grön Jette, the wild huntsman, who once in every year comes over the sea at midnight out of Denmark, slew him by a blow of his lance, as he sped with his yelling hounds and fierce black horses over land and ocean towards the north, where the bright streamers were dancing.
"The spell was thus broken; and the young girl found herself turned suddenly into an old woman, seated on the same rock where, twenty years before, the merman had wooed and won her; but now seven well-grown children with fish-tails, and hair that was half green like her husband's and half golden like her own, were swimming about in the flood before her, weeping for her return. So, to rejoin them, she plunged in and was drowned—for the spell of the merman's presence was no longer around her. Next day I found her body floating in the strait, and by a string of crystals round her neck, knew her to be the sister my mother had lost twenty years before. We bore her to the Island of the Dead; and as we use no coffins, like the red-haired Danes, we heaped up stones to hide her from view; but a bear swam off from Sermesoak, tore our gathered heap asunder, and devoured her!"
Wolmar Fynböe rehearsed this strange story with the utmost good faith; for he was simple enough to believe that Torngarsück, the God of Greenland—a spirit which, though no larger than one's thumb, at times assumes the form of a gigantic white bear—dwelt at the bottom of the Whale Strait, with his wife the Demon of Evil, guarded by droves of narwhals and ferocious seals, and surrounded by vast lamps filled with train-oil, in which the sea-birds swam by night.
With many a strange story of witches, and conflicts with whales, walruses, and with devils that sailed through the air and changed themselves into snowdrifts to overwhelm belated hunters, he beguiled the way, until we reached Cunninghame's Haven, where I found Paul Reeves and Hans Peterkin awaiting me in considerable anxiety, and irresolute whether to put off for the Bear Isle and report to Hartly that I had been lost, or to return once more in search of me.
I now gave the honest Greenlander two crown pieces, as neck amulets for each of his daughters (among whose descendants they may become heirlooms for ages), and bidding him farewell, we stepped into our boat, which was well stocked with game—a large white bear, a pile of hares, and several brace of birds shot by the two mates. Then we shoved off to join the Leda, and Wolmar Fynböe, ever and anon pausing to look after us, slowly ascended the cliffs, assisted by his harpoon-shaped hunting spear, and at last disappeared on the path to his half-barbarous and wholly secluded home.
In two hours after, we reached the Leda, which had her courses loose, a signal for sea. Our quota of provisions proved a very acceptable addition to those obtained by Hartly from the Danish resident.
"Bravo, Jack!" said he, as we hoisted the bear on board, "our victualling department is complete now, and if this wind holds we shall weigh an hour before sunset."
"But the victualling—of what does it consist?"
"The dainties—the luxuries of Greenland!"
"Indeed," said I, doubtfully.