When the boat came nearer Gud and the fish saw that the boat also contained a man and two women. The man was talking. "Suppose," said he, "that the boat should upset: neither of you can swim, and what would I do? For I could not save you both. I could not let my dear old mother drown and yet how could I let my beautiful wife drown? If I had realized how I was going to worry about it, I should have insisted on going to the mountains for our vacation."
Upon hearing the man's words the two women set up a great weeping.
"I wonder," said Gud, "which one he would save!"
"Let's find out," laughed the fish; and without further ado he dived beneath the boat and upset it with a mighty stroke of his great scaly tail.
"Help!" screamed the mother.
"Help!" gurgled the young wife.
"Now I am in a devil of a fix," groaned the man, "which ever one I save, the neighbors will say I should have saved the other one." And he started off alone swimming rapidly toward the shore.
Then the fish remembered that the young wife was quite plump—even if she wasn't beautiful as her husband had said she was, so he dived deep into the sea and left Gud standing there on the water without a blessed thing to do and nothing to think about.
And now a wind came sighing over the deep blue sea, and little ripples stirred upon the surface of the water, and then the wind came soughing over the roughened sea, and larger wavelets raced and ran atop the cold, damp water. And soon the wind began to howl and tear the wild, wet sea, and mighty waves began to break and toss and splatter—and it made Gud seasick.
So he began to wonder why the waves kept going on and leaving him behind. The more he thought about it, the more it worried him; and finally it occurred to Gud that he was opposing the waves subconsciously. So he sublimated his subconscious conflict and harmonized his ego with the spirit of the waves, and when the next wave hit him he rode atop it like a cat on the ridgepole of a cabin going down the river in a June rise.