No! No! And she sets to work and lashes the water into foam with her tail; but the little pearly fish is inexorable; it is too strong for her.
There must be some strange witchcraft about it all!
Instead of her swimming away with it, here it goes swimming away with her, and on they go, nearer and nearer up towards the light and the surface, which she instinctively shuns. All at once the pearly fish leaps into the air with her. She wants to let go, to spit it out, but she is too late; for the moment she is not quite conscious.
Her eyes ache; she feels as if they would jump out of her head. Her sight is gone, and a bright red mist surrounds her. She tries to swim, but cannot get her balance; she tries to strike with her tail in order to escape, but the water round her offers no resistance.
A suffocating feeling seems suddenly to contract her gills; she cannot open them far enough. She opens her mouth to let water in, but only swallows dry wind.
The next moment she is lying floundering in a boat, and then a human hand takes her up.
“A pickerel! undersized!” mutters the angler. And he carefully takes out the revolving bait and weighs the fish in his hand. Alas! not even a miserable two pounds!
He takes out his sheath-knife and marks her dorsal fin; and then, in the hope of finding favour with the gods on account of his magnanimity, and catching the fish again at some future time, he tosses her over the side of the boat, and Grim is given back to life.
It was much the same feeling as when she was ejected from the heron’s throat; her intestines seem bursting, and her breath to be leaving her. Then she reaches the water, where she lies floating on her side, and slowly wakens as though from a long fit of unconsciousness.
And in a trice she has disappeared into the depths.