What would it bring
to light when it came up?
"Row!" ordered Peer, and began hauling in.
The boat was headed straight out across the fjord, and the long line
with its trailing hooks hauled in and coiled up neatly in the bottom
of a shallow tub. Peer's heart was beating. There came a tug--the
first--and the faint shimmer of a fish deep down in the water. Pooh!
only a big cod. Peer heaved it in with a careless swing over the
gunwale. Next came a ling--a deep water fish at any rate this time. Then
a tusk, and another, and another; these would please the women, being
good eating, and perhaps make them hold their tongues when the men came
home. Now the line jerks heavily; what is coming? A grey shadow comes in
sight. "Here with the gaff!" cries Peer, and Peter throws it across to
him. "What is it, what is it?" shriek the other three. "Steady! don't
upset the boat; a catfish." A stroke of the gaff over the side, and a
clumsy grey body is heaved into the boat, where it rolls about, hissing
and biting at the bottom-boards and baler, the splinters crackling under
its teeth. "Mind, mind!" cries Klaus--he was always nervous in a boat.
But Peer was hauling in again. They were nearly half-way across the
fjord by now, and the line came up from mysterious depths, which no
fisherman had ever sounded. The strain on Peer began to show in his
looks; the others sat watching his face. "Is the line heavy?" asked
Klaus. "Keep still, can't you?" put in Martin, glancing along the
slanting line to where it vanished far below.
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