there was anything nobody else dared do, Bardun was the man to do it.
And, absurd and desperate as the venture might be, he always succeeded,
so that folks were always talking about him.

Now, right out at sea, beyond the skerries, lay a large rock, the lair
of wild-fowl, whither the merchant who owned it came every year to bring
away rich loads of eider-down. A long way down the side of this lofty
rock was a cleft. Nobody could tell how far _into_ the rock it went, and
so inaccessible was it there that its owner had said that whoever liked
might come and take eider-down from thence. It became quite a proverb to
say, when anything couldn't be done, that it was just as impossible as
taking eider-down from Dyrevig rock.

But Bardun passed by the rock, and peeped up at the cleft, and saw all
the hosts of the fowls of the air lighting upon it so many times that he
felt he needs must try his hand at it.

He lost no time about it, and the sun was shining brightly as he set
out.

He took with him a long piece of rope, which he cast two or three times
round a rocky crag, and lowered himself down till he was right opposite
the cleft. There he hung and swung over it backwards and forwards till
he had got a firm footing, and then he set about collecting eider-down
and stuffing his sacks with it.

He went searching about for it so far into the rocky chasm that he saw
no more than a gleam of sunlight outside the opening, and he couldn't
take a hundreth part of the eider-down that was there.

It was quite late in the evening before he gave up trying to gather it
all. But when he came out again, the stone which he had placed on the
top of the rope and tied it to was gone. And now the rope hung loosely
there, and dangled over the side of the rock. The wind blew it in and
out and hither and thither. The currents of air sported madly with it,
so that it always kept sheer away from the rock and far out over the
abyss.

There he stood then, and tried again and again to clutch hold of it till
the sun lay right down in the sea.

When it began to dawn again, and the morning breeze rose up from the
sea, he all at once heard something right over his head say--

"It blows away, it blows away!"

He looked up, and there he saw a big woman holding the rope away from
the cliff side.

Every time he made a grip at it she wrenched and twisted it right away
over the rocky wall, and there was a laughing and a grinning all down
the mountain