in point of fact, it was no easy matter to make out the meaning of
her eyes. As a rule, they were unfathomably dark with the lustre of a
night-billow through which the sea-fire sparkles; but, occasionally,
when she laughed, they took a bright sea-green glitter, as when the sun
shines deep down into the sea.

Now and again they passed by a boat or a vessel half buried in the sand,
out and in of the cabin doors and windows of which fishes swam to and
fro. Close by the wrecks wandered human shapes which seemed to consist
of nothing but blue smoke. His conductress explained to him that these
were the spirits of drowned men who had not had Christian burial--one
must beware of them, for dead ones of this sort are malignant. They
always know when one of their own race is about to be wrecked, and at
such times they howl the death-warning of the Draug through the wintry
nights.

Then they went further on their way right across a deep dark valley. In
the rocky walls above him he saw a row of four-cornered white doors,
from which a sort of glimmer, as from the northern lights, shot
downwards through the darkness. This valley stretched in a
north-eastwardly direction right under Finmark, she said, and inside the
white doors dwelt the old Finn Kings who had perished on the sea. Then
she went and opened the nearest of these doors--here, down in the salt
ocean, was the last of the kings, who had capsized in the very breeze
that he himself had conjured forth, but could not afterwards quell.
There, on a block of stone, sat a wrinkled yellow Finn with running eyes
and a polished dark-red crown. His large head rocked backwards and
forwards on his withered neck, as if it were in the swirl of an ocean
current. Beside him, on the same block, sat a still more shrivelled and
yellow little woman, who also had a crown on, and her garments were
covered with all sorts of coloured stones; she was stirring up a brew
with a stick. If she only had fire beneath it, the girl told Eilert, she
and her husband would very soon have dominion again over the salt sea,
for the thing she was stirring about was magic stuff.

In the middle of a plain, which opened right before them at a turn of
the road, stood a few houses together like a little town, and, a little
further on, Eilert saw a church turned upside down, looking, with its
long pointed tower, as if it were mirrored in the water. The girl
explained to him that her father dwelt in these houses, and the