48. THE BROTHERS WHO WERE LOST ON THEIR JOURNEY UP THE FIORD.

48.
THE BROTHERS WHO WERE LOST ON THEIR JOURNEY UP THE FIORD.

SEVERAL men were living together in the mouth of a fiord. Each of them used to go out kayaking by himself; but it so happened that all those who went up the fiord entirely disappeared one after another. Two brothers, both strong and able men, were still left, and of these, the eldest first went out in search of the lost ones. He kept close along shore; but having arrived at a certain spot, he could not master the strong tide, but was carried along by it to a place where two old people were standing, who (by magic) drew him to their shore. When he got upon land he saw numbers of people, who were all sons of the old couple; they seized his kayak, smashed it asunder, and put the pieces of it on the top of the turned-up boat. He was then asked to enter the house, and a dish of berries was put before him; but perceiving part of a human hand sticking up among them, he left it untouched. The people he had thus encountered were the murderers of his lost friends. At nightfall they entered to attack him also; and with this view they as usual took out a sealskin and spread it on the floor, for a trying-match at hook and crook. Seeing, however, that nobody was able to conquer him in this way, they dared not downright kill him. His p. 287 kayak being destroyed, he was deprived of all means of returning. His brother in vain awaited his arrival, and therefore at length resolved to follow him. He took the very same course, and had the same fate, being likewise drawn towards the shore by the two old people. But before the young men could seize hold of his kayak, his own brother, who all the while had feigned to know nought of him, caught it up and placed it in safety on the top of the boat. At night he said to the men of the place that they might as well go to sleep, and that he would take charge of the stranger; but at midnight he suffered him to escape; and not till he believed he had gained a safe distance did he awake the people of the house and make known to them what had happened. The boat was quickly got down and put out in pursuit of him. The brother, who was given charge of the steering-oar, feigned to be pulling exceedingly hard, and in so doing, purposely broke every oar he got in hand in order to delay the pursuit. Meanwhile the fugitive escaped them, and on reaching home went off in search of helpmates to the north as well as to the south. In the ensuing winter they started in great numbers to take revenge on the fiord people. When the latter had been apprised of their approach, the elder brother, who was still staying with them, said he would rescue them, and they had better go and hide themselves in a cave close by; but no sooner had the assailants arrived, than the brother hastened to point out their hiding-place, and they commenced the attack, pouring their arrows into the cave, killing all but one, for whom there was not an arrow left. Presently, however, a bird came flying out of the cave; but one of them quickly got an arrow from an orphan boy, who had just been practising bow-shooting, and hit the bird with it; and when they came to look more closely at it, the bird turned out to have been one of the men. They cut him to pieces, and at once took out his entrails. p. 288 Part of them were sunk in the depths of the ocean, and the rest brought to a place on which the sun never shone.

NOTE.—This tale is taken from two copies. Besides these there are two much resembling it. In the first, all the men having disappeared, only an old bachelor is left with the women, who persuade him to go in search of the lost men. On returning after having revenged them, the women, for sheer joy, suffocated him by their caresses. In the other, the inhabitants of two different islands were living in friendly relations to each other until an ill-natured sorcerer at one of those places took it into his head to kill the visitors successively arriving from the other island. His mode of attacking people was to fly at them like a bird from the top of a mountain, striking off their heads at one blow. At length, however, he was killed by the arrow of a boy who had been trained for the purpose.