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 side—­

“It blows away, it blows away!”

And, again and again, the rope drove in and out and hither and thither.

“You had better take a spring at once, and not wait till you’re tired,” thought he.

It was a pretty long leap to take, but he went back a sufficient distance, and then out he sprang.

Bardun was not the man to fall short of anything.  He caught the rope and held it tight.

And, oddly enough, it seemed now to run up the cliff-side of its own accord, just as if some one were hoisting it.

But in front of the rocky crag to which he had fastened the rope, he heard a soughing and a sighing, and something said, “I am the daughter of the Wind-Gnome, and now thou hast dominion over me!  When the blast blows and whines about thee ’tis I who long for thee.  And here thou hast a rudder which will give thee luck and a fair wind whithersoever thou farest.  He who is with thee shall thrive, and he who is against thee shall suffer shipwreck and be lost.  For ’tis I who am in the windy gusts.”

Then all at once everything was quite still; but down on the sea below there swept a heavy squall.

There stood Bardun with the rudder in his hand, and he understood that it was not a thing to be lightly cast away.

Homeward he steered with a racing breeze behind him, and he had not sailed far before he met a galeas which gave him the Bergen price for his eider-down.

But Bardun was not content with only going thither once.  He went just the same as before, and he returned from the Dyrevig rock with a pile of sacks of eider-down on his boat right up to the mast.

He bought houses and ships; mightier and mightier he grew.

And it was not long before he owned whole fishing-grounds, both northwards and southwards.