Elizabeth, too, was listening.
They had crossed that day a long stretch of dead water, and the carpenter had several mysterious incidents, of which he declared he had been an eyewitness, to recount on the head of it.

Meeting dead water like that out in the open sea generally meant that something was going to happen.
Nils Buvaagen, like all fjord peasants, had a strong leaning towards every kind of superstition; and in his many voyages across the North Sea, he had had more than one experience of the kind in question.

He had sat quite silent so far.
"H'm!" he remarked now, thoughtfully taking a pull at his pipe.

"I dare be sworn there's many a one out here on the Dogger.

Where we are now, I tell you, is as it might be an old burial-ground." With that he retired into himself, and began to pull away vigorously at his pipe, as if he had unintentionally said more than he exactly liked.
But being pressed to go on, he was obliged to satisfy the curiosity he had excited, and resumed accordingly in a hushed tone, after cautiously looking round first.
"Do you know," he asked, mysteriously, "how all the old fish come by their deaths ?" None of his audience were able to give an answer to this unexpected question.
"You don't ?" he continued; "nor no one else neither.