Part 3 (1/2)

These slowly neared with flapping sails, and we could see that the decks were crowded with men. They pa.s.sed by, as they went hailing us in rough tongue, laughing out many-languaged questions as to where we had come from.

Then came something that was very strange. A few men and myself saw my lord very slowly take up a cross-bow and drawing it, deliberately shoot an arrow into the side of one of the nearest s.h.i.+ps. A yell of defiance came over the water, and young Erik cried to every man to take his arms.

Why had my lord shot that arrow? Who can say? We do not know.

They came down on us singing Icelandic songs, as is the custom of most of these people, for the s.h.i.+ps were princ.i.p.ally full of these men.

One s.h.i.+p pa.s.sed close by us and the men shouting over the sides, threw spears at us as they went by, brus.h.i.+ng us with their oars. Then this s.h.i.+p rounded on behind us, and the spears came in showers over the stern.

But part of our men, dropping their weapons, and throwing themselves at the oars, drove us over the sparkling sea, toward the s.h.i.+p that came gliding toward us, with a howl from the enemy that reverberated in the ears of the straining men inside our wooden bulwarks, our long prow cut into their s.h.i.+p's side. I saw their mast bend away from us. The other s.h.i.+p now came on, singing.

We shoot at her with our long-bows, and the singing is turned to shouting as they come toward us. My lord shouts to pull on the right-hand oars and while some of us tug wildly the others shoot over the side. Slowly we turn, and the heeling s.h.i.+p before us comes into view over the bow-slowly we turn, as the third s.h.i.+p nears us. We move round, and, their arrows in our faces, they go sweeping by-just by-the oars grazing.

And now we can see the s.h.i.+p we have run down as she turns over her deck to us; the men tumble down the rowers' benches; they leap into the water; she settles sideways, the water bubbling.

Now come the two other s.h.i.+ps from behind us.

Young Lord Erik lies wounded on the after-deck. Half of the men sit white, about the arrow-struck mast. The other two s.h.i.+ps come on.

My lord cries to face them, and we move slowly, seeing over the bow the s.h.i.+ps rush on over the place where their comrades sank, striking the heads of the swimming men with their oar-blades.

We drop our arms and, heaving three times on the long-oars, send our s.h.i.+p between the other two.

A flight of arrows, a glimpse on each side of a pa.s.sing mast-they are behind us. My lord calls from the after-deck, ”Row away, row away!”

Turning my head to look at him I see him laughing, the bow still in his hand.

We rowed round the sand-spit, and as we went round it we saw the two s.h.i.+ps close together picking up men from where a mast stuck up out of the light-green water.

”It is the second time we have been comrades,” said young Lord Erik, his right arm bandaged, gazing up palely at my lord as they stood by the rail.

My lord smiled.

”Yes, true,” he said.

We were running along a forest-covered strand, where the roots of old trees gnarled themselves into the water.

”Now we must go to the hall that I told you about,” said my lord.

”Yes and see the girl I am so eager to see!” exclaimed young Lord Erik, his white face lighting as he gazed up smiling to my lord.

He laughed.

”Ah,” he said, ”it is both pleasant and good,” and he gazed along the depleted seats.

The next day there was a strange excitement in my lord's eyes, and we began to put together our clothes. And late in the afternoon we came into the little bay on the sh.o.r.e of which lay old Raud's castle. We ran through the water hauling our s.h.i.+p up with cables, and with shouting from the people coming welcomingly down from the castle, we hastened up the beach.

As we sat over the meat that night, a curtain was pulled aside from the door by Lord Raud's chair, and he, rising feebly, my lord slowly, and smiling, and young Lord Erik jumping to his feet eagerly, we saw her come gliding in whom we had seen often before. She gave her hand timidly, yet with a little laugh, to my lord, shyly yet kindly to young Lord Erik, and welcomed them as her guests as her father had welcomed them as his at the castle-door as we pa.s.sed over it. How such a maiden could be the daughter of such a feeble, timid, dainty old man as Lord Raud, I could never know. As a child pretending to ask for forgiveness was her face-half-laughing and half-sorrowful. Her moving was like a ripple of blown cloth, it was so springing graceful. And her eyes, when they occasionally looked at you, had a woman's innocence, never a man's straightforwardness.

It was sunset three days later. Walking on the beach I could see my lord and Hildur pacing slowly, he laughing, along the gra.s.s that stretched by the path to the houses in the wood. The scene was lit up by one of the sometimes far-reaching clear sunsets of autumn. I could see her hand raised in remonstrance, and though I was too far, I could see that they were both laughing. Presently she nodded her head of gold hair to him, and turned into the castle-door, leaving him alone in the soft, far, unusual, light. He turned.