Part 4 (1/2)
SPARK VII.
HOW THE STAR HELPED ULF THE SILENT TO WIN A GREAT NAME.
Back at the fjord, what happened to Edith Fairhair while Ulf was on the ocean? Apparently nothing worth recording. Yet something had happened, so silently, so stealthily that no one gave the matter a thought. What was it? Why, Edith Fairhair had grown up!
She was now a tall maiden, straight as a poplar tree. Hers was now the hand to rule in her sweet lady-mother's place when work bore heavily on the shoulders now weary with many years. She it was who now directed the household thralls and saw that their tasks were well done. Did they not understand their business? Then hers was the hand to show them how, be it spinning, weaving, milking, was.h.i.+ng, sweeping, dusting, or any other household art.
In the kitchen it seemed to the servants that all the pots and kettles were bewitched when young Edith stood before them, for the water never refused to boil nor the wood to burn, nor the roast to cook thoroughly and tender. And she had so deft a way of first thinking out what new things would be likely to go well together, and then mixing things that no one ever thought of mixing before, which yet turned into the most delightful dishfuls, that the sea-kings who dined with Sigurd jestingly declared that but one thing prevented some one's making war on him in hope of capturing Edith for himself, and that was the surety that if he won he then would have to fight all the others!
But one morning the sun had just begun glinting past the pines, and had turned all the dewdrops into dancing jewels, as Edith stepped to the door and flung it open to admit the fresh morning air. As it swung she found herself face to face with a browned, bright-eyed young man, clad in mail that rippled in the sunlight radiance.
”Ulf!”
”Edith!”
And down the slope were moving forms about a longs.h.i.+p, rusty and weedy from long voyaging, now drawn up high on the beach for a long rest. In the clear air their voices were blithe as they shouted orders and tossed to earth the bales of costly furs, or handed down with more respect some small yet valuable parcel, doubtless containing gems or gold; while over the waters of the vik the gulls were wheeling, screaming, calling, as it seemed to Edith,
”Ulf! our Ulf is home again!”
Then the sun lifted itself clear of the shadowing pines and flooded the fjord with glory, and in Edith's face he seemed to have flashed a colour of sunrise rose.
”For rest and new plans have I come,” said Ulf, presently. ”Seas have I crossed, and new lands have I seen, and wealth have I won while trading; but a name is not won in ways like these.”
To him, indeed, that name of honour still seemed as far beyond the horizon as ever it had been. Yet, for some reason, Edith thought differently. So did Jarl Sigurd when, now seated on the ”high-seat”
with other visiting captains, Ulf told of his search for timber lands and briefly gave an idea of what he had brought home.
”Almost thou art man-grown, Ulf,” he said, significantly. ”Not quite, as yet. But almost. A little more, perhaps another voyage--”
Ulf's face flushed scarlet, and into his eyes leaped a joyous light.
Yet he said only,
”The son of a jarl needs a larger measure, else will men say, 'good as a dagger, but short for a sword.'”
And the grim war-captains around, who knew the difference, nodded a.s.sent and said the word was wise. Yet thought they none the less of the youth because he felt that a renowned father made all the harder work needful in the son.
But all day long, and for various other days, the dark little smithy was alight again, and merrily the clink of anvil rang. Little by little new plans were forming. A new strip of rings had to be let into that mail, for Ulf had grown larger. He had grown in other ways as well, and could see far into the needs for the future. So to his arms he had added a spearhead with a point like a needle. And now he took from an almost forgotten hiding-place a toy of his younger days.
You would hardly know the use at first glance. Just two jawbones of some large animal, white and polished. But look closer at them. The outer side of the curve has been filed flat. There are holes drilled in the bone through which are rove leather strips. If with those strips the bones were laced to the bottom of your shoes, now--
”Skates!” you cry; and skates they were. Not keen enough perhaps to give a good honest stroke, yet speedy enough when used rightly in ”roller-skate” fas.h.i.+on, and just as easy to get a fall with as any other kind. Ulf's nose tingled as he looked at them. It seemed to remember at least one b.u.mp.
Then Ulf fell to hammering again at his bits of steel, and presently those flat surfaces of bone were shod with something harder, with keen cutting edges of corners that would never slip, no matter how gla.s.sy the ice beneath.
Jarl Sigurd laughed when he heard of it and said that Ulf was still quite a boy. Edith was amazed, although that winter she took much pleasure in a pair of skates which were wondrous keen. But that was still in the future; meanwhile, Ulf said nothing, only smiled, and when he next sailed away he took his new toys with him.
Far up in the Arctic Circle, where the nights are six months long, day was fairly begun. That means, it had progressed till five or six weeks of our days might have been carved out of it, and the sun stood quite high above the horizon. It was so warm that the ice had begun to melt, and one great floe of it, ever so many miles wide, broke off from the rest and began to drift slowly southward. What made it break off was this:--here and there in the smooth plain great icebergs were frozen, huge mountains of ice, every one of them. The wind was blowing south, and each berg stood there like a great white sail. Underneath there was a current flowing southward; and every berg was many times larger under water than it was above, as you can see for yourself by dropping a piece of ice into a waterpail and measuring the difference. So the river of water flowing through the Arctic Ocean was pus.h.i.+ng, pus.h.i.+ng, and the wind above was pus.h.i.+ng, pus.h.i.+ng, until at last there came a thunderous crack, and the whole concern began drifting, drifting down to the warmer seas.
But where did the bergs come from? That, too, is very curious. Among the mountains in the far north, just as in Switzerland, there are great rivers of ice, called glaciers. They look like rivers frozen clear to the bottom, and the weight of the ice is forever pressing it downward toward the sea, sliding, squeezing, crus.h.i.+ng itself into strange forms, and moving a few inches or a few feet or yards per year. Very slow progress, you will say. But then, it is enough. By and by a great ma.s.s of it will be shoved so far into the sea that it will break off, a whole mountain of it, and go wallowing away with perhaps twenty cart-loads of sand and gravel and great stones scooped up from the bottom into its crevices, or frozen fast to the ice. By-and-by that berg will drift down as far as Newfoundland, where it will meet the warm water of the Gulf Stream as it hurries northward. The ice will melt, the sand and stones will go silting downward, and by just so much the bottom of the ocean will be a little nearer to the surface. Already there are great banks of such deposits, many miles across, where a s.h.i.+p can anchor, although out of sight of land; and they are great places to go fis.h.i.+ng on. More codfish and halibut are caught in such places than anywhere else.