Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

LUKUNDOO

LUKUNDOO

IT STANDS to reason,” said Twombly, “that a man must accept the evidence of his own eyes, and when eyes and ears agree, there can be no doubt. He has to believe what he has both seen and heard.”

“Not always,” put in Singleton, softly.

Every man turned toward Singleton. Twombly was standing on the hearth-rug, his back to the grate, his legs spread out, with his habitual air of dominating the room. Singleton, as usual, was as much as possible effaced in a corner. But when Singleton spoke he said something. We faced him in that flattering spontaneity of expectant silence which invites utterance.

“I was thinking,” he said, after an interval, “of something I both saw and heard in Africa.”

Now, if there was one thing we had found impossible it had been to elicit from Singleton anything definite about his African experiences. As with the Alpinist in the story, who could tell only that he went up and came down, the sum of Singleton’s revelations had been that he went there and came away. His words now riveted our attention at once. Twombly faded from the hearth-rug, but not one of us could ever recall having seen him go. The room readjusted itself, focused on Singleton, and there was some hasty and furtive lighting of fresh cigars. Singleton lit one also, but it went out immediately, and he never relit it.

I

We were in the Great Forest, exploring for pigmies. Van Rieten had a theory that the dwarfs found by Stanley and others were a mere cross-breed between ordinary negroes and the real pigmies. He hoped to discover a race of men three feet tall at most, or shorter. We had found no trace of any such beings.

Natives were few; game scarce; food, except game, there was none; and the deepest, dankest, drippingest forest all about. We were the only novelty in the country, no native we met had even seen a white man before, most had never heard of white men. All of a sudden, late one afternoon, there came into our camp an Englishman, and pretty well used up he was, too. We had heard no rumor of him; he had not only heard of us but had made an amazing five-day march to reach us. His guide and two bearers were nearly as done up as he. Even though he was in tatters and had five days’ beard on, you could see he was naturally dapper and neat and the sort of man to shave daily. He was small, but wiry. His face was the sort of British face from which emotion has been so carefully banished that a foreigner is apt to think the wearer of the face incapable of any sort of feeling; the kind of face which, if it has any expression at all, expresses principally the resolution to go through the world decorously, without intruding upon or annoying anyone.

His name was Etcham. He introduced himself modestly, and ate with us so deliberately that we should never have suspected, if our bearers had not had it from his bearers, that he had had but three meals in the five days, and those small. After we had lit up he told us why he had come.

“My chief is ve’y seedy,” he said between puffs. “He is bound to go out if he keeps this way. I thought perhaps....”

He spoke quietly in a soft, even tone, but I could see little beads of sweat oozing out on his upper lip under his stubby mustache, and there was a tingle of repressed emotion in his tone, a veiled eagerness in his eye, a palpitating inward solicitude in his demeanor that moved me at once. Van Rieten had no sentiment in him; if he was moved he did not show it. But he listened. I was surprised at that. He was just the man to refuse at once. But he listened to Etcham’s halting, diffident hints. He even asked questions.

“Who is your chief?”

“Stone,” Etcham lisped.

That electrified both of us.

“Ralph Stone?” we ejaculated together.

Etcham nodded.

For some minutes Van Rieten and I were silent. Van Rieten had never seen him, but I had been a classmate of Stone’s, and Van Rieten and I had discussed him over many a camp-fire. We had heard of him two years before, south of Luebo in the Balunda country, which had been ringing with his theatrical strife against a Balunda witch-doctor, ending in the sorcerer’s complete discomfiture and the abasement of his tribe before Stone. They had even broken the fetish-man’s whistle and given Stone the pieces. It had been like the triumph of Elijah over the prophets of Baal, only more real to the Balunda.

We had thought of Stone as far off, if still in Africa at all, and here he turned up ahead of us and probably forestalling our quest.

II

Etcham’s naming of Stone brought back to us all his tantalizing story, his fascinating parents, their tragic death; the brilliance of his college days; the dazzle of his millions; the promise of his young manhood; his wide notoriety, so nearly real fame; his romantic elopement with the meteoric authoress whose sudden cascade of fiction had made her so great a name so young, whose beauty and charm were so much heralded; the frightful scandal of the breach-of-promise suit that followed; his bride’s devotion through it all; their sudden quarrel after it was all over; their divorce; the too much advertised announcement of his approaching marriage to the plaintiff in the breach-of-promise suit; his precipitate remarriage to his divorced bride; their second quarrel and second divorce; his departure from his native land; his advent in the dark continent. The sense of all this rushed over me and I believe Van Rieten felt it, too, as he sat silent.

Then he asked:

“Where is Werner?”

“Dead,” said Etcham. “He died before I joined Stone.”

“You were not with Stone above Luebo?”

“No,” said Etcham, “I joined him at Stanley Falls.”

“Who is with him?” Van Rieten asked.

“Only his Zanzibar servants and the bearers,” Etcham replied.

“What sort of bearers?” Van Rieten demanded.

“Mang-Battu men,” Etcham responded simply.

Now that impressed both Van Rieten and myself greatly. It bore out Stone’s reputation as a notable leader of men. For up to that time no one had been able to use Mang-Battu as bearers outside of their own country, or to hold them for long or difficult expeditions.

“Were you long among the Mang-Battu?” was Van Rieten’s next question.

“Some weeks,” said Etcham. “Stone was interested in them and made up a fair-sized vocabulary of their words and phrases. He had a theory that they are an offshoot of the Balunda and he found much confirmation in their customs.”

“What do you live on?” Van Rieten inquired.

“Game, mostly,” Etcham lisped.

“How long has Stone been laid up?” Van Rieten next asked.

“More than a month,” Etcham answered.

“And you have been hunting for the camp!” Van Rieten exclaimed.

Etcham’s face, burnt and flayed as it was, showed a flush.

“I missed some easy shots,” he admitted ruefully. “I’ve not felt ve’y fit myself.”

“What’s the matter with your chief?” Van Rieten inquired.

“Something like carbuncles,” Etcham replied.

“He ought to get over a carbuncle or two,” Van Rieten declared.

“They are not carbuncles,” Etcham explained. “Nor one or two. He has had dozens, sometimes five at once. If they had been carbuncles he would have been dead long ago. But in some ways they are not so bad, though in others they are worse.”

“How do you mean?” Van Rieten queried.

“Well,” Etcham hesitated, “they do not seem to inflame so deep nor so wide as carbuncles, nor to be so painful, nor to cause so much fever. But then they seem to be part of a disease that affects his mind. He let me help him dress the first, but the others he has hidden most carefully, from me and from the men. He keeps his tent when they puff up, and will not let me change the dressings or be with him at all.”

“Have you plenty of dressings?” Van Rieten asked.

“We have some,” said Etcham doubtfully. “But he won’t use them; he washes out the dressings and uses them over and over.”

“How is he treating the swellings?” Van Rieten inquired.

“He slices them off clear down to flesh level, with his razor.”

“What?” Van Rieten shouted.

Etcham made no answer but looked him steadily in the eyes.

“I beg pardon,” Van Rieten hastened to say. “You startled me. They can’t be carbuncles. He’d have been dead long ago.”

“I thought I had said they are not carbuncles,” Etcham lisped.

“But the man must be crazy!” Van Rieten exclaimed.

“Just so,” said Etcham. “He is beyond my advice or control.”

“How many has he treated that way?” Van Rieten demanded.

“Two, to my knowledge,” Etcham said.

“Two?” Van Rieten queried.

Etcham flushed again.

“I saw him,” he confessed, “through a crack in the hut. I felt impelled to keep a watch on him, as if he was not responsible.”

“I should think not,” Van Rieten agreed. “And you saw him do that twice?”

“I conjecture,” said Etcham, “that he did the like with all the rest.”

“How many has he had?” Van Rieten asked.

“Dozens,” Etcham lisped.

“Does he eat?” Van Rieten inquired.

“Like a wolf,” said Etcham. “More than any two bearers.”

“Can he walk?” Van Rieten asked.

“He crawls a bit, groaning,” said Etcham simply.

“Little fever, you say,” Van Rieten ruminated.

“Enough and too much,” Etcham declared.

“Has he been delirious?” Van Rieten asked.

“Only twice,” Etcham replied; “once when the first swelling broke, and once later. He would not let anyone come near him then. But we could hear him talking, talking steadily, and it scared the natives.”

“Was he talking their patter in delirium?” Van Rieten demanded.

“No,” said Etcham, “but he was talking some similar lingo. Hamed Burghash said he was talking Balunda. I know too little Balunda. I do not learn languages readily. Stone learned more Mang-Battu in a week than I could have learned in a year. But I seemed to hear words like Mang-Battu words. Anyhow the Mang-Battu bearers were scared.”

“Scared?” Van Rieten repeated, questioningly.

“So were the Zanzibar men, even Hamed Burghash, and so was I,” said Etcham, “only for a different reason. He talked in two voices.”

“In two voices,” Van Rieten reflected.

“Yes,” said Etcham, more excitedly than he had yet spoken. “In two voices, like a conversation. One was his own, one a small, thin, bleaty voice like nothing I ever heard. I seemed to make out, among the sounds the deep voice made, something like Mang-Battu words I knew, as _nedru_, _metebaba_, and _nedo_, their terms for ‘head,’ ‘shoulder,’ ‘thigh,’ and perhaps _kudra_ and _nekere_ (‘speak’ and ‘whistle’); and among the noises of the shrill voice _matomipa_, _angunzi_, and _kamomami_ (‘kill,’ ‘death,’ and ‘hate’). Hamed Burghash said he also heard those words. He knew Mang-Battu far better than I.”

“What did the bearers say?” Van Rieten asked.

“They said, ‘_Lukundoo, Lukundoo!_’” Etcham replied. “I did not know that word; Hamed Burghash said it was Mang-Battu for ‘leopard.’”

“It’s Mang-Battu for ‘witchcraft,’” said Van Rieten.

“I don’t wonder they thought so,” said Etcham. “It was enough to make one believe in sorcery to listen to those two voices.”

“One voice answering the other?” Van Rieten asked perfunctorily.

Etcham’s face went gray under his tan.

“Sometimes both at once,” he answered huskily.

“Both at once!” Van Rieten ejaculated.

“It sounded that way to the men, too,” said Etcham. “And that was not all.”

He stopped and looked helplessly at us for a moment.

“Could a man talk and whistle at the same time?” he asked.

“How do you mean?” Van Rieten queried.

“We could hear Stone talking away, his big, deep-chested baritone rumbling along, and through it all we could hear a high, shrill whistle, the oddest, wheezy sound. You know, no matter how shrilly a grown man may whistle, the note has a different quality from the whistle of a boy or a woman or little girl. They sound more treble, somehow. Well, if you can imagine the smallest girl who could whistle keeping it up tunelessly right along, that whistle was like that, only even more piercing, and it sounded right through Stone’s bass tones.”

“And you didn’t go to him?” Van Rieten cried.

“He is not given to threats,” Etcham disclaimed. “But he had threatened, not volubly, nor like a sick man, but quietly and firmly, that if any man of us (he lumped me in with the men), came near him while he was in his trouble, that man should die. And it was not so much his words as his manner. It was like a monarch commanding respected privacy for a death-bed. One simply could not transgress.”

“I see,” said Van Rieten shortly.

“He’s ve’y seedy,” Etcham repeated helplessly. “I thought perhaps....”

His absorbing affection for Stone, his real love for him, shone out through his envelope of conventional training. Worship of Stone was plainly his master passion.

Like many competent men, Van Rieten had a streak of hard selfishness in him. It came to the surface then. He said we carried our lives in our hands from day to day just as genuinely as Stone; that he did not forget the ties of blood and calling between any two explorers, but that there was no sense in imperiling one party for a very problematical benefit to a man probably beyond any help; that it was enough of a task to hunt for one party; that if two were united, providing food would be more than doubly difficult; that the risk of starvation was too great. Deflecting our march seven full days’ journey (he complimented Etcham on his marching powers) might ruin our expedition entirely.

III

Van Rieten had logic on his side and he had a way with him. Etcham sat there apologetic and deferential, like a fourth-form schoolboy before a head master. Van Rieten wound up.

“I am after pigmies, at the risk of my life. After pigmies I go.”

“Perhaps, then, these will interest you,” said Etcham, very quietly.

He took two objects out of the sidepocket of his blouse, and handed them to Van Rieten. They were round, bigger than big plums, and smaller than small peaches, about the right size to enclose in an average hand. They were black, and at first I did not see what they were.

“Pigmies!” Van Rieten exclaimed. “Pigmies, indeed! Why, they wouldn’t be two feet high! Do you mean to claim that these are adult heads?”

“I claim nothing,” Etcham answered evenly. “You can see for yourself.”

Van Rieten passed one of the heads to me. The sun was just setting and I examined it closely. A dried head it was, perfectly preserved, and the flesh as hard as Argentine jerked beef. A bit of a vertebra stuck out where the muscles of the vanished neck had shriveled into folds. The puny chin was sharp on a projecting jaw, the minute teeth white and even between the retracted lips, the tiny nose was flat, the little forehead retreating, there were inconsiderable clumps of stunted wool on the Lilliputian cranium. There was nothing babyish, childish or youthful about the head, rather it was mature to senility.

“Where did these come from?” Van Rieten inquired.

“I do not know,” Etcham replied precisely. “I found them among Stone’s effects while rummaging for medicines or drugs or anything that could help me to help him. I do not know where he got them. But I’ll swear he did not have them when we entered this district.”

“Are you sure?” Van Rieten queried, his eyes big and fixed on Etcham’s.

“Ve’y sure,” lisped Etcham.

“But how could he have come by them without your knowledge?” Van Rieten demurred.

“Sometimes we were apart ten days at a time hunting,” said Etcham. “Stone is not a talking man. He gave me no account of his doings and Hamed Burghash keeps a still tongue and a tight hold on the men.”

“You have examined these heads?” Van Rieten asked.

“Minutely,” said Etcham.

Van Rieten took out his notebook. He was a methodical chap. He tore out a leaf, folded it and divided it equally into three pieces. He gave one to me and one to Etcham.

“Just for a test of my impressions,” he said, “I want each of us to write separately just what he is most reminded of by these heads. Then I want to compare the writings.”

I handed Etcham a pencil and he wrote. Then he handed the pencil back to me and I wrote.

“Read the three,” said Van Rieten, handing me his piece.

Van Rieten had written:

“An old Balunda witch-doctor.”

Etcham had written:

“An old Mang-Battu fetish-man.”

I had written:

“An old Katongo magician.”

“There!” Van Rieten exclaimed. “Look at that! There is nothing Wagabi or Batwa or Wambuttu or Wabotu about these heads. Nor anything pigmy either.”

“I thought as much,” said Etcham.

“And you say he did not have them before?”

“To a certainty he did not,” Etcham asserted.

“It is worth following up,” said Van Rieten. “I’ll go with you. And first of all, I’ll do my best to save Stone.”

He put out his hand and Etcham clasped it silently. He was grateful all over.

IV

Nothing but Etcham’s fever of solicitude could have taken him in five days over the track. It took him eight days to retrace with full knowledge of it and our party to help. We could not have done it in seven, and Etcham urged us on, in a repressed fury of anxiety, no mere fever of duty to his chief, but a real ardor of devotion, a glow of personal adoration for Stone which blazed under his dry conventional exterior and showed in spite of him.

We found Stone well cared for. Etcham had seen to a good, high thorn _zareeba_ round the camp, the huts were well built and thatched and Stone’s was as good as their resources would permit. Hamed Burghash was not named after two Seyyids for nothing. He had in him the making of a sultan. He had kept the Mang-Battu together, not a man had slipped off, and he had kept them in order. Also he was a deft nurse and a faithful servant.

The two other Zanzabaris had done some creditable hunting. Though all were hungry, the camp was far from starvation.

Stone was on a canvas cot and there was a sort of collapsible camp-stool-table, like a Turkish tabouret, by the cot. It had a water-bottle and some vials on it and Stone’s watch, also his razor in its case.

Stone was clean and not emaciated, but he was far gone; not unconscious, but in a daze; past commanding or resisting anyone. He did not seem to see us enter or to know we were there. I should have recognized him anywhere. His boyish dash and grace had vanished utterly, of course. But his head was even more leonine; his hair was still abundant, yellow and wavy; the close, crisped blond beard he had grown during his illness did not alter him. He was big and big-chested yet. His eyes were dull and he mumbled and babbled mere meaningless syllables, not words.

Etcham helped Van Rieten to uncover him and look him over. He was in good muscle for a man so long bedridden. There were no scars on him except about his knees, shoulders and chest. On each knee and above it he had a full score of roundish cicatrices, and a dozen or more on each shoulder, all in front. Two or three were open wounds and four or five barely healed. He had no fresh swellings except two, one on each side, on his pectoral muscles, the one on the left being higher up and farther out than the other. They did not look like boils or carbuncles, but as if something blunt and hard were being pushed up through the fairly healthy flesh and skin, not much inflamed.

“I should not lance those,” said Van Rieten, and Etcham assented.

They made Stone as comfortable as they could, and just before sunset we looked in at him again. He was lying on his back, and his chest showed big and massive yet, but he lay as if in a stupor. We left Etcham with him and went into the next hut, which Etcham had resigned to us. The jungle noises were no different there than anywhere else for months past, and I was soon fast asleep.

V

Sometime in the pitch dark I found myself awake and listening. I could hear two voices, one Stone’s, the other sibilant and wheezy. I knew Stone’s voice after all the years that had passed since I heard it last. The other was like nothing I remembered. It had less volume than the wail of a new-born baby, yet there was an insistent carrying power to it, like the shrilling of an insect. As I listened I heard Van Rieten breathing near me in the dark, then he heard me and realized that I was listening, too. Like Etcham I knew little Balunda, but I could make out a word or two. The voices alternated with intervals of silence between.

Then suddenly both sounded at once and fast, Stone’s baritone basso, full as if he were in perfect health, and that incredibly stridulous falsetto, both jabbering at once like the voices of two people quarreling and trying to talk each other down.

“I can’t stand this,” said Van Rieten. “Let’s have a look at him.”

He had one of those cylindrical electric night-candles. He fumbled about for it, touched the button and beckoned me to come with him. Outside of the hut he motioned me to stand still, and instinctively turned off the light, as if seeing made listening difficult.

Except for a faint glow from the embers of the bearers’ fire we were in complete darkness, little starlight struggled through the trees, the river made but a faint murmur. We could hear the two voices together and then suddenly the creaking voice changed into a razor-edged, slicing whistle, indescribably cutting, continuing right through Stone’s grumbling torrent of croaking words.

“Good God!” exclaimed Van Rieten.

Abruptly he turned on the light.

We found Etcham utterly asleep, exhausted by his long anxiety and the exertions of his phenomenal march and relaxed completely now that the load was in a sense shifted from his shoulders to Van Rieten’s. Even the light on his face did not wake him.

The whistle had ceased and the two voices now sounded together. Both came from Stone’s cot, where the concentrated white ray showed him lying just as we had left him, except that he had tossed his arms above his head and had torn the coverings and bandages from his chest.

The swelling on his right breast had broken. Van Rieten aimed the center line of the light at it and we saw it plainly. From his flesh, grown out of it, there protruded a head, such a head as the dried specimens Etcham had shown us, as if it were a miniature of the head of a Balunda fetish-man. It was black, shining black as the blackest African skin; it rolled the whites of its wicked, wee eyes and showed its microscopic teeth between lips repulsively negroid in their red fullness, even in so diminutive a face. It had crisp, fuzzy wool on its minikin skull, it turned malignantly from side to side and chittered incessantly in that inconceivable falsetto. Stone babbled brokenly against its patter.

Van Rieten turned from Stone and waked Etcham, with some difficulty. When he was awake and saw it all, Etcham stared and said not one word.

“You saw him slice off two swellings?” Van Rieten asked.

Etcham nodded, chokingly.

“Did he bleed much?” Van Rieten demanded.

“Ve’y little,” Etcham replied.

“You hold his arms,” said Van Rieten to Etcham.

He took up Stone’s razor and handed me the light. Stone showed no sign of seeing the light or of knowing we were there. But the little head mewled and screeched at us.

Van Rieten’s hand was steady, and the sweep of the razor even and true. Stone bled amazingly little and Van Rieten dressed the wound as if it had been a bruise or scrape.

Stone had stopped talking the instant the excrescent head was severed. Van Rieten did all that could be done for Stone and then fairly grabbed the light from me. Snatching up a gun he scanned the ground by the cot and brought the butt down once and twice, viciously.

We went back to our hut, but I doubt if I slept.

VI

Next day, near noon, in broad daylight, we heard the two voices from Stone’s hut. We found Etcham dropped asleep by his charge. The swelling on the left had broken, and just such another head was there miauling and spluttering. Etcham woke up and the three of us stood there and glared. Stone interjected hoarse vocables into the tinkling gurgle of the portent’s utterance.

Van Rieten stepped forward, took up Stone’s razor and knelt down by the cot. The atomy of a head squealed a wheezy snarl at him.

Then suddenly Stone spoke English.

“Who are you with my razor?”

Van Rieten started back and stood up.

Stone’s eyes were clear now and bright, they roved about the hut.

“The end,” he said; “I recognize the end. I seem to see Etcham, as if in life. But Singleton! Ah, Singleton! Ghosts of my boyhood come to watch me pass! And you, strange specter with the black beard, and my razor! Aroint ye all!”

“I’m no ghost, Stone,” I managed to say. “I’m alive. So are Etcham and Van Rieten. We are here to help you.”

“Van Rieten!” he exclaimed. “My work passes on to a better man. Luck go with you, Van Rieten.”

Van Rieten went nearer to him.

“Just hold still a moment, old man,” he said soothingly. “It will be only one twinge.”

“I’ve held still for many such twinges,” Stone answered quite distinctly. “Let me be. Let me die my own way. The hydra was nothing to this. You can cut off ten, a hundred, a thousand heads, but the curse you can not cut off, or take off. What’s soaked into the bone won’t come out of the flesh, any more than what’s bred there. Don’t hack me any more. Promise!”

His voice had all the old commanding tone of his boyhood and it swayed Van Rieten as it always had swayed everybody.

“I promise,” said Van Rieten.

Almost as he said the word Stone’s eyes filmed again.

Then we three sat about Stone and watched that hideous, gibbering prodigy grow up out of Stone’s flesh, till two horrid, spindling little black arms disengaged themselves. The infinitesimal nails were perfect to the barely perceptible moon at the quick, the pink spot on the palm was horridly natural. These arms gesticulated and the right plucked toward Stone’s blond beard.

“I can’t stand this,” Van Rieten exclaimed and took up the razor again.

Instantly Stone’s eyes opened, hard and glittering.

“Van Rieten break his word?” he enunciated slowly. “Never!”

“But we must help you,” Van Rieten gasped.

“I am past all help and all hurting,” said Stone. “This is my hour. This curse is not put on me; it grew out of me, like this horror here. Even now I go.”

His eyes closed and we stood helpless, the adherent figure spouting shrill sentences.

In a moment Stone spoke again.

“You speak all tongues?” he asked thickly.

And the emergent minikin replied in sudden English:

“Yea, verily, all that you speak,” putting out its microscopic tongue, writhing its lips and wagging its head from side to side. We could see the thready ribs on its exiguous flanks heave as if the thing breathed.

“Has she forgiven me?” Stone asked in a muffled strangle.

“Not while the moss hangs from the cypresses,” the head squeaked. “Not while the stars shine on Lake Pontchartrain will she forgive.”

And then Stone, all with one motion, wrenched himself over on his side. The next instant he was dead.

When Singleton’s voice ceased the room was hushed for a space. We could hear each other breathing. Twombly, the tactless, broke the silence.

“I presume,” he said, “you cut off the little minikin and brought it home in alcohol.”

Singleton turned on him a stern countenance.

“We buried Stone,” he said, “unmutilated as he died.”

“But,” said the unconscionable Twombly, “the whole thing is incredible.”

Singleton stiffened.

“I did not expect you to believe it,” he said; “I began by saying that although I heard and saw it, when I look back on it I cannot credit it myself.”

1907

FLOKI’S BLADE

FLOKI’S BLADE

I

THORKELL VILGERDSON was not only reputed the handsomest youth in all Norway, but was famous as a redoubtable champion, who had unfailingly killed his man in every combat, and who was so skillful with weapons that he had never been seriously wounded in any of the countless affrays in which he had taken part. Therefore, although every one of the thirty-nine other men on the Sea-Raven hated him venomously, not one challenged him, or provoked him, or affronted him in any way, but all were most scrupulously civil.

They all hated him. The three chieftains, Halfdan Ingolfson, Kollgrim Erlendson, and Lodbrok Isleifson, who owned the ship and had planned the adventure, hated him because, to their incredulous amazement, they found themselves indubitably afraid of him. Their six thralls, Vifill, Ulf, Hundi, Kepp, Sokholf and Erp, hated him, even more than they hated their own masters, for his air of ineffable superiority. The twenty-six other Vikings hated him because they felt themselves his inferiors and were unwilling to acknowledge it, even in their thoughts. Most of all his four perfidious sham friends, Hrodmar Finngerdson, Sigurd Atlison, Gellir Kollskeggson and Bodvar Egilson, who had hatched the plot to lure him to his doom and put him out of the way, and had enticed him to join the expedition, hated him for his beauty, his grace, his jaunty demeanor and his vivacious wit. Attack him they dared not, and, sulking inwardly, they bided their time, outwardly suave and smiling, but with furtive winks at each other.

Their opportunity came after a storm which drove them, they knew not where or whither, for, in those times, stars were the mariners’ only guides. Throughout three nights and three days they saw neither star nor sun; in fact, could see barely two ships’ lengths through the driving scud and sluicing rain; and all that time they dared not set so much as a rag of sail, but, taking turns, every man of them, thralls, warriors and chieftains alike, with but brief snatches of uneasy sleep, labored mightily at the oars, to keep the ship head to gale, or bailed furiously to keep her afloat. So terrific was the tempest that Kollgrim, their acknowledged leader, was unwilling to relinquish the helm and clung to it until exhaustion compelled him to rest. Even when he signalled for a relief neither Halfdan nor Lodbrok showed any alacrity for undertaking his momentous task. As they hesitated, although only for an instant, Thorkell seized the tiller just as Kollgrim’s grasp loosened. So well did he steer, so completely did he justify his reputation as a seaman, that thereafter it was rather Kollgrim who acted as relief to him than he to Kollgrim: every man of them all, Kollgrim included, felt safer with Thorkell at the helm.

An hour or two before sunset of the long northern day the storm blew itself out, the sky cleared, and the wind slackened and shifted to a fair breeze. They stepped their mast, hoisted their yard, set a full sail, and, Halfdan at the tiller, and Lodbrok on lookout at the prow, the rest feasted. Champing and munching unhurriedly they despatched a vast quantity of food, washed down with copious drafts of mead. When no one could swallow another mouthful, Sigurd took the helm and Bodvar the lookout’s place, and, while Halfdan and Lodbrok ate, the rest disposed themselves to sleep, most of them to larboard, on the spare oars and coils of rope, under the rowing-benches.

During the brief northern night Sigurd and Bodvar set the Sea-Raven on a true course by a whole skyful of brilliant constellations, but, before dawn, they saw the stars hidden all round the horizon and gradually higher up, until only a few showed blurredly directly overhead; so that, when the sleepers waked, they found themselves enveloped in dense fog, and, soon after dawn, the wind slackened until they had to man the oars to keep headway on the ship. The weary thralls and Kollgrim roused last. After Kollgrim waked Thorkell was the only sleeper and he slept heavily, exhausted by his overexertion at the tiller.

Eyeing him as he lay on a coil of rope, Hrodmar and Gellir beckoned Sigurd and Bodvar. They resigned their posts to willing reliefs and picked their way amidships over and among the resting men and toiling rowers. Kollgrim, Lodbrok and Halfdan joined them and the seven conferred. All conned Thorkell and all agreed that he was fast asleep and far from rousing. Then the three chieftains beckoned their six thralls and instructed them. Erp and Ulf took convenient lengths of ratline and knotted in each a clean-running noose. Vifill paired with Hundi and Sokholf with Kepp, each pair choosing a length of light rope, thicker than a big man’s thumb. Cautiously the six crawled towards Thorkell, every man aboard, except a few sleepers and such oarsmen as were abaft of Thorkell’s position, watching their approach with malicious relish. Hundi and Vifill slipped their rope under Thorkell’s knees; Kepp and Sokholf took a turn with theirs round his ankles, Ulf and Erp each noosed a wrist: when all six were ready they looked towards Kollgrim, and, at his nod, the two nooses tightened and the ropes were knotted fast round Thorkell’s knees and ankles. Even that did not waken him and, as Erp and Ulf pulled their cords and dragged his arms wide, his four pretended friends sprang on him, turned him on his face, and, after a violent struggle, for, even with knees and ankles lashed, Thorkell fought like a wildcat, they pinioned his arms behind him and turned him once more face upward, trussed and helpless.

Then they gloated over him, told him what they really thought of him, and insulted him to their hearts’ content. Halfdan, who was an acclaimed skald, composed and chanted over him an impromptu drapa of triumph. Even the thralls expressed their envious malignity. Gellir proposed to run him through and Bodvar to throw him overboard. But Kollgrim demurred. The thirty-four freemen had taken oath to a pledge of mutual fellowship, as was customary in all Viking voyages, and he pointed out that they were bound, all of them, by their oath and must keep its letter, if not its spirit.

Lodbrok thereupon suggested that they set him adrift, bound as he was, in their smallest boat, which had been half stove during the storm and was presumably leaky; putting into it with him a small hide flask of water and one smoked fish. Then they could accuse him of wilful desertion.

By then it was nearer noon than sunrise, but no sight of the sun had they had, nor could any man, in that fog, conjecture the sun’s place in the sky. Their outlook was all gray mist and smooth groundswell, for there was not a catspaw of breeze.

From the boat they took its sail, mast and oars; but they did not search it carefully. In it they laid a leather flask of water and two little smoked fish. In it they laid Thorkell, trussed as he was, but, as they launched the boat, Kollgrim cut the ropes at his knees and ankles.

As boat and ship drifted apart his enemies mocked him, their grinning faces peering between and over the shields which lined the low rail.

“Hoist your sail!” Bodvar jeered at him, “and make for Norway or Iceland, as you prefer. You are about as far from the one as from the other. You have no worse or better chance, either way.”

“Hope you relish your provender!” Gellir called.

“You’ll need both oars soon,” Hrodmar shrilled, “and I don’t see either.”

“Don’t you wish you had a bailer!” Sigurd shouted.

Soon he saw only fog.

He eyed the dirty water sloshing about in the dory’s bilge. The boat was not leaking rapidly, but it was leaking. No water had lapped over the gunwales and the big groundswells were long and smooth. Of air there was not a breath. For the time being he had only the leaks to fear. And, in the bow, jammed under the tiny fore-thwart in the triangular cubby-hole, he saw a small wooden scoop-bailer. It meant more to him than the two little fish and the leather water-bottle under the after thwart.

He conned the edges of the gunwales and thwarts. He saw two sharp splinters. The larger and sharper was where he could not use it; but, painfully and with great exertion, he wriggled, hunched and wrenched himself until he brought the cords which bound his wrists against the other splinter. With efforts distressing at once, and not long afterwards agonizing, he sawed the rope against the splinter. Panting, a jelly of exhaustion, shivering and sweating, he all but fainted; but he found fresh energy every time he glanced at the bilge-water.

At last, just as hope and strength together were failing him, the cord parted. A few jerks and twists of his arms and hands and they were free. He shook himself, beat his arms against his chest and sprang upon the bailer. To his great satisfaction it was not long before no deftness could scoop it up half full; the boat was not leaking too fast for him.

As the dense fog and breathless calm continued to brood over the waters and the slow groundswell even abated, his cockleshell kept afloat not only all that day and night, but throughout the two following days and nights. But the third night after he had been set adrift found him near exhaustion. More than half his time was occupied in bailing and his muscles ached. He was afraid to sleep for fear of foundering before he woke. Once, in spite of himself, he fell deeply asleep and roused to find the gunwales almost awash, so that the most desperate fury of bailing barely sufficed to save him. In the flurry of effort his remaining fish went overboard in a scoopful of water, unheeded. His flask he had emptied by dusk of the second day, control himself all he could.

As the slow dawn whitened the fog after the short arctic night he thought he was delirious, for he seemed to hear the roar of surf on rocks and not far off.

Then, suddenly, all at once, the fog thinned, sunrays lanced the last wisps of it, the air cleared, he saw the sun plain, saw the sky cloudless, saw the horizon all round and beheld, close to him and opposite the just-risen sun, a rocky coast.

Instantly he realized that his enemies had been vastly in error as to the position of the Sea-Raven and had set him adrift only a few leagues east of Iceland. In spite of his buzzing head, his parched mouth, his shivering and trembling limbs, his general faintness, he felt new vigor infused all through him. With his pitiful beechen scoop he alternately bailed and paddled. The current, he felt, was drawing him towards the cliffs. He saw a headland close. With his bailer he strove to guide the skiff towards it. The currents were kind and towards that headland he drifted. He saw no beach, but many flat-topped rocks just awash, some hardly wet by the lazy surges. Between them and him he saw no broken water. If his boat dashed into or scraped against a rock he might leap to it without a ducking.

Actually he had the luck to achieve just that and saw his boat stove and smashed after he had firm footing on almost dry basalt.

He stood in his doublet, hose and brogues, with only his inner girdle, without belt, mantle, sword, dagger, or even belt-knife. Everything on him was damp from the fog and the splashing of his long bailing; but, though his teeth chattered in the chilly morning air, doubly chilly to him after the milder temperature out at sea, he was not the half-frozen waif he would have been if he had had to swim ashore.

To his left, to southwards, the cliffs seemed beaten by the surf. Before him, to westwards, he thought he espied a bit of beach not far ahead. To his right, northwards, he seemed to descry a headland afar across a fiord. He walked westwards, swaying, tottering, stumbling, even staggering, but keeping his feet. Gulls and other sea-fowl wheeled and screamed above and about him. Not a hundred paces from his landing-place he came upon a little rill trickling down a nook in the cliff. He knelt and scooped up a handful of icy water. Then he lay beside the rivulet and counted a slow hundred between each handful of the water and the next. Before his thirst was entirely quenched he stood up.

Then he scanned the rocks for birds’ nests. He saw many; but, of the scores of eggs he broke, but one was eatable. This he sipped and slowly swallowed its contents. He felt new life all over him.

Not stumbling now he stepped heedfully forward. He felt strangely large and light and whatever he gazed at looked dim and vague. But he felt really able to walk. He rounded a jutting elbow of the cliff.

Before him, irradiated by the slant sunrays, he saw three handsome young noblewomen, walking arm in arm. All were bareheaded, each with a forehead-ribbon round her flowing hair. The middlemost was tall, full-contoured, with very black locks. She was enveloped in a crimson mantle. The girl on her right was of medium height, slender, with glossy brown tresses and wore a mantle of dark blue. The third was small and very lovely, her hair golden, her cheeks pink, her eyes blue, all set off by a mantle of bright grass-green.

Thorkell thought them norns come to escort him to Valhalla. A cloud, gray and then inky black, swept between him and his outlook. He felt himself topple.

II

When Thorkell came to himself he was in bed in the pitch dark. He felt about him and found that he was in a sort of bunk, a wall on his right hand and, on his left, a polished board. He ran his hand along its upper edge. He was rather deep down in his berth and under him was an infinity of yielding feather-bed. He was well covered with warm quilts. He tried to stretch, but the space was too short for him. He composed himself and slept again.

When he woke the second time it was daylight and he saw by his bunk a tall, spare, elderly noblewoman, severe-looking, hatchet-faced, with a lean and stringy neck and gray hair. She was clad in garments of undyed wool of the usual rusty brown.

“Son,” she warned him, “you must not try to speak. Drink this slowly.”

And, as he weakly tried to raise himself in the wall-bed, she supported him with her right arm, at the same time holding to his lips with her left hand a silver goblet. Thorkell tasted a delicious posset, compounded of milk, mead, honey, barley-meal, and of other ingredients unknown to him. He swallowed most of it, fell back among his down pillows and slept again at once.

His third waking was again in full daylight. He felt more like himself. He saw that his bed occupied most of one side of a fair-sized room, wainscoted in dark wood and with a low ceiling, similarly panelled. Opposite his bunk stood a high, narrow table. In the wall by the foot of his bunk was a low doorway, its door shut. In the opposite wall was a window, whose contracted casements had small panes of fish-gut membrane, stretched across wooden lattices. The panes were bright with the glare of brilliant sunshine full on them and much light filtered through, so that the room was well-lighted. By his bed, facing the window, in one of the two chairs, sat a tall, magnificently dignified, elderly man, gray-haired, ruddy of complexion, broad-shouldered, wrapped in a reddish-brown mantle of fine wool. He wore a gold neck-chain from which hung a large, flat, oval gold amulet-case.

“Son,” he said, “you must not yet attempt to speak. Hearken and remember. You are housed at Hofstadir, on Revdarfiord, by Faskrudness, on the east coast of Iceland. I, Thorstein Vilgerdson, am master of Hofstadir. We know nothing of you except that my daughter and my two nieces found you early in the morning, day before yesterday, on the strand by Faskrudness. My wife has been caring for you and she now tells me that you will soon be able to be up and about. Only after you are well and strong will I permit you to tell your story. Meanwhile you are our guest. Do as I bid you. Be silent, compose your mind, repose yourself, and help my wife to restore you to strength and vigor. When you are yourself we shall talk again. Now sleep.”

Thorkell was compliantly mute and his host rose and left him.

Two mornings later Thorkell woke to find Thorstein again seated by his bed. And he saw, on the table opposite his bed, a tray with a goblet and a hunch of bread on it.

“Son,” the old man queried, “are you entirely awake?”

After Thorkell’s affirmation Thorstein said:

“My wife judges that you are now sufficiently recovered to tell your story. But you had best first fortify yourself with some food.”

And he himself rose and fetched the tray from the table. Thorkell acquiesced and swallowed a few mouthfuls. Then he settled himself back on his pillows, his host resumed his armchair, and Thorkell began his story by naming himself.

“A Vilgerdson!” the old man exclaimed, “and from Rogaland! We must be cousins, however distant. In my long life I have never known or heard of any Norwegian Vilgerdsons; as far as my knowledge goes our family has long been wholly Icelandic. We are descended from Floki Vilgerdson, of Rogaland, the first voyager who ever wintered in Iceland. A hundred and thirty-six years ago he sailed past the headlands of Faxafloi and wintered in the Breidifiord. But he and his associates were so carried away by the abundance of fish and the ease of catching them that they neglected to cure enough hay and their live-stock all perished. Therefore he sailed home next spring. But, twenty and more years later, when past middle age, after most of the west and north of Iceland had already been settled, Floki returned and chose a home here in the east on this very spot. I am his great-great-great-grandson and heir to him and all his.”

“I,” said Thorkell, “am great-great-great-great-grandson to Snorri Vilgerdson, younger brother to Floki the Viking and settler. For both were sons of Vilgerd Vilgerdson of Rogaland.”

“Then,” said his host, “you are a fourth cousin to my children and they are your fourth cousins. You are one of us. And now tell me your story.”

When Thorkell had said his say and had answered all his host’s questions the old man said:

“My wife opines that it will now benefit you to be out of bed and in the open air. My younger sons, Thorgils and Thorbrand, will help you to dress and will assist you to walk about, for, although you may resent the suggestion, you are not yet strong enough for it to be well for you to attempt walking unassisted.”

And he called his sons, handsome youths, who clasped hands with Thorkell, called him “cousin” after their father’s explanation, and, when the old man had gone out, assisted him to rise. He found he needed assistance. They helped him to don a shirt of the finest linen, knitted hose of soft wool, noblemen’s shoes, a doublet of the best woolen cloth, and a fine crimson mantle of wool delightful to feel and handle. They girded him with an outer belt, but there was no sign of sword-belt, sword, poniard or knife. Each of them wore a belt-knife with a staghorn heft, and a dagger and sword, with steel guards and hilts of walrus ivory, pommelled with gold.

One on each side of him they supported him as he strove to stand and they guided him through the doorway into a spacious, plank-floored, high-raftered hall, lighted by many small windows placed high up in the tall gable-ends; low, narrow doors were all down both long sides, with an ample fireplace in a big chimney-piece midway of one side; at one end was the main doorway, at the other a door almost as large. His helpers conducted him out through the main doorway and to a bench in the sunlight where they seated him. Thorbrand sat by him, Thorgils walked away.

Thorkell found the cool, soft breeze invigorating and yet mild, for it was near midsummer and as genial as it ever is in Iceland. The slant sunrays warmed him. He basked and gazed about him. He saw close by a strongly built storehouse of stone and great ash beams, high-gabled, though its roof was not as steep and tall as that of the mansion. Further away he made out a big sheepfold, with sheds, a large cattle-byre, an ample stable and two very large barns. In whatever direction he looked the extensive level space in which the buildings were grouped was bounded by a stone wall, breast-high, and not of boulders, but of roughly squared blocks.

Some two hundred yards or more distant, topping a low hill, was a temple; for, with its great size, its high and steep roof, its scalloped shingles, its horse-head and fish-tail ornaments at the ridge-pole ends and eave-ends, its carven gable-ends, it could be nothing else.

Some of the thralls were busy about the buildings and several maid-servants passed in and out. Thorkell saw no men-at-arms, nor any of the family except the two brothers. Thorbrand sat smiling, but mute. Thorkell kept mute and basked. After a time Thorgils came back and Thorbrand strolled away. When Thorbrand returned he said:

“Mother thinks that you were best back in your bed.”

Thorkell acquiesced and suffered himself to be escorted indoors. In bed he ate some food brought by a tow-headed serving-maid. Soon he slept.

He woke near dusk of the long northern day and again ate what the same maid brought him and was again soon asleep.

Next morning Thorstein was again sitting by him when he woke. As before he enquired how he felt and himself served him with food and drink. When he had reset the tray on the table and reseated himself he said:

“Young man, I and my family have talked over you and your story. I and my daughter and my nieces believe you. But all five of my sons, my two daughters-in-law, my accountant, my seneschal, my skald and everyone of my men-at-arms are convinced that you are not a castaway from any ship, though likely enough a Norwegian and no Icelander. They are unanimously of the opinion that you are a spy craftily insinuated into our community by our enemies. They point out that your clothing was dry when you were carried in here: that neither it nor your hair showed any signs of your having been swimming; that such a marvel as your having leapt ashore from a ship’s-boat drifting without sail, oars or rudder is too improbable for them to believe it other than a clumsy invention. They all insist that I would imperil myself and all my household if I were to accept your story and keep you here as a guest. My word is law here, but I feel that it would be unwise for me to disregard so unanimous, so insistent and so clamorous a dissent from my views.

“Now, young man, if you have in fact been sent here by the Miofifirthers or the Seydisfirthers you had best admit it at once and make a clean breast of the whole matter. You shall not be harmed in any way. I will have you fed and cared for until you are fit for a short journey, and then I will equip you with flint and steel, a belt-knife, a dagger, a sword and sword-belt, a horseman’s cloak, a good horse, well bitted, saddled and girthed, and a supply of food; and I will send a thrall to guide you round the head of Revdarfiord and to speed you on your way. But if you are what you assert you are and claim our protection and hospitality as the dues of a castaway, you must convince all my household of the truth of your tale.”