Chapter III: Part 3

The snow chunked under our weary feet and our staffs were useless in the thaw, and ever behind, when the wind was still, and when there were no pines near us to whisper as of safety, we could hear the sound of the horses, and we would look at each other and step higher, and take longer strides for a few yards. My lord was very weary, for he was a man who loved warmth, and he could not bear the cold of the indifferent sky above him and the unfeeling purity of the snow that lay about us.

Far away was the glimmer of sea. There was no dawn, but a streak of yellow in the east, that grew and lengthened and widened, and then became flame-coloured and then disappeared, and a little sun came from the sea, but it had no light and the snow had glimmered more under the moon. There were but two of us left. We had been seven at first, but of the others three had turned back and two lay in the snow on our way. It was the ninth day that we had left the hall; and ever the men of the Bishop of Lund, three hundred and fifty of them, came after us on their light horses, and ever we doubled and crouched over the snow, like hares hungered or hunted. At night we would make fires of the pine-cones, and in our helmets melt the snow into water, lowering our helmets into the snow again to cool them afterwards. We had eaten all our bread, but of fish we had plenty, though I was sorry for my lord. So all that day we hastened, and when the night came we lay back to back in a hollow of the snow on a little hill that looked over a bay. The bay was frozen, and I remember the winter moonlight kept me awake as it shed itself upward from the ice into my face; and whenever I looked out over the snow-sweep, its long white track seemed to point to where we lay. Deep into the night, when the sighing wind had ceased to scud the drift-snow into our hiding-place, my lord turned over and shook me feebly. "Man!" he said; "he was right when he said the Church was born militant, and that only a greater power like itself shall cast a shadow on men. We broken clans, that call ourselves nations, are little things. What shall I do? Tell me, what shall I do?" I looked at him in the surprise of one just waking, as he knelt above me, one hand on each shoulder. "Man!" he said, again, shaking me, "what shall I do? They are coming; I can hear them under the snow. I can hear the ice of the bay cracking to their boats, and I can hear the whispered warnings of the pine trees when they bend to the stirred air of their innumerable breaths. Man! what shall I do?" Awake now, I saw that my lord was full of terror, like a child, and bringing him close to me, I rolled him in his clothes and put him deep in the snow again, piling some of my own things over him, and he slept complainingly and fitfully like a child who has been punished.

It was just before the dawn when we heard the far-away shouting of the Bishop's noisy troop, and crawling to our feet we left our hole in the snow and crept down the side of the hill toward the water. Here my lord thought it was easier walking on the ice, but soon we heard the sound of horses on the strand, and as it was a road to them not like the snow above, we climbed again to where the deeper drifts were and passed unseen. So half that day we travelled, and twice they went ahead of us going by the strand, but both times a few horsemen only; so we dared not turn back, for we knew the others were spread out on the uplands. Late in the afternoon we came to the long point of rock that stretches from our island towards the mainland, and here my lord stopped. "If we had a boat," he said, trembling I think with eagerness; then, pulling his grey beard, he whispered to himself only, "Who can fight against the Church,--who will not fight?" Then turned he again and went on along the shore; and thus late in the evening we came to a solitary beech which rose from out a hollow in the hills. Great formless mounds of white lay near, the fallen ones who had left this old tree lonely; and leaning against this solitary trunk we passed our night, until the coming of a glorious dawning fell on our faces as they lay against the smooth beech-bark, and awakened us early--I think earlier than any of the Bishop's men awakened that morning, for though we waited to eat we heard no sound of their pursuing until nearly the noon-time; then from far off came the familiar thud of horses' hoofs and the crisp jingle of the bridle-reins, in the far-carrying, cold, morning air.

It was the next day after this, when my Lord Rolf seemed to hesitate, walking by himself, telling even me nothing, and when it came to the sunset and a cold yellow edged the dark sky over the sea, and the snow-drifts looked ghostly at any distance, he spoke to me after many trials with himself.

"Do you know where we are?"

"No," I said.

"Do you know that by to-morrow at noon we shall have returned?"

I looked at him startled.

"Returned to the hall?"

"Yes," he said; "we shall have been round the island."

"And when we shall have returned?" I asked.

My lord was silent. It was not at noon the next day but toward the dusk when the darkening trees began to seem familiar, and the coast-line stretched in remembered curves, and the ripples along the icy beach seemed home-like. In the dusk, as we plodded crouching behind a drift of snow that ran along the hillside, there rose before us something gaunt and white and very tall and very still in the valley below us, and we stopped, for we saw it was a building: it seemed a keep of the old days that they build no more now. So we stood looking, trying to make out any light near in the dark evening. Suddenly my lord sighed, and, falling forward on his knees, he put his face down in the snow, and when I bent and whispered to him he only answered, "They have burnt it, but the old keep would not burn." It was our own hall that we had come back to. So, the next morning we struck inland again, from the hill-top, thinking to find refuge in a forest of leafless oaks whose rattling branches glittered in the pale sunlight; and when we reached it my lord sat down on a great root of one of the trees and would go no farther into the forest. So I stayed by him all day feeding him on the last of our fish, and making him cold water to drink, for though he shivered very much he drank always. Thus it was that midway between the noon and the evening there came three men, cross-bowmen, suddenly, from over the hillside, and seeing us they stopped; then after a moment's speaking one with another they ran forward, their cross-bows stretched.

My lord was sitting dejectedly at the foot of the ice-sheaved oak, and I was cooling water for him in my helmet. The three men ran toward us, shouting. My lord heard the sound and looked up; then rising slowly to his feet, he hesitated a moment and unbuckled his sword, at which the three cross-bowmen stopped, for they were not great men. Then my lord spoke to me, half turning: "You have followed me faithfully, though to a bad end, and I can give you nothing; nor do you want it; but I will not be killed by Bishop's men. My fathers knew how to die, and their Gods took them, so I---- and my Gods will take me." Then ramming the hilt and the upper part of his sword into the snow, my lord fell over it awkwardly and lay groaning, the sword through him. All this before I could do aught but cry out.

Well---- Then came the bowmen, who shot him so that, after a few minutes, he was dead indeed, and they brought his body and his sword down to the snow-covered keep in the valley, where they delivered it to the Bishop of Lund's legate; and they showed me over the doorway the heads of many old women whom they said had been "left behind." I do not know. And there were children's heads hanging from them. What became of the men of the hall? It is something that I cannot remember. They bound thongs of leather round my brows to make me tell of Father Peter and how he died, and again in Roskilde, and they twisted them. But at last they permitted me to enter the church here, as a server, and I look out on the fair fiord of Roskilde now.

I am very glad that the story is done.

THE STORY OF THE OAR-CAPTAIN

This is the story of the Oar-Captain, that they used to tell to harps; and that, after, was made a saga of. The story is rough, like the natures of men, and full of storm of Nature and sea, as if a fury had run down the pages. But there are soft threads in its rough woof--I tell it just as the Oar-Captain told it.

The sun sank over the right-hand side of the ship--red, while the sky was cloudless. And the light breeze fell, just as the dusk came, and our brown sail trembled for a moment, and then sank back against the mast. The men, laughing, leaned in a row along the bulwarks, while my lord paced up and down on the aft-deck. The steersman pulls in his oar, the ship swings idle, and soon the blue smoke ascends in a straight, fine line through the evening air from the open dish of black charcoal where they cook at the mast-foot.

It is evening, and soft clothes are spread about on the deck. Far away the sea stretches, till it fades into the glow of the almost dark sky; while on the other side, where no man looks, is dusk-darkness, cold, abandoned, the dead regions of what was morning. After a while, when the glory has quite faded out of the sky, the men murmur and slowly lie down on their clothes talking for a while. That gradually ceases, and we lie silent, while there comes faint creaking of cordage as the ship lazily swings. My lord has ceased pacing the aft-deck. We lie watching the stars come out.

Slowly they come, the eyes of other worlds. Lying close under the rail I see a little track of lights come from far away, till it seems they become scared and stop, and other lights come out behind them--a twinkling row, till they reach the bulwark over my head. Next me a man sighs in his sleep.

I lie thinking of the lands to the south, and of my lord. When I turn my head I can still see him in the gathering dark, where he leans dim by the black line of the steering-oar. Looking up my soul leaves the ship, and seeming to gaze down from the stars I feel very far away. Slowly they come, silent lights. I remember old sagas and faces--old faces----

It is morning. The fresh wind lifts the sail outward; the hair is blown in the men's faces; the water whispers and chuckles merrily under the side of the leaning ship. The thin ropes creak, the shields over the sides rattle and jerk. I and another swing on the steering-oar, and the men run along the decks with glad faces.

It is afternoon. The ship lies on her side; the flying water runs over as it goes by. Dark clouds have come out of the east, and are streaked from their low-lying bank in long streamers along the sky. The mast bends, the bows shoot the spray up into the winds, where it is whirled away before us. The water hisses; the wind moans and sings; and the ship is full of the rattle of the oars along the benches.

It is evening. The moving sky is as black as the water between the foam-streaks, by which we rush; through a vapour-veiled hole, dimly, the pale sun is going down. Men shout to each other in the dark, and the water splashes in waves along the benches. My lord gives orders for the sail to be rolled fast and that all men shall come off the fore-deck.

Morning. By the hazy light from far up in the heavens, I see our bare mast with the tangled bunch of ropes whipping forward from the top.

Broken oars swim in the water in the waist of the ship, and from outside, heard in the twilight, comes the sound of mermaids singing I think, answered by the dull roar of the mermen's shells. I look around; before me are the men holding to anything that is firm on the after-deck, where my lord stands, looking forward. They are pale, and the glistening of their clothes shows in the misty light, that shows the foam hissing over the side of the ship.

So, all day we crouch, gnawing pieces of bran-bread, and holding fast to the sides of the ship.

Evening. The sun has gone out, and a roaring that sounds like the rushing of pine-trees falling, comes from the dark. The shields are gone, and the men laugh grimly thinking of death, when the seas rush over the flying bulwarks.

It is morning again, and the clouds rolling and flying in jagged flags in the wind, are broken at sunrise, and the wind sings now, not roars.

The ship shows, a bare-sided, dripping, unfamiliar thing beneath the morning light; full of wreckage and ropes, the sail lying, and the yard gone, the bunch of ropes at the top of the mast. The pale men that have ceased to laugh now, untie themselves from the bulwarks and creep stiffly forward to the food-chest. The sea rises in waves, but the still stiff breeze keeps them down and we ride on, plunging; our bare mast shakes in the wind.

That is how, when Lord Uffe stood on the seaweed-brown beach four days later, he was cried to over the side of a bare-masted ship as it rowed round the point along the rocky shore, and asked the name of the country.

Lord Uffe brought us up to the hall where his people ran to cook meat for us, and where we sat gladfully drinking the warm ale by the fire. Then the great platters of meat came in seething, and we sat and ate, warming ourselves, while Lord Uffe talked to my lord at the end of the table--sitting by a great red-haired man that he ever glanced at kindly, but who with thoughtful eyes sat gazing as one seeing nothing.

As we sat there, when our first hunger was done and men were beginning to stretch out their legs under the table, I looked about the hall. And there was something that seemed strange about it. For some time gazing, I could not see; then with a half-afraid feeling, a wonder, I saw that everything was old--the benches, the arms rusted on the walls--it was as if men had been dropped back three centuries. Even while I was yet wondering at this and looking curiously at the old-patterned arms on the walls--such as I had seen in the old halls we had stopped at in our sailing, kept from ancestors--the lord of the place, Lord Uffe--a short, stout, strong, old man, with kind face and a beard to his waist and eyes that shut in his laughter--rose, and standing with his hand on my lord's shoulder, spoke to him and to the table so that all might hear.

"Ye care to know," he said, smiling, "what country this may be. Then I will tell a story to you all--see that ye are comfortable--

"Four men's lifetimes ago if they were old men there was a ship blown off the coast while it bore a boat-load towards the south, from a burnt town in the hard north; searchers for new places. And for days a great wind blew them the same as it has blown you, till, in the night, no moon, they fell upon this place, the ship shocking onto the sands and falling in pieces, and some of the men killed. They sat in the hiding of the rocks till the sunrise, then with the strong wind blowing in their faces, they found their home, built it, and saved some things from out of the ship--they were my fathers. A pleasant country; we are content; no ships ever come; we are alone; we mow our easily-sown fields while our children grow about us; we cut timber in limitless forests--why should we leave it? The name of the place?" And he stood, his great beard falling on his chest, his eyes looking kind along the board to see if we wanted anything.

"We are lost in the seas," he said again. "Whether far or near, or north or south, no man knows; no ship ever comes; the forest begins behind us; nothing that shows sign of man's hand is washed to the shore; we are alone, lost and contented. Listen to the sound of the sea; we have never crossed it; no man has crossed it to us; we know not where it goes; or where we are."

The old man spoke grandly, but his kind eyes ever glanced along the table to see if we wanted anything.

We men drew long breaths, and I saw my lord draw down his brows, and tug the fair hair over his forehead. Some of us got up, and began to walk about.

Then in the midst of the silence my lord spoke hesitatingly.

"We thank my Lord Uffe for his kindness. What can we do--can we sail home--and where? Still, for the present, we thank my Lord Uffe for his kindness."

The old man, pulling his beard, stood, looking at my lord for a moment; then, a smile coming to his lips and showing in his eyes, he held out his hand and said, "Stay."

It was some days before we got the things out of the ship and the ship well hauled up on the beach. Then we looked about for a place for our houses; for we had decided to stay, at least for a while.

The land seemed good; the sand, broken with rocky points, stretched straight along the bright sea; and, protected from the sea-winds and storms by a line of oak forest left standing, lay fields now just green in the spring-time. Beyond these fields, fenced off from one another by little walls of stone, drew in the forest again, the colour of the light-green of a curling wave, and as limitless as the sea. In the edge of the forest, surrounded by a few of the great trees, the others being taken away, on a little rise in the ground, stood the old wooden hall of Lord Uffe, shaded by the green branches, or crossed by the patches of sunlight when they waved--the hall, a low building, old, with many passages inside and far-away little rooms, and the one great dining-chamber; built very stoutly. Around, in the edge of the forest, were little houses of wood from which the smoke curled lazily up in the spring air, and about which ran children playing while their happy-faced mothers watched from the doorways. The sky was very blue, birds sang in the trees, and about the fields hopped little hares.

We decided to build our hall, not a large one, but enough for us, farther down the row of fields in a little point of great old trees that ran out a little way toward the cleared place. Here with our axes we hewed for many days, cutting great timbers and raising them upright along the sides of our house-floor. Then came dragging of logs through the forest and the laying them one on the other along the timbers for the walls of the house and the driving of wooden pins and hewing of doorways.

All this time we lived at the hall of Lord Uffe, except some of us who stayed in the houses round.

I lived at the hall. Thus I saw from the beginning, the trouble that came to us, and that brought storm and madness. Here, lost from all men, with the unknown sea between us and all things but the birds and woods and trees and waters and our little selves, was played a thing that was unchanged from the far places we had left, as though we had never left them.

While the fields grew greener, and the birds sang, and our house was growing nearer finishing, while Lord Uffe walked in the forest and our ship lay on the beach and our men ate in the hall, my lord, with his yellow hair, and his soft harping, made love to the daughter of Lord Uffe's dead brother, the betrothed of the friend of Lord Uffe, the great man who had sat in the hall silently when we found welcome there.

It was this way. One day, when the noon held all the fields in stillness and the little singing things were silent in the grass, I walked--for the day was too warm to work in the mid-day--slowly, along one of the forest paths, just shut off from the glare of the sun in the open by a screen of trees whose leaves hung still in the silence. Then, far before me, I saw at the end of the path two figures, and stopped, I do not know why. I saw who the figures were--my own lord and Hilda, the betrothed of his friend.

They were coming toward me, but their heads were bent down, and they did not yet see me. I waited; though they walked slowly it seemed but a moment till they were close to me; they were walking in silence. I know not why, but I turned softly and went back, they not seeing me. As I went back the silence oppressed me and I wanted the sound of the crickets in the grass.

When I came into the hall that night for my meat, and looked up at the end of the table where she sat by the great man, I sat down in the shadow and was ashamed, for I saw it all.

Perhaps it was that we were new and strange, or perhaps it was my lord's harping, and songs, and gentle ways, that took the maiden's liking--she to whom the world was a legend. The people about her were rough; she, in her simple dress, had learnt from the delicate flowers and things of the woods where she had lived, to find them so perhaps. But when I looked up from the shadow and caught the gleam of my lord's eyes as they met hers, looking across the forms of Lord Uffe who had welcomed us, and her betrothed, in this old hall; where below, sat our men and Lord Uffe's together, all their hands hard from the work on great timbers--I grew sick.

I have no heart for this part of the tale; let me go on to the ending.

For many days I stayed by our unfinished hall where the men were busy thatching the roof and making the fireplace and windows; it was almost done. At last one night I trod wearily up for my meat at Lord Uffe's, while the air felt heavy and the occasional thunder that had rumbled far away all day, growled in the west, as the sun sank. I came into the hall when they were all seated, and without looking up at the end of the table sat myself down silent, while the man next to me growled like the thunder as he shoved me the meat-dish.

After dinner they called on my lord for a song. He took down his harp from where it hung on the back of his chair, and striking it three times--I remember all these small things--bent his head for a moment as if listening. Then turning, and facing down the hall, he lifts his head; and, playing softly, his voice rings out in a love song, that brings the tears into the eyes of the women by the fire in a moment. As it rises, it wakes even us men--what was that? Only thunder. The song goes on. It speaks of love and despair, softly, but with a strange tenderness in the notes that makes each man apply it to himself. The sorrowful notes droop through the hall to the running music of the strings--he turns toward the figure in white behind him--What a roar of thunder!--the song goes on.

It speaks of division and of sorrow, and love unknown; it speaks of the tenderness of love that is hid, of longing. A crash and volley of thunder just overhead, and the hall is lit up for a moment by the lightning--it is gone and the fire shines out again.

My lord is standing facing her; he leans forward, his eyes on hers, and plays softly, his voice falling low. We bend forward to listen. He is singing of love and its fulfilment; he sings of love, and the tenderness of it. Slowly the words fall, his head is bent forward and his eyes gaze into hers. Slowly she rises from her place, slowly she comes toward him, her head raised, her eyes on his, slowly she sinks at his feet--the notes fall--low----

Crash and roar! and a dying-away of the tumult into a distant roll while the hall is lit up for a moment by the lightning. The light flickers on the walls, showing the still raised harp, the kneeling figure, the men half-risen from their places. It is gone, and the fire that has died down glows feebly.

As I awake from the waking sleep I hear voices raised angrily, and in the dusk see two figures, one tall, risen by the bench at the end of the table. Someone throws a log on the smouldering fire and the sparks fly up. In a moment it is light.

I hear a voice shouting, "Dost thou love this man?"

And Lord Uffe's voice raised in remonstrance; and from the white figure now standing leaning against my lord comes a low voice saying something we cannot hear.

Then there is more tumult that gradually thins down to a single voice speaking, and Lord Uffe's words are heard as the silence falls. "Before thou cam'st we were content; but thou hast brought the noises of the world with thee, and broken peace. Thou cam'st to us out of the storm; go back into the storm, my guest!"

Slowly my lord went down the hall, we behind him. Turning my head--I was the only man who turned--I saw the white figure on its knees again by the bench, its head hidden. Our host stood, his hand out towards us; away by the fireplace a face shone over a huge black form on whose hair the firelight played. I wish I could forget that face!

As we passed in silence through the door the thunder roared and died away.

Soon we were at the ship in the darkness; we shoved her off in the darkness; we men hoisted the mended sail in the darkness; we heard the water begin to sound under our sides, then--a faint roll of thunder from far away, a long flicker of light across the sky. We saw my lord standing alone on the hind-deck, the beach, the lights of the hall--the lightning gone, and we heard the water rushing around our bow in the darkness.

Not a drop of rain fell; the air was very still.

When the day broke pink over the far level waters, my lord was leaning on the rail yet. As the yellow light reached over the water till it touched our ship I saw his face, and it surprised me, being quite gay. I went up to him, and, the men gazing silently at us, spoke to him.

"The men," I said, "will carry you home, or east, but then----" I stopped, for there was something in his face that made me stop.

"Yes," he said.

"And then we will leave you. If you wish, you can get a new crew."

"Ah," he said.

"I do not know how many days--when----"

"Yes," he said.

I stood silent; in the silence again; "Yes," he said, smiling to himself as if in fun.

I moved myself so as to get a look at his face. There seemed a horror in the eyes, and a stopping of all hope, that made me uncomfortable.

Waiting for a little time, I said again:

"If we come home----"

He did not answer. I was angry with him, and stood one foot uncomfortably over the other for a little while, and then went back to the men.

"He will answer only 'Yes,'" I said angrily. The men grunted, and I sat down, angry, yet not quite understanding, leaving him still smiling.

All day I sat, angry, and when evening came and we had eaten, grumbling, and cursing--all save my lord, who had eaten nothing--I got up and clambered again on to the hind-deck.

When I came to him I stood, all the words having left me. I seized my courage hard and spoke.

"When we get back, if we ever do, the men will leave you."

I waited; he gave no answer. I started to speak again, but no words would come. I tried again. Then, with a sudden movement I leaned round on the bulwark and saw his face. For a moment yet I stood impatient; then with a cry of rage and pity I seized his hand and held it a moment, then dropped it and rushed back among the men, and hid my face in a dark corner, and sat there cursing weakly in a childish feeling of impotency--oh, the shame; and the great woe he carried in his smiling face!

Toward evening the wind fell, and as the sun went down the water shone smooth, and the light blazed in our faces. The cool of the dusk was a relief, and long after the great red moon had risen, we lay, restlessly, surely a strange ship-load, lost on the limitless seas.

When morning came we pushed out our oars and toiled regularly, creakingly, over the level water. The sun blistered the wood of the bulwarks and burned our faces, and we longed for evening. So for twelve days; till the yard was crooked, and our faces the colour of tanned skin. The men used to groan at the oars. On the twelfth day, midway between sunset and dark, came a little breeze over the water, that made the men shout. And for two days we went unsteadily eastward and northward with the little puffs of wind.

All this time we saw no land and no streak of foam upon the sea, that was the colour of wood-ashes; only brown seaweed drifting northwards. My lord had become very brown, and had a way of always turning toward the light, looking east when the sun rose and west when it set.

Now, for some days we went northward; then for more days we went east, till one morning, just after sunrise, we saw land, black hills which we had come near to during the night. And for two days we coasted along the great cliffs where the water beat white at their black bases. Then we came to some houses, then to a curve and dying down of the cliffs. Then a great wind took us and we were blown in, and all the rest was storm. Once we drove past a sandy desolate point of land that was gone in an instant; and once the ship grew almost full of water which we baled out in the darkness.

On the second night, as we were flying through the half-dusk--the moon shone sometimes--we heard a deep rushing before us just a little louder than the sea's rushing. In a moment there grew up in the darkness a shore of waving trees--we were among rushes--the ship high on the ground. We were splashing ashore in the dark and the swishing wind, and we sat and listened under the tossing, complaining trees till daylight.

Two days' travelling under darkly-dripping branches brought us to a hall. It looked familiar--it was our own hall!

We had come home!

How quickly wonders fade under joy, though sorrow preserves them long. By that evening we had come to think of it as very natural.

Three days we passed in eating and drinking, and on the evening of the third one we sat pale from our drinking along the board. Outside the ship lay, having been brought round by those sent.

My lord sat on a low stool by the corner of the fire. The talking grew slack and we yawned, the edge of our home-coming having been ground down by welcoming. Some of us rose to go to our sleep.

Then my lord stirred, uneasily, for a moment, got up, walked slowly to the end of the long room, and sat down. We glanced around at the sound of his tread and then the little talking ceased, for we saw that he meant to speak. After a moment he spoke.

"I will go there to-morrow, and I would know what men would accompany me." His lips were tight closed and he was pale across the forehead.

No one spoke.

"Will no one go?" he asked softly.

After a moment, I said, "Where?" all the men frowning.

"To where we have come from, across the water," he answered, pressing his lips together till he showed white round the mouth.

The men sat, perfectly silent.

He came slowly to his feet, stopped, and then began to speak, softly and strangely, with a great kindness.

"Ye do not ask it, but though I believe ye do not even want it, I will speak in justification. I would tell ye a few things. In that far place she had seen but few men, only woods and trees and natural things. The man to whom she was betrothed not against her will--I will be fair--was little more than these to her in that dreamy place. Slow and dull, he had nothing to answer in her own-taught beauty. When we came, she did love me, truly, but in her kindness, she would stay his wife. She had Freya's soul. Her father's brother liked me. Thus things were when the night came of our leaving.

"One more--I had never asked her to be not true to her betrothed, so, I was dreaming, my soul drawn all one way.

"That night when I sang her the love-song--oh ye men of my house, have ye never done wrong? Are ye sure that the souls within ye would stand firm while they were pulled with mighty cables? Have ye never had an evil thought? Have your spirits always been level within ye? Can ye never be mad, and rock to the torment of it? Do ye understand?

"Well, the music went out of my harp, and tore me--Are ye stone walls, that ye would not have shaken down like the leaves of trees? I could have wailed like a child for its mother, or, like a hammer on beams, crushed a man's head with my hand.

"Are ye more than are men? Have ye never done any ill? I say, I stood there, dreaming, playing; my soul drew her to me; I stood there playing the old love-song, in agony. Then there was a noise of voices, and we went to the ship, and were many days coming home, being becalmed."

He stared straight before him--a wakening came into his face--he on a sudden raised his hands in the air, and, the shaking fingers widespread, called through the hall in a strange voice. "Oh great Gods, come!"

We sat silent in the lit hall, and the call died away into silence.

"Shame!" cried a woman's voice; "ye are not men!"

We stirred not even at this reproof from a woman.

"I will go!" cried the voice again, and one of the women who helped in the cooking stood forward with her great ladle held like a sword.

"Ay, and leave the ladle for the men to manage!" cried a second, a bare-armed, laughing woman, ranging herself by the other one, and turning a saucy face on my lord.

"Will ye lend us your swords, stay-at-homes?" called a third from beside the fire.

"We need not your help to shove the ship off the beach," said a young girl, haughtily, as she swept forward to the others and looked up at my lord from her little height.

There was stillness in the hall, while the three women stood looking up at my lord. Then some of the men got up, and frowning, hesitated, and then said they would go. Six of them. We others sat silent. The women fell laughing and pointing at us, and the lights flared merrily.

The next morning we watched the ship hauled down the beach and put out. And when she passed round the trees going by the shore, we lost her suddenly.

For months we waited--for a year. She did not come back. Did they find the hall lost beyond the waters? Did my lord marry the maiden? Or were they drowned or lost?

I an old man write this now in "justification," as my lord said.

THE LAST VOYAGE

The ceiling was broken through in the corner over our heads, and clean-tongued splinters pointed downward; the big room was smoky from the roaring fire, and the table was covered with bottles; around sat some forty men. We were in our armour, except our head-pieces, for we had ravaged the country round, and had killed or driven away all living things. All but one; for the old woman of the house stood even now grinning in the corner. Round the walls were piled plate and beautiful armour, such as we had never seen before, and there were gold crosses and gold pots and chains; yet the men grumbled, till at last one threw his little cup into the fire and strode heavily to the door. He kicked it and it tumbled outward on one leathern hinge. The rest of us looked lazily up. A brown expanse of burnt vinelands, and in the distance a broken-roofed church and the black walls and chimneys of a few cottages that looked ugly and lonely and pitiful against the blue depth of the sky. The thought came into the minds of all of us I think, to leave this brown path that we had trod free of grass, for our ship lay only one day's march somewhere westward, and the half of our number again cursed the lots that they had drawn as they waited; but the old woman, who always grinned, poured yellow wine into our cups and took the old ones away, and we drank, and it made us courageous, so that we spent the evening wrestling by the firelight.

It was just before sunrise that I stirred sleepily and raised myself on my hands and knees. In a moment I heard clank and clash coming from the darkness all around me, then silence, but my mind saw grey things that crept in nearing circles. Ay, grey as sleep, around the house. As I woke my companions shaking them by their sword-belts, there broke out on the stillness of the night a loon's cry, from beyond some bushes by a narrow pond. We were lying outside under the overhanging front roof of the inn. We crept through the door, our swords in our hands, and each man hastily buckled on his armour. When we were ready we turned. Before the fire stood some twelve mail-clad men, with curious helmets and coverings for their elbows, and their swords were long, reaching from their shoulders to the floor. We stood looking each other in the face for a long time, then we backed slowly to the door and out of it, still gazing at them, into the pale uncertain light of the watery dawn, leaving them standing there in front of the glowing embers. We stole toward the narrow path in the growing light, and waited there in the bushes for sound from the house, our cross-bows strung. At last, as we waited and watched, a crouching figure ran hastily round the corner of the house to the doorway. After this we waited for a very long time till the east was all gold, then suddenly a file of men, in plate to the waist, with long bows in their hands, stepped forth from the bushes on either side of the door.

Men who had grown up on these ravaged vinelands, and who had come from nowhere on vengeance they were; and as they grouped themselves around the corner of the house a sudden flare of red came through the doorway, and we could hear the crackling of lit wood from inside. Then there were shouts from our men in the upper chambers, and we heard their steel shoes on the stone stairway. There came the clank of steel on steel, and the steps on the stairway ceased. Now the smoke came from the windows in the upper chamber, and in a moment we heard a great rush across the upper floor--a rush that ended in falling bodies, and yells, and the breaking of wood, and three of our men broke through the doorway. In a moment they were down, each man with a goose-shaft in him. The bowmen closed in the doorway, and the house was filled with a roaring as of bulls, and the clanking as of a thousand anvils in caves; and the flames poured from the chimney. Now came the old woman who always grinned, rushing out through the doorway, but as she came, one of the men-at-arms who stood behind the others raised his bow, and she fell kicking over the pot-helm of one of our men. Last, came six more of our men, their clothes singed off outside their armour, and their faces deep red. They came through the door sideways, their sweaty swords turning in their hands as they struck, but in a moment they fell also, two by two; and then the tumult within the house died down, but the flames roared through the crumbling rafters, and the burning wisps of thatch lit up the distant poplar tops where the wide road curved in the distance. So we crept away over the burnt fields, crouching in ditches, with our swords drawn; we had no water all day, but we passed many cottages where no one came to the doors to stare at us nor smoke rose from the chimneys, and there was no waving of yellow grain on the hill-tops. We passed the bones of a horse, and after, part of the armour of a man--rough armour--and as the sun sank we passed a woman's head-covering lying dirty by the road. It was after the dusk, which comes stealing in these countries, and blinds you from behind, sudden and soft, that we smelt the sea, and we stumbled forward hastily over a charred hillside. The ground grew softer as we descended, though now we could see nothing. Soon we were on level, and our feet sunk in the sand, and we heard a rustle and a whispering just before us. We ran forward and waded to our waists in the unseen water. Ah! 'twas good. Then we crept back to the hillside again, where we lay until morning in a hollow, covered with dead leaves; and in the morning we were awakened before the sunrise, by the strong salt wind in our faces, and the lashing of what last night had been dainty with playfulness. The beach was brown with seaweed cast up, and the spume of the light waves that broke on the shore retreated in streamers and circles far out from the land again. The keen wind whistled on the edges of our armour and sang round us, and we turned our faces from it, and it blew our long hair into our eyes, stinging us. Now, we knew that the ship lay somewhat to the north of us, for our lord had said that she should not pass a certain great rock, round whose top many gulls circled, but stay to the northward; so we tramped the heavy sands the gathering wind at our backs, and we stumbled over the piles of slippery seaweed and passed round the promontory, where was the Gull Rock. So it came to late in the afternoon and we were very weary, having had no meat or drink. Yet we kept on in silence, bending as we pulled our heavy feet from the sucking sand-holes. The spume blew in our faces now when the waves broke; the beach was narrow, and to our right were rocks which rose up straight into the air. So, as I say, it came to late in the afternoon. We were walking, each man in the other's footsteps, and I, being the largest and having the largest feet, went first. Suddenly I heard a sharp sound from one of the men in the line, and turning, I saw that the last man of us was on his hands and knees in the sand, with his head lowered. I ran to him. Sticking from the side of his back was a great goose-shaft, the feather and some three inches of the wood showing; and when I raised him till he came to his knees, I saw the point coming out at his armpit, for he wore no back-plate. We laid him on his side under the rocks and waited till he died. It was not long; he rolled himself as I have seen an acrobat do, talking hastily of small affairs of our old hall. So we left him on the sand and tramped on under the rocks. We turned a point where the beach ran out a little and the great waves reared themselves like angry clouds, on end, and then another man fell with a sharp sound as of the bird who pecks on the side of trees. It was a cross-bow bolt that had hit him in the side of the head. Even as we were turning from him the man next to me gave a sharp cry and put his hand on my shoulder, and pointing upwards to the heights above, spoke in a trembling voice, "They have found us." He had a long arrow shot through his right forearm just above the wrist, where there was a space between his leather glove and the sleeve of his chain-shirt. Then we went on, with him cursing and groaning and he pulled off his glove and emptied the blood on the sand, and it dripped from his fingers as he plodded along leaning on my shoulder. Then another man fell, this time quite dead, shot between back and breastplate, for he had no chain-shirt. Then the four of us, one behind the other hurried cursing along the narrow beach, catching occasional glimpses as we glanced upward, of brown and grey figures running, against the torn clouds of the moving sky. Soon another man fell, shot through the leg and not able to walk. There was no carrying him, and we could not leave him there, for there is torture for the sacking of churches and burning of towns and the razing of homesteads; so we told him this; and he asked us to lift him and bring him and put him in the edge of the sea where the white foam would break over him; and we did so and drew back and stood in silence. In a moment he turned to us, and with a word--"Farewell"!--he drew his dagger, and as the green of the surf curved over him I saw it go under his shoulder that he had bared, and when the green of the wave had changed to the retreating, and whispering spume again, there was only something dark in the wash of the water. Then we three others left that place and staggered on over the sucking sands. There was a headland before us, from which great fragments of rock had fallen and blocked the beach, and we could hear the sea dashing and roaring and moaning among the hollows, and see the great waves strike and leap up and scatter in sunlit spray. When we saw this bar across our path our hopes sank low, and we hurried that we might die like men or perchance get over it, and ever as we followed the curve of the beach the sputter of cross-bow bolts came from the sand behind us, and twice long arrows whizzed from my breastplate and glittered into the sea. At last we came to the rocks. I went first, climbing, my sword in my hand as a staff. We fell over the great blocks of dripping black, and we slimed our hands and armour on the seaweed that lifted with every wave; our clothes were heavy with water, and the wounded man who leant on my shoulder groaned as I hoisted him up and down. At last we gained the top of the largest rock, the outermost black fragment on which the great waves rent themselves. I knew we must not linger, and sliding down the side with my other companion, I turned for the wounded man, but he sat upon the rock his face drawn all sideways with pain, for he had raised his helmet for breath, and there was a cross-bow bolt sticking firmly out from one of his eyes. One glance was all; then the world was a green fairyland with rushing music and the noise of mighty crowds; then a soft rolling as in tons of fleece, and then the air again, and sunlight.

The rock was bare. We staggered up, and crawling over stones like children before they have learned to walk, came at last to the sands again, the seaweed hanging from our shoulders and a weight as of leaden anchors driving us down.

We pressed the water from our eyes and turned and looked at each other, and then turned to the beach again; and gave a great shout, for our ship lay high on the sand, and we could see the heads of our men over the bulwark already watching us; then an arm waved, and down the gale came a fine sound of welcome in our own language. Heavy as we were we could not run, but we stumbled forward as an old horse to stable, and after we had crossed the beach, without a sound my companion fell against me, and when I held him from me and held him up, and saw the goose-shaft through his neck, I dropped him on the sands, and, cursing as I hobbled, broke into a shambling trot, using my sword as I ran. The arrows struck against my back-plate as I bent over, but I had no time to look above, and the cross-bow bolts whizzed and volleyed past my ears, and sang, but I came to the ship at last and was lifted in, for I could not climb myself, and there I fell down between two of the rowers' benches and hid my face in my hands, while the arrows sang over us from the cliffs and the men looked up wondering as they crouched inside the bulwarks.

But soon they came and whispered to me for news of the expedition, and when I told them that of our lord and his forty men I only would stand before them, they groaned as men who have no to-morrow and who know not what to do. This could not go on. The bow of the ship was feathered with arrows and they began to strike into the benches and the after-deck.

"Can we not shove off?" I asked.

"Look at the sea," answered the oar-captain pointing; and as he pointed, his hand was broken by a cross-bow bolt. "I shall never hold oar again," he said. No more.

While they were binding his hand, I crept to the bulwark, and raising a shield between my head and the cliffs, looked past the stern of the ship at the white waters that reached for us, and the brown arms that opened to us, and I thought of the suffocation of the sea and of its indifference in its anger, and of its beautiful white carelessness, as I went down--down--down--to the bottom-most seaweeds, where the eyeless cold things crawl.