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 THE LIBRARY 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY 
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 LOS ANGELES
 
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 THE SENTIMENTAL VIKINGS
 
 The 
 
 Sentimental Vikings 
 
 BY 
 
 R. V. RISLEY 
 
 JOHN LANE 
 
 THE BODLEY HEAD 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 1897
 
 ; f 
 J? *f *l 
 
 Co 
 
 . c.

 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE SWEEPING OF THE HALL . i 
 
 AN INCIDENT . . .... . 37 
 
 WHERE THE WOLVES DANCE . . .61 
 
 THE SACRILEGE . . . . .99 
 
 THE STORY OF THE OAR-CAPTAIN . . . 115 
 
 THE LAST VOYAGE . . . . . -145
 
 THE SWEEPING OF THE HALL 
 
 AN OLD DANISH TRAGEDY
 
 THE SWEEPING OF 
 THE HALL 
 
 AND now this is the story of Witlaf the 
 harper, that he told in the great hall of 
 Gorm, the king of all Denmark, ten 
 centuries ago, waving his handless arms 
 in the flickering glow of the firelight. 
 
 I tell the tale of Snore, the lord of 
 the north of the island of Zeeland, years 
 ago ; and of how he swept his hall as 
 the day broke. 
 
 First, as to his birth. Men say that the 
 heavens were darkened, and that tumult 
 uous clouds swept low over the battle 
 ments, and that voices were heard, 
 meaningless, in the air. I do not know 
 wonders are kind to great names when 
 they have been memories a little time. 
 
 But this much is true, that we in the 
 hall of the castle were told by a white- 
 faced woman, just as the sun set I re 
 member how red its light fell on the 
 rush-covered floor, and how the woman 
 
 3
 
 4 The Sweeping of the Hall 
 
 leaned half through the door and told 
 us, holding the curtain that the child 
 was born, and was strong, and a man; 
 but that the mother was dead, and that 
 the Lord Sigmund was with her. 
 
 That night in the hall, by the light of 
 the fire, as we men were talking in 
 whispers, and telling kind deeds of our 
 lady (for she was ever about in the 
 cottages, and she and her women made 
 soft-sewed clothes for all the men of the 
 ship-crew), came, from behind the curtain 
 that is to my lady's chambers, a long, 
 low wail of a child, strong and insistent, 
 and then a man's tread for a few paces, 
 and then silence again, save for the 
 men's whisperings and the sound of the 
 squeaking of their leather-belts as they 
 moved, and the gentle rubbing of the 
 wooden shields on the walls as the wind 
 blew through under the rafters. 
 
 And afterwards, when the fire burned 
 low, the men departed for their beds 
 and left the hall empty, and then I also 
 went, because I did not like the shadows, 
 but to the battlements, not to my sleep, 
 for I felt that this night meant some-
 
 The Sweeping of the Hall 5 
 
 thing, and I was not yet enough settled 
 in my mind to lie and think in the dark 
 ness. So, lonesomely, I paced the battle 
 ments, while the moon rose, and all 
 around me lay the great forest reaching 
 almost down to the edge of the moat, 
 and throwing its shadows over the silver 
 water and on the white walls of the 
 house. And in the distance, the long, 
 still, snake of the fjord stretched out 
 under the moon, till it curved and a 
 black point of trees cut it off suddenly. 
 And at last, when the woods had be 
 come dusky, and the distant water where 
 it passed out of sight was grey instead 
 of silver, and then slowly turned to pink, 
 I went down the steep stairs, through 
 the yet dark galleries, where the carving 
 on the corners was worn so smooth and 
 stained with smoke down to the chill, 
 dark hall, and, kneeling on the hearth, 
 built up and lit a fire of good beech 
 twigs among the ashes, while the first 
 day of the life of Lord Snore, who swept 
 this same hall of his at another dawn 
 ing, broke through the long windows and 
 shone on the armour.
 
 6 The Sweeping of the Hall 
 
 There are truer ways of reckoning time, 
 O king, than by the indifferent passage 
 of the meaningless years. Some moments, 
 of the flying of a thought in length, fill 
 more space in our lives and memories 
 than much of everydays. 
 
 Yet something remains to me of those 
 light-footed years till I see again clearly. 
 Thus, I remember Lord Sigmund, my 
 Lord Snore's father, set forth that year 
 after the grain-planting was over, and un 
 til it was tall, he sailed the high seas, and 
 brought back white furs from the North, 
 and stories of mountains and ice-floors. 
 
 Next, I remember a strange ship come 
 rowing one day up the fjord, and of her 
 landing, and the men coming up to the 
 hall, where they stayed many days; and 
 of how they ran in the fields, shouting, 
 and throwing the grass at each other; 
 for they were sea-weary. 
 
 Then they departed, and there passed 
 some more seasons and harvests, with 
 sometimes hunting of bears or of deer, 
 and the hewing of pieces of woodland. 
 
 Thus the years trod by softly while 
 the Lord Snore grew to his manhood.
 
 The Siveepiny of the Hall i 
 
 And Lord Sigmund would sail away 
 with his men every spring when the 
 planting was over, and my young lord 
 would sit in his place in the hall, and, 
 when need was, give justice unto the 
 townsfolk. Good years, O king, when the 
 fields grew wide, and the board was 
 filled for a hundred men who sat there 
 every evening. 
 
 When, looking back from where I now 
 sit I hope near the end of my life I 
 see again clearly, it is the time of mid 
 summer in the meadows that stretch by 
 the side of the fjord, where the woods 
 fall back, an hour's boat -row from the 
 castle. There, just when the still noon 
 day drew to its close, and the slanting 
 sun was beginning to throw its afternoon 
 brightness in our brown faces, my Lord 
 Snore and I lay stretched out in the 
 long, sweet grass, he with a heavy cross 
 bow a new weapon then and the car 
 casses of two brown deer lying beside 
 him, I idly talking and ever looking 
 forth over the blinding waters for sight 
 of his father's ship that we might begin 
 to expect now, the grain being tall.
 
 8 The Sweeping of the Hall 
 
 Suddenly, from behind a point of jut 
 ting woods round which the fjord ran 
 curving, grew and took shape a some 
 thing long that the sun shining on made 
 painful for the eyes a long, low some 
 thing that, curving in again, glided be 
 tween me and the dark green point of 
 trees. It was the ship! The young lord 
 sat up on the grass, and putting his hand 
 on the carcasses of the deer, rose to his 
 feet. "It moves too slowly," he said. It 
 was true. Now we could see the swing 
 of the oars, and the pause between the 
 strokes was very long. 
 
 "Look at the dragon," he said again, 
 shading his eyes with his hand. I saw 
 now that the great beak that had used 
 to be so fierce in its red -and -gold paint 
 ing was broken off, so that only its 
 curving neck rose from the bow. And, 
 looking again, I saw that the sides of the 
 ship were battered, as if by rocks, and 
 that many of the oar-blades were broken 
 and tied to their stems with ropes. I ran 
 to our boat that lay against the side-of- 
 grass, and hurriedly tumbled its stone 
 anchor on board.
 
 The Sweeping of the Hall 9 
 
 "He must have sunk the other ship 
 or he would have come home in her," I 
 said, shipping the steering-oar. 
 
 Lord Snore raised himself from the 
 bottom of the boat where he had been 
 stooping to place the two deer, and 
 turning his shaggy head, looked at me 
 curiously. "I will sit in my own right 
 now!" he answered. 
 
 Beneath the lord's long strong strokes 
 the sharp-prowed skiff went rapidly over 
 the still water, and now we could see the 
 broken dragon's-neck and the rents in the 
 shields hung over the sides more plainly. 
 We were almost within the shadow of 
 her mast when a tall man I knew his 
 face for that of Esbiern the oar-captain 
 with a great red cloth round his head, 
 leaped on the bow, waving his long arms 
 wildly and shouting to us over the sunny 
 waters, wild words of some sea-fight. 
 
 Our prow cut the shadow; half -unwill 
 ing hands reached over the gunwale to 
 grasp our boat; we clambered over the 
 side and turning, we looked along the 
 length of the battered ship, over the half- 
 empty rowers' benches, past the pale faces
 
 10 The Sweeping of the Hall 
 
 of five or six men with linen - swathed 
 heads and arms on, over the confusion 
 and wreckage that littered the centre of 
 the ship, to where, leaning against the 
 edge of the fore-deck, lay the body of 
 Sigmund the lord with the half of the 
 crew of his returned ship arranged in a 
 long sitting row beside him. 
 
 So, with Lord Snore at one of the big 
 oars to help the weary men with one 
 more rower, and I heaving on the great 
 steering blade and guiding the ship 
 slowly over the shallows, we went silently 
 up the fjord through the afternoon. 
 
 That night, when the men and the 
 household were done eating and only 
 the horns and wooden tankards of beer 
 stood along the board, my Lord Snore 
 spoke from the great seat where he sat 
 moodily, with his fist on the table, and 
 the chair-cushions thrown on the floor 
 beside him; and thus he spoke, with the 
 men leaning silently forward to hear him : 
 
 "The men of the ship have told ye of 
 the fight; how in the south, off Lolland, 
 they met a Viking-ship which attacked 
 them. How they fought and drove
 
 The Siveepiny of the Hall n 
 
 the Viking ; how that the Viking led 
 them along the coast till, our men 
 weary with rowing, there came two 
 fresh ships from a bay, hidden, friends 
 of the Viking; and how that Lord Sig- 
 mund died in the fight, and how that 
 our men fled north, while the Vikings 
 shouted; and our ship ye have seen! 
 
 "On the sixth day after this, at the 
 sun-rise, let the ship be ready with new 
 oars; the ship's men will stay here to 
 rest. I shall take the men that I call 
 my guard; those who hunt bears with me 
 in the forest. But let the dragon's-neck 
 remain broken." 
 
 This he said, and the men were silent, 
 the old ship's crew sitting, looking de 
 jectedly along the board, their ale un- 
 drunk, and shuffling their feet in the 
 rushes. Then there was drinking one to 
 another while the women took down 
 the men's axes and armour - coats from 
 the walls and carried them off to their 
 houses to clean them; and there was 
 laughter and boasting and talking loud 
 making up courage, and some got up 
 from their places and went seriously out
 
 12 The Sweeping of the Hall 
 
 of the hall to the houses and to their 
 children, and some talked to the men of 
 the ship's crew. 
 
 Thus the evening passed, and the men 
 went home to their beds early, save for 
 a few who sat down with made-up in 
 difference and talked, while their beer- 
 mugs stood on the benches till they 
 grew warm in the firelight. 
 
 So the next six days we worked and 
 made ready, hewing and smoothing new 
 oars, and whetting our knives on the 
 grind-stone; and at sun-rise on the sixth 
 day, with a long crowd of men and 
 women on the strand and the rain pour 
 ing down out of the misty brown sky, we 
 hauled our ship down the beach and 
 setting ourselves in our places rowed 
 splashingly away from the castle ; while 
 the fine rain ran down our faces and the 
 shouting grew faint in the distance. 
 
 And so passes that part of my tale and 
 I take up the second. 
 
 Now there come two months, O king, 
 that are as difficult to see clearly as the 
 length of a flame in the sunshine.
 
 The Sweeping of the Hall 13 
 
 We sailed south to Lolland, but we 
 could find no word of a large ship with a 
 plain prow and a new crew. 
 
 And we landed on many shores, and 
 much I learned of the art of minstrelsy. 
 
 And Lord Snore managed his men well 
 and was a kind lord over us, though 
 fierce, and long of anger. 
 
 We sailed, passing along the coast, some 
 times running so near that the coolness 
 of the trees was grateful to the sun 
 burned men where we could see the 
 bottom over the side of the ship, as we 
 glided, stilly, over the white stones that 
 glimmered through the clear water. 
 
 And sometimes we would pass by grey 
 castles with small villages and houses over 
 the fields, where the people would come 
 out and look at the ship, and when they 
 saw the broken dragon and that it was 
 a ship for fight, run in again, or hurry 
 towards the castle from the fields. Then 
 we would call out to them to go back 
 to their oxen, or to go on with their 
 thatching, and wish good marriages unto 
 the maidens, and laugh at them while 
 they stood staring.
 
 14 The Sweeping of the Hall 
 
 And we would land sometimes and hunt 
 in the forests; and then we would cook 
 our meat all through over great fires, and 
 not eat it half -fresh as on shipboard. 
 
 Once we chased a great ship and came 
 up with her, but on calling out, we found 
 they were Northmen; and the ship that 
 we wanted was of our own race. So we 
 gave them some rope in exchange for 
 some leather, and drank "skaal" to them 
 over the bulwarks as they spread their 
 brown sail going northwards. 
 
 Sometimes we landed at some lord's 
 castle, sending a man before that they 
 might know us as friends. And here were 
 we entertained for many days, and were 
 well liked, both on account of the kind 
 ness and manhood of my Lord Snore and 
 on account of the sturdiness of the ship's 
 men, and on account of the quest we 
 were on. 
 
 Sailing thus, O king, come I to that part 
 of my tale when the ladies smile, and 
 when the lords in the hall look away 
 and seem not to listen yet would I be 
 prompted if I forgot it. 
 
 Now, my Lord Snore was a fierce man
 
 The Sweeping of the Hall 15 
 
 of manner and face, being very large, 
 with his shaggy head held high on great 
 shoulders a man more for fighting and 
 combat than for young women's eyes 
 and old ones' tongues. 
 
 Yet like some ugly men he seemed the 
 manlier by his ugliness. 
 
 We sat in the hall of Lord Rudolf of 
 Lolland, anxiously waiting the coming of 
 the ship of his brother, gone Viking 
 hoping for word of the ship we had 
 searched for. And Lord Snore hunted 
 and rode with Lord Rudolf every day, till 
 it came to the evening that he had set 
 for departure. 
 
 And, drinking health to the lord, as he 
 raised his great mug to his lips, I saw his 
 eyes glance over the edge, and they met 
 the eyes of Lord Rudolfs fair daughter. 
 And I saw a slight surprise come into 
 his face; it grew into amazement; and he 
 drank the cup slowly still looking at her. 
 
 We stayed many days at Lord Rudolfs. 
 
 It was when the men were growing 
 weary of waiting and the household that 
 eat in the hall knew all of my songs 
 when the keel of the ship was fast
 
 16 The Siveeping of the Hall 
 
 grounded that one night as I lay asleep 
 with my back to the bulwark I felt a 
 hand shaking my shoulder. And, as I 
 grasped his arm in the darkness, Lord 
 Snore's voice came to me whispering: 
 
 " Awake ; and come out of the ship, 
 silently here in the darkness," he whis 
 pered, as I came over the side and let 
 myself drop by my arms to the sand. 
 
 I saw that he was dressed in his armour, 
 and had his great axe in his hand, as 
 he pulled me into the shadow of the 
 steering-oar, where it stuck over the stern, 
 its blade of broad silver where it shone to 
 the moon-light. 
 
 "Do you hear the noise up at the 
 castle?" he whispered. 
 
 "It is surely Lord Rudolfs brother re 
 turned," I answered when I had listened; 
 for a sound like the grounding of swords 
 and the tramping of men passing in and 
 out over the drawbridge came to me, faint 
 ly, from where lay the castle beyond the 
 black line of trees: the night was very still. 
 
 "Nay, it is not that," whispered Lord 
 Snore, looming up dim by the ship's side. 
 "Listen, Witlaf: I love Lord Rudolfs
 
 The Sweeping of the Hall \i 
 
 daughter ah! so thou knowest? and this 
 night have I gone up to look at her win 
 dow where the light is nay, listen and 
 as I was standing there dreaming, I think, 
 sudden and soft her voice came to me 
 out of the darkness, from just within the 
 great window that is at the side of the 
 hall, and looking up, I heard her call to 
 me gently, saying, 'Snore, Snore; come 
 here to the window-ledge, silently quick! 
 Back to your ship, Snore my father is 
 arming himself in his chamber; I heard 
 the clang of his armour: he is angry be 
 cause that I love thee. The castle is 
 filled with his men, and I love thee!'" 
 
 And the lord's great hand was raised 
 in the darkness. 
 
 "Now, Witlaf," he whispered, and I 
 heard his voice tremble, "the maiden is 
 safe in the ship; but thou knowest," and 
 his voice grew firm, "that the half of our 
 men lie drunk on the fore-deck and 'tis 
 hard to move ship with so few. Say, Min 
 strel, wilt thou hold the ship while I, with 
 the rest, warm my hands at the castle?" 
 
 And thus it was that I, the harper of 
 Lord Snore, came to be sitting in the 
 B
 
 18 The Sweeping of the Hall 
 
 moonlight inside the ship, with my harp 
 by my knee, and my axe in my hand, 
 and a pale-faced maiden beside me who 
 listened in silence to the distancing tread 
 of my lord and his men as they stealthily 
 passed up the path towards the castle. 
 
 So, seemingly for years and years, we sat 
 there, with the water lapping against the 
 side of the ship, and the sound of the 
 straining of leather and the shuffling of 
 feet as the men sleepily put on their arms 
 on the fore-deck. Then, more years passed, 
 and the maiden shivered and crept closer, 
 and I put my great skin-cloak around her. 
 
 So we sat and waited ; and the moon 
 sailed grandly overhead throwing flakes 
 of white on the dancing water to sea 
 ward; and save for the lapping of water 
 and occasional sounds from the fore-deck, 
 there was stillness out of which an owl 
 cried, thrice, with its long, strange, mourn 
 ful note, and then ceased; leaving the 
 silence more silent. 
 
 Then, suddenly, from out the darkness, 
 seemingly miles away, there rose, and 
 rose, and hung on the air, and slowly died 
 away, a great cry in a man's voice. Then
 
 The Siveepiny of the Hall 19 
 
 there was silence once more for a moment. 
 And now began a confused dull rabble 
 of sound that I knew well enough; with 
 a skin-moving swish in it like the whet 
 ting of knives. And there were far sounds 
 of voices, and sometimes a curious hol 
 low drubbing, like a hammer on the side 
 of a ship ; this, I could tell, was the sound 
 of my Lord Snore's great axe as it beat 
 on the door, and when it ceased presently 
 I knew that the door was down. 
 
 Now, for a long time only the far sounds 
 and the occasional voices came to us; and 
 the years grew long again, and I heard 
 the water lapping against the side of the 
 ship. 
 
 Suddenly, out of the darkness and 
 into the strip of moonlit beach that lay 
 between the edge of the black forest 
 and the silvery ship, came running a man, 
 silently, and swaying as he ran, and just 
 mid-way in the moonlight, he stopped, ran 
 round uncertainly twice in a little circle, 
 and then pitched forward with his face 
 in the sand and lay still. The maiden by 
 me gave a little cry and hid her face on 
 the edge of the bulwark. Then we waited
 
 20 The Sweeping of the Hall 
 
 again and listened to the barking of dogs 
 in the distance; and so more years passed, 
 and the lapping of the water grew loud 
 again. 
 
 Now began to come wounded men in 
 pairs, stumbling groaningly over the side, 
 and soon with these began to come back 
 other men out of the darkness, unwounded, 
 but bloody enough, and these waited in a 
 little crowd outside the ship panting, and 
 wiping the sweat from their foreheads, 
 and leaving the prints of their hands on 
 the planks where we found them next 
 morning. And, last, with a little knot of 
 unwounded men around him, came Lord 
 Snore walking heavily, swinging his axe, 
 with the blood dripping from his shaggy 
 foretop and from the ends of his hands. 
 He stood while the men slowly shoved 
 off the ship, then plunging through the 
 water like horses and splashing it over 
 their red armour and faces, they all came 
 clambering aboard, and throwing off their 
 steel hoods and sword-belts, sat them down 
 to the oars to get the ship out of shoal 
 water. But my Lord Snore came to the 
 gunwale, and taking the maiden's hand
 
 The Sweeping of the Hall 21 
 
 drew her to him, wrapped in the great 
 wolf-skin, and lowered his head on her 
 shoulder. 
 
 Thus we left that shore ; and when far 
 out, we saw first a flicker and then a 
 glow of fire, and the burning of Lord 
 Rudolfs castle lit up the sea, and we 
 heard the cocks crowing over the water 
 as we turned our prow homeward, while 
 the oar-blades rose and fell, dripping silver. 
 
 Now, as we sailed homeward the maiden 
 was given the after-part of the ship, save 
 for the steersman, and because, that, lov 
 ing Lord Snore, she was afraid of him; 
 yet ever looking towards the forward part 
 of the ship where he sat with his men : 
 thus she would have me come and harp 
 to her and tell her sagas and tales; and 
 she told me many things in return. 
 
 And then Lord Snore would come to the 
 edge of the raised deck and leaning upon it, 
 talk to her, while my harp made low music. 
 
 In the years that have passed, O king, 
 a mist like the autumn mist that lies white 
 on the earth in the morning has grown 
 between my eyes and the past, so that 
 only the hill-tops break through it.
 
 22 The Sweeping of the Hall 
 
 Now, I will tell of the passing of 
 Snore and Helga, and like the scenes 
 of a play, the last scene of my tale is 
 the bloodiest for fighting was the half 
 of men's lives in those days thank 
 the Gods ! So, to the end of the 
 tale. 
 
 As we rowed up the fjord past the 
 meadows and woodlands, the oars making 
 song on the oar -pins for gladness, 
 pointing out things to each other, my 
 lord and I talked over his taking of 
 Helga to wife on the morrow; my lord 
 laughing loud and resting his hand on 
 my shoulder and glancing back ever at 
 Helga as she sat looking out on the 
 fields. We arranged that all the men 
 of his land should be called in for 
 the great feast that night at the castle, 
 and that the feast should be until 
 daybreak, when he would take Helga 
 as wife before all men. Then these 
 things being arranged, my Lord Snore 
 went to her and told her, and she 
 answered him honestly blushing a little 
 that she was glad ; and then bade him 
 sit down beside her, and tell her of
 
 The Stveeping of the Hall 23 
 
 what we were passing. And thus, with 
 Lord Snore sitting beside her pointing 
 out woodland and meadow, and the men 
 smiling up at them, as they rowed in 
 the waist of the ship, we came to the 
 strand and the old castle stood before 
 us; and landing we pulled the ship up 
 on the beach and with the crowds 
 laughing and welcoming us and all 
 confusion, we all went up to the castle. 
 I remember till now, the great comfort 
 it was to get fresh boots and clothes, 
 and new harp-strings, and soft cushions 
 to sit on. 
 
 It was a great feast that night ! The 
 long hall with the smoke-stained walls, 
 hung with great boat-shields and bright 
 arms, with skins of bear and deer, and 
 with branches of green oak and beech 
 leaves. 
 
 Down through the whole length ran 
 the long table, loaded with meat and 
 drink, and from the cushioned bench 
 where sat Snore and Helga, to the other 
 end of the table, were laughing and 
 welcoming. And from the fire at the 
 end of the hall, where two deer swung,
 
 24 The Sweeping of the Hall 
 
 cooking and burning, in the blaze, and 
 from the great candles along the gay 
 walls came yellow light shining on arms 
 and laughing faces. 
 
 And the smell of the cooking deer 
 came through the hall, and the cakes of 
 brown meal were piled up on the end 
 of the table, and the great mugs rang 
 as the drinking men struck them to 
 gether, and the voices and laughter rose 
 loud in the hall. And then the men 
 rose, shouting, to my lord, and drank 
 welcome and " skaal " to him ; and, 
 standing, they drank a great welcome to 
 my lady, and the mugs came down with 
 a crash on the board, and the shouting 
 was long ere it rested. Then my lady 
 spoke from the place that she held by 
 Lord Snore and thanked them in 
 woman's words; and they roared again 
 in their gladness. 
 
 After, they called to me for a song. 
 Then I stood up and sang to them with 
 my harp ; I sang of peace, and of the 
 glory of it ; and of battle, and of the 
 strong joy of it; and of welcome, and 
 so again peace. And the men stood,
 
 The Sweeping of the Hall 25 
 
 shouting, unto my lord, till the hall rang 
 with it; and the great fire roared, and 
 the yellow light flashed on the arms 
 and the faces, and glowed on the painted 
 shields hung on the walls oh it was a 
 great feast! 
 
 And now, O king, this is the last 
 scene of my play all this was long ago, 
 and these loves and these lives have 
 passed away utterly. 
 
 It was far in the night and the empty 
 platters and dishes were piled on the 
 floor, and the men were drinking the 
 frothing beer, resting their mugs on the 
 foam - dripping board or on the empty 
 seats of the drunken, who lay around 
 the sides of the hall asleep on the 
 rushes ; the arms were thrown in the 
 corners with dishes, and the air felt 
 chill ere the dawning in spite of the 
 piled-up fire. 
 
 Now Helga being weary arose, and 
 leaned towards my lord Snore to kiss 
 him ere she went to her chamber, and I 
 who sat by the side of my lord, looked 
 up at her, smiling; for she had never 
 kissed him before among men. And look-
 
 26 The Sweeping of the Hall 
 
 ing, I saw, ere their lips met, a change 
 come into the eyes of Helga and she 
 stood still. Then, making a little gesture 
 as of casting something away from her, 
 she stooped again, but the change grew 
 in her eyes and she could not. I fol 
 lowed her look to where it rested on the 
 curtained door that enters the hall from 
 the apartments which face on the water. 
 
 Slowly I reached for my axe, and lean 
 ing to look at my lord as I lifted up his, 
 I saw him waiting expectantly, shyly 
 before his men, for Helga's good-night. 
 So I leaned a moment. Then I whispered 
 to him, and put the axe in his hand. 
 
 The great table is overturned, the broken 
 stools and benches lie over the floor, the 
 fire is scattered, and the flying ashes drift 
 in the smoke and swirl around the heads 
 of the combatants, making them cough as 
 they strike. The drunken men along the 
 walls are stabbed or trampled among the 
 torn rushes, and the foe that have stolen 
 in through the seaward windows are 
 pressing over the benches. 
 
 We are behind the upturned table, and
 
 The Siveeping of the Hall 27 
 
 fighting desperately, our backs to the wall. 
 The enemy rush against the table but 
 the long arms of our men drive them 
 back. I am holding a boat-shield from 
 the wall over Helga and using my axe 
 with the other hand. 
 
 Lord Snore is sweeping the space in 
 front of him clear; he has thrown aside 
 his shield. We seem to have been fight 
 ing for hours in the dim hall. 
 
 Our men begin to fall behind the table ; 
 they are in their leather coats, and guard 
 badly in the murk. 
 
 The swords clang on the edge of the 
 table; the men stumble over broken 
 dishes. I see through the smoke one of 
 them with his foot fast in a wooden beer 
 mug. They run along the table striking. 
 The smoke comes in my eyes, and the 
 forms grow dim. 
 
 Now they go back leaving us, and 
 a tall man dressed in strange armour, 
 breaks through them, and stands, banging 
 his leg with his sword. 
 
 " I am Swend, kinsman of Rudolf of 
 Lolland; and I came and found his hall 
 ashes. Say, dost thou think that a ship
 
 28 The Sweeping of the Hall 
 
 with the dragon beheaded, can sail where 
 it will and no man be the wiser? And 
 who was it, think you, that drove your 
 ship laughing?" And he stood, snarling 
 and digging the floor with his sword- 
 point, like a wolf in his anger. 
 
 Then Lord Snore, resting his axe on the 
 table "If thou art the man who fought 
 with my father and called two fresh ships 
 to thy helping then I am glad thou art 
 come to my feast in my hall!" 
 
 Then Swend "Thou hast murdered thy 
 host for the sake of his daughter! I, 
 his kinsman " and he stopped while the 
 smoke swirled down and I heard him 
 coughing. 
 
 "Who would have been kinsman to me 
 had I slept in my ship, Rudolfs guest? 
 And the maiden chose freely. He would 
 have bit on my axe-blade though he were 
 Odin!" And Lord Snore lifted his axe, 
 shouting aloud in his anger. 
 
 I hear Swend yell to his men through 
 the smoke; the floor shakes as they come 
 running towards us. They break out of 
 the gloom; they leap on the table smit 
 ing and stabbing. But the long arms of
 
 The Sweeping of the Hall 29 
 
 our men pull them down; they fall. Lord 
 Snore's axe swirls and bangs on their 
 armour; the table is cleared. They draw 
 back, gasping like dogs; their wounded lie 
 against the wall in the drip of the candles. 
 I see the chests of our men heave in 
 their weariness. They lean with their 
 backs against the wall, wiping their 
 slippery hands on the skirts of their 
 garments. The smoke comes down; again 
 they come. The fight closes in again the 
 struggling forms striking over the table, 
 I catch dim sight of swift grey shapes 
 and the flashing of swords high in the 
 air. Our men are panting like bulls; I 
 hear the straining of their leather coats 
 as they lean, striking into the mist. 
 Bodies of men come shocking against the 
 table; there is roaring, and trampling of 
 feet, and banging and clashing of armour, 
 and breaking of wood, and the sound of 
 Lord Snore's axe falling regularly comes 
 through the darkness. 
 
 All this comes to me, dimly, as though 
 through a dream, and dreaming, I catch 
 a passing sight of the shadowy figures 
 in the smoke on the other side of the
 
 so The Sweeping of the Hall 
 
 table. The fight goes on; it goes on for 
 ever and ever it seems; and the world 
 in the smoke and the noises and sounds 
 of the combat grow farther and farther 
 away; they come to me unreally, in a 
 far-off roar, like the sea. 
 
 I hear the sound of waves; the water 
 roars, and roars, and roars farther and 
 farther then nearer again; the ship 
 moves and heaves and turns slowly round 
 under the motion. And now I hear the 
 sound of my harp playing, coming through 
 the sound of the water; that ceases, and 
 I hear the sound of Snore's and Helga's 
 voices speaking softly. I hear the words 
 they come to me over the continuous 
 sound of the water and they are silly 
 words, about a piece of her hair that 
 she has given him and I laugh 
 
 And my laugh awakens me, sounding 
 ghastly under the dull smoke; and the 
 tumult and ringing and roar of the com 
 bat springs up around me again. 
 
 And now, over the banging of metal 
 and the clashing of armour on armour 
 and the sounds of the trampling and 
 breaking of wood and the howling, comes
 
 The Sweeping of the Hall 31 
 
 another sound surely my Lord Snore's 
 axe! But the blows are so quick, there 
 is something awesome, unnatural, in the 
 blows of a man falling so fast. 
 
 And now I am aware of a change that 
 has come in the fight. I no longer see the 
 ghost-figures passing, dim in the smoke. 
 The sound of the fighting comes from out 
 in the hall. I wait, peering into the 
 smoke. Slowly it lifts from above the 
 table lifts, growing dimmer. 
 
 Outlines come out of the distance. The 
 opposite wall of the hall looms up into the 
 darkness. The candles glimmer and show 
 through the smoke. I look down the hall. 
 A. grey mass, moving indistinctly, and the 
 sound of a great continuous crashing com 
 ing from somewhere within it. 
 
 The smoke lifts more ; bodies of men 
 on the floor come out, and I can see the 
 dim tapestries waving on the walls ; and 
 now the great sound of the crashing 
 comes louder. 
 
 The smoke lifts yet more, it is pouring 
 out of the windows and under the roof; 
 the walls spring out into distinctness; and 
 I see, plain, the end of the hall.
 
 32 The Siveepiny of the Hall 
 
 A crowd of men struggling and falling 
 over each other against the great door ; 
 the flashing of armour, swords thrown in 
 the air, clenched hands raised and falling, 
 the end of the hall full of tumult of 
 arms and legs and bodies, as the men 
 rush and surge over each other against 
 the outlet. 
 
 But, dominating all in its hugeness, 
 striking the men before it, making a 
 glory with its flying axe enormous, irre 
 sistible, clothed in red, seeming to shake 
 the air with the roar through its skin, 
 yet utterly silent Lord Snore, gone mad 
 with the combat, striking with the 
 strength of a falling tree sweeping out 
 the hall before him ! 
 
 The door is open ! The men pile up on 
 the threshold ; the door grows high is 
 darkened is full. Grows open men whirl 
 along the floor under the axe the wave 
 breaks, it recedes, it runs away into the 
 corners, it dissolves and runs away in 
 foam the door is empty. 
 
 The last of the smoke rolls around under 
 the roof, the walls rock with the rever 
 beration, and the sounds of our voices
 
 The Sweeping of the Hall 33 
 
 calling to one another are lost in the 
 echoes. The hall heaves, the sounds die, 
 going out with the smoke under the roof; 
 and the pale light of the daybreak falls 
 through the long windows. The candles 
 gutter and go out, falling down from the 
 walls, from the burned-out spikes. We 
 stumble over the table, on, over the 
 broken benches, and over the bodies. 
 
 It was a good fight, O king, when 
 Lord Snore swept his hall! There is now 
 but little more to tell. We found a great 
 figure standing idly by the door when we 
 came there; it was swinging a great axe 
 in its hand, with its head sunk on its 
 chest, and it swayed when a man touched 
 it, and fell back limply into our arms. 
 
 As they carried him up the hall to 
 wards the great bench a white figure ran 
 past me. 
 
 Then the lights went out, the world 
 heaved, and I fell down across the table; 
 for both my hands had been cut off upon 
 its edge. 
 
 When next I saw the hall, having come 
 back out of the long unreality that had 
 lasted so many days, the first snow of 
 c
 
 34 The Sweeping of the Hall 
 
 the winter lay on the window-ledges and 
 the great fire was blazing merrily. I re 
 member how strange it all looked. And 
 there, walking up and down slowly, and 
 leaning on my lady who guided him, 
 was the wreck of a great man who 
 grasped weakly for support at her robe. 
 I went up to him and stood silently. 
 My lady touched me with her hand and 
 whispered to me to speak to him. Then 
 said I to my lord with a strange softness 
 in my throat : " I hope my lord is better 
 after his sickness." And he answered, 
 "Yes, yes yes, yes yes, yes " nodding 
 his head, sillily. And then my lady led 
 him to the great bench, and, seating him, 
 talked to him child-talk and tended him 
 gently. 
 
 That night, as I sat by my lady, silent, 
 the boy who fed me having gone away 
 to the others, one rose, and thinking to 
 please me I suppose, brought me my 
 harp out of an inner room. 
 
 I think we were all glad when my 
 lord died at the last snow. Then my 
 lady used to go among the cottages of
 
 The Sweeping of the Hall 35 
 
 the villagers, tending those who were 
 sick, talking with the young girls, 
 and comforting all who were in any 
 sorrow. The women used sometimes to 
 cry when she spoke to them. And in 
 about three months after we buried my 
 lord, when summer was come again, and 
 the sun had already begun to warp the 
 timbers of the ship on the beach, when 
 the boys ran shouting in the shallows, 
 died my lady also, and we buried her by 
 the side of my lord. 
 
 Then left I the castle ; and men tell me 
 that it is pulled down to build more houses 
 for the villagers, and that the old ship 
 has mouldered away on the beach and 
 can no more be seen. 
 
 And all this happened years ago and is 
 forgotten. If some one will hold my cup 
 I will drink "skaal" to the king that he 
 has listened. 
 
 And this is the tale of the sweeping of 
 the hall, that the old minstrel used to tell 
 at the board of King Gorm, waving his 
 handless arms in the glow of the fire 
 light.
 
 AN INCIDENT
 
 AN INCIDENT 
 
 THE great fog lay dun over the sea, and 
 the shadows moved over the motionless 
 ship, passing swiftly; yet there was no 
 wind. 
 
 We lay wrapped in the wood-ashes 
 coloured air, through which the mast 
 shone glimmering in many lines when 
 you looked at it, idly swinging under 
 no wind. Easily the water slipped by, 
 dimly streaked, through the cloudy 
 vapour. The men from the stern could 
 not be seen by those in the bow. 
 
 We yawned and stretched ourselves, 
 the peculiar smell of the fog rising into 
 our nostrils. The warm air lay like the 
 weight of a cloud on our foreheads, and 
 we grumbled wearily, wanting a sight of 
 the sun. 
 
 While we waited thus sighing, out of 
 the dun vapour on the right came a cry 
 indistinguishable. After we had been on 
 our feet for some moments, there came 
 
 39
 
 40 An Incident 
 
 the swift wash of oar-blades, and their 
 rabble on the gunwale, going very fast. 
 
 Then the sound of a far-away crash, 
 and, after a little, clinking as of knife on 
 glass, and a dead murmur of voices in 
 the fog. 
 
 We straightened ourselves, and after a 
 moment of hesitation, my lord gave the 
 word to get out the oars, which we did 
 very gladly though with little noise, 
 pulling carefully, our mast-top lost in 
 the shifting roof. Very soon we could 
 hear the sound of the fighting coming 
 quite plainly over the dusky sea; and in 
 a little time thereafter, we saw, while 
 the vapour swirled back for a moment, 
 three brown hulks near together. We 
 lay on the edge of the foam-touched 
 space of water, catching occasionally 
 glimpses of the moving shapes: only a 
 large piece of wood floated past us. 
 
 Have you ever listened to a fight at 
 sea? The men were leaning over the 
 bulwarks, their hands on their axe- 
 handles, their feet grasping firmly the 
 deck. My lord raised himself in a mo 
 ment; we ran swiftly along the water
 
 An Incident 41 
 
 under the quick, ragged stroke, the ships 
 rose before us, we swept past the side 
 of the largest one, dropping the oars. 
 
 The man next to me leans back sud 
 denly just as my bow twangs; arrows 
 strike into the bulwarks. 
 
 Fierce faces and bent bows send their 
 sound of shouting and twanging at us 
 over the close side of the enemies' ship. 
 We thrust with our oars that slip along 
 the timbers; the arrows sing and streak 
 past, their long feathers grey like storks. 
 
 Then the ship by us turns off into the 
 fog with a dash of oars that sends the 
 white spray flashing for a moment ; it is 
 a shadowy form in the mist; a tall 
 brown thing disappears beside it; we 
 are alone on the smooth water with 
 the ship we have come to help. 
 
 The hillside is sprinkled with flowers, 
 the setting sun draws our attention 
 from them. " Come," says Lord Erik to 
 my lord, " let us go in." They walk 
 slowly over the darkening blossoms. 
 
 "Ever since you called out to me 
 through the fog," says Lord Erik, " and
 
 42 An Incident 
 
 came on with me and became my guest, 
 I have trusted you with all that I care, 
 or think, or am, and you have never 
 before told me of this." 
 
 My lord smiled rather sadly at the 
 handsome, eager, young face, where the 
 emotion of disappointment lay, like all 
 emotions on those expressive features, 
 bare. 
 
 "We do not always speak so easily of 
 what we like," he answered. 
 
 " Oh, it is like an old sail you speak 
 of her why do you not care?" And the 
 beardless mouth went down. "Does she 
 not like you ? " glancing at my lord's 
 strong limbs. 
 
 "Perhaps; girls do not usually love old 
 men," my lord answered, looking kindly, 
 amusedly, at the boy. 
 
 " You old ! You are not old ! I think 
 of you as something with me, you " 
 
 "Try your success with women, my 
 son," broke in my lord laughing ; " you, 
 a young lord come." 
 
 They went in. 
 
 A word about us. We were Eastern 
 men from the island ; my lord, old,
 
 An Incident 43 
 
 burned-out, though not with years, 
 restless deliberately silent, kind, secre 
 tive, and wise in some old-gained sad 
 kind knowledge of men. So we had 
 cruised where my lord was quiet, seem 
 ing content, till in the fog opportunity 
 brought us new friends, at whose sunny, 
 lonely town we were guests. When my 
 lord had told his host of the woman 
 to whom he was betrothed, idly, we men 
 who stood by watching noticed them 
 keenly, for we were interested in my 
 lord and the why of his choosing the 
 maiden. She, the daughter of a timid 
 lord, her mother dead a fair thing who 
 gave flowers to boys in fun. 
 
 This is what we were. 
 
 Now, whether it was the beer we drank 
 that night, or whether the long rest 
 though I think the long rest the 
 men began to speak in loud voices with 
 sea-tales. Now, the young lord, his slim 
 right hand on the great mug, laughed 
 to my lord: "Let us go and make some 
 sea-tales ! " and laughing, raised his mug 
 to his lips, glancing merrily at his guest 
 over the top as he drank.
 
 44 An Incident 
 
 "But your ship," said my lord looking 
 at him. 
 
 " Let us go in yours, mine is too battered," 
 answered young Erik. "Ah that was a 
 joy the fog and the shouting and the 
 grey ships ! " 
 
 His face grew pale in the light with 
 excitement. My lord seemed reluctant. 
 
 "Yes"; he said. "Where shaU we go?" 
 
 " There here anywhere ! " cried young 
 Erik, jumping to his feet and waving his 
 beer-mug to three points of the horizon. 
 
 "The men in my town will take care 
 of the harvest." 
 
 We were at sea again; my lord cynical 
 on the after-deck, young Erik talking 
 to the men. 
 
 We were passing a sand-spit that ran 
 out into the calm water just touched 
 with ripples. Over the top of the sand 
 we saw masts rising, and came out into 
 the open again, where we could see the 
 yellow over our sides through the light 
 green water, the sand-spit falling behind 
 we saw three great ships, heavy-masted, 
 long -yard -armed and with sharp prow.
 
 An Incident 45 
 
 These slowly neared with flapping sails, 
 and we could see that the decks were 
 crowded with men. They passed by, as 
 they went hailing us in rough tongue, 
 laughing out many-languaged questions 
 as to where we had come from. 
 
 Then came something that was very 
 strange. A few men and myself saw my 
 lord very slowly take up a cross-bow and 
 drawing it, deliberately shoot an arrow 
 into the side of one of the nearest ships. 
 A yell of defiance came over the water, 
 and young Erik cried to every man to 
 take his arms. 
 
 Why had my lord shot that arrow ? 
 Who can say? We do not know. 
 
 They came down on us singing Ice 
 landic songs, as is the custom of most of 
 these people, for the ships were princi 
 pally full of these men. 
 
 One ship passed close by us and the men 
 shouting over the sides, threw spears at 
 us as they went by, brushing us with 
 their oars. Then this ship rounded on 
 behind us, and the spears came in 
 showers over the stern. 
 
 But part of our men, dropping their
 
 46 An Incident 
 
 weapons, and throwing themselves at 
 the oars, drove us over the sparkling sea, 
 toward the ship that came gliding to 
 ward us, with a howl from the enemy 
 that reverberated in the ears of the 
 straining men inside our wooden bul 
 warks, our long prow cut into their ship's 
 side. I saw their mast bend away from 
 us. The other ship now came on, singing. 
 
 We shoot at her with our long-bows, 
 and the singing is turned to shouting as 
 they come toward us. My lord shouts to 
 pull on the right-hand oars and while 
 some of us tug wildly the others shoot 
 over the side. Slowly we turn, and the 
 heeling ship before us comes into view 
 over the bow slowly we turn, as the 
 third ship nears us. We move round, 
 and, their arrows in our faces, they go 
 sweeping by just by the oars grazing. 
 
 And now we can see the ship we have 
 run down as she turns over her deck to 
 us; the men tumble down the rowers' 
 benches; they leap into the water; she 
 settles sideways, the water bubbling. 
 
 Now come the two other ships from 
 behind us.
 
 An Incident 47 
 
 Young Lord Erik lies wounded on the 
 after-deck. Half of the men sit white, 
 about the arrow-struck mast. The other 
 two ships come on. 
 
 My lord cries to face them, and we 
 move slowly, seeing over the bow the 
 ships rush on over the place where their 
 comrades sank, striking the heads of the 
 swimming men with their oar-blades. 
 
 We drop our arms and, heaving three 
 times on the long- oars, send our ship 
 between the other two. 
 
 A flight of arrows, a glimpse on each 
 side of a passing mast they are behind 
 us. My lord calls from the after-deck, 
 "Row away, row away!" 
 
 Turning my head to look at him I see 
 him laughing, the bow still in his hand. 
 
 We rowed round the sand-spit, and as 
 we went round it we saw the two ships 
 close together picking up men from where 
 a mast stuck up out of the light-green 
 water. 
 
 "It is the second time we have been 
 comrades," said young Lord Erik, his right 
 arm bandaged, gazing up palely at my 
 lord as they stood by the rail.
 
 48 An Incident 
 
 My lord smiled. 
 "Yes, true," he said. 
 
 We were running along a forest-covered 
 strand, where the roots of old trees gnarled 
 themselves into the water. 
 
 "Now we must go to the hall that I 
 told you about," said my lord. 
 
 "Yes and see the girl I am so eager 
 to see!" exclaimed young Lord Erik, his 
 white face lighting as he gazed up smil 
 ing to my lord. 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 "Ah," he said, "it is both pleasant and 
 good," and he gazed along the depleted 
 seats. 
 
 The next day there was a strange ex 
 citement in my lord's eyes, and we began 
 to put together our clothes. And late in 
 the afternoon we came into the little bay 
 on the shore of which lay old Raud's 
 castle. We ran through the water haul 
 ing our ship up with cables, and with 
 shouting from the people coming welcom- 
 ingly down from the castle, we hastened 
 up the beach. 
 
 As we sat over the meat that night, a
 
 An Incident 49 
 
 curtain was pulled aside from the door by 
 Lord Raud's chair, and he, rising feebly, 
 my lord slowly, and smiling, and young 
 Lord Erik jumping to his feet eagerly, 
 we saw her come gliding in whom we 
 had seen often before. She gave her hand 
 timidly, yet with a little laugh, to my 
 lord, shyly yet kindly to young Lord Erik, 
 and welcomed them as her guests as her 
 father had welcomed them as his at the 
 castle-door as we passed over it. How 
 such a maiden could be the daughter of 
 such a feeble, timid, dainty old man as 
 Lord Raud, I could never know. As a 
 child pretending to ask for forgiveness 
 was her face half-laughing and half-sor 
 rowful. Her moving was like a ripple of 
 blown cloth, it was so springing grace 
 ful. And her eyes, when they occasionally 
 looked at you, had a woman's innocence, 
 never a man's straightforwardness. 
 
 It was sun-set three days later. Walk 
 ing on the beach I could see my lord and 
 Hildur pacing slowly, he laughing, along 
 the grass that stretched by the path to 
 the houses in the wood. The scene was 
 lit up by one of the sometimes far-reach- 
 D
 
 so An Incident 
 
 ing clear sunsets of autumn. I could see 
 her hand raised in remonstrance, and 
 though I was too far, 1 could see that 
 they were both laughing. Presently she 
 nodded her head of gold hair to him, and 
 turned into the castle-door, leaving him 
 alone in the soft, far, unusual, light. He 
 turned. 
 
 As he moved, I saw that he was not 
 laughing. As he came down to the 
 beach, I could see the same excitement 
 in his eyes that had always been there 
 when he came near her, since his hair 
 began to grizzle, and she used to bring 
 the cynical old father's friend his beer 
 in the great hall after meat a little 
 maiden. 
 
 He passed me and turning at a word 
 behind me, I saw him meet young Lord 
 Erik; smiling again. But the young man's 
 face was troubled, that face on which 
 all emotions were like shadows on even 
 water. 
 
 Not a word, after my lord's greeting, 
 passed. 
 
 Suddenly, my lord called to me over his 
 shoulder :
 
 An Incident 51 
 
 "Lord Erik wishes to go home, wilt thou 
 take ship with him and come back to me?" 
 
 Their figures were dim in the lessened 
 light. 
 
 " Let another man go ; I stay. Send one 
 of the younger men," I answered. 
 
 My lord held out his hand to me. Young 
 Lord Erik's face was white in the dusk. 
 
 Over our beer, by the fire-light, I could 
 see the glances Hildur threw to young 
 Lord Erik, I could see his hard-shut 
 mouth; I could see my lord's cynical 
 smile and the gleam of the excitement 
 in his eyes; I could see old Lord Raud, 
 daintily fingering his beer - mug - handle 
 thoughts far away. And I was glad I 
 had stayed by my lord. 
 
 So, the next day young Lord Erik went 
 north with the ship. And my lord stood 
 on the beach smiling gaily and called 
 out gay words of next summer. And 
 the young face brightened for a moment 
 as the ship drew away. 
 
 Well, all that day I followed my lord 
 about, smiling at his gay moods, quiet 
 when he forgot which gave me plea 
 sure. I am sure he tried to leave me
 
 52 An Incident 
 
 behind him sometimes, after mid-day, 
 by fast walking, but I came. And to 
 ward evening, as we tramped back along 
 the beach to the hall, I coming behind, 
 my lord turned, and started running. In 
 a moment I caught him; and he bent 
 suddenly over my shoulder, with a sound 
 like a seal grunting. So, I held him for 
 a moment till he shook himself into him 
 self again and walked up towards the 
 castle, I falling back again; we never 
 said anything about this. 
 
 Now I go out on a long ending, that is 
 only true. After some days of silent 
 smiling on the part of Hildur to me she 
 looked very ugly and much laughter 
 which cheered old Lord Raud on the 
 part of my lord, he asked Lord Baud to 
 give him the maiden now, for he was 
 anxious to take her away. So my lord 
 spoke to her about it, and she said yes. 
 
 Then we went away; and old Lord Raud 
 stood on the beach, our ship being back, 
 and large tears came down from his eyes. 
 So we all went home again and took the 
 maiden with us. 
 
 There is little use in telling a tale of
 
 An Incident 53 
 
 women. Yet some scenes rest with me 
 that concern my lord, so I tell it all. 
 Thus those two used to walk past the 
 door of the hall, and past again, while I 
 stood in the doorway ; and I would hear 
 what they said, for my lord did not care 
 for me, and it was very loving. But 
 after it was over he would go down to 
 the water and look out, and stretch his 
 arms, and yawn then break in with a 
 laugh and walk back again. 
 
 Often in mid-summer came ships, and 
 their men were well fed and liked us. 
 
 Hildur used to be gay now only when 
 these ships would come; in the winter 
 she was silent. 
 
 The house was badly kept; many times 
 I have made rough sowing for my lord, 
 so that he would not know. 
 
 When spring came and the sea was 
 bright at the early morning, we would 
 often get drunk in the hall toward night 
 after standing watching the glancing of 
 little waves through the lazy day. I 
 used to put water in my lord's beer 
 that he might not drink too much. He 
 never used to speak of young Erik now;
 
 54 An Incident 
 
 of which I was glad; he was only a 
 boy. 
 
 So the spring went by and the green 
 of the leaves grew darker and the sun 
 light lingered over the sea till late. There 
 were no good dishes in the hall, and the 
 women who cooked never thought of the 
 things my lord liked. Hildur would go 
 to her chamber early, and we all would 
 wander out along the sea-shore, away 
 from the clatter of dishes the women 
 made. And when it grew dark we would 
 come in and sing over great beer-tank 
 ards ; but we loved the beer better than 
 the soon -died -out singing. 
 
 We were weary in the sunshine, and 
 old sea-sagas came to us so easily. The 
 women were cross, and children cried, 
 instead of running about in the forest. 
 I do not know what is in man, or how 
 himself works on himself; we are parts 
 of the woods, the sea, the far light. The 
 spring was running into summer ; the free 
 air in the night made us gasp like tired 
 dogs, and we felt smothered. 
 
 That night my lord sat on a piece of 
 rock overlooking the sea, I was behind
 
 An Incident 55 
 
 him. All in front of us was dark, but 
 we could hear the sound of the water 
 come from away and all along the coast. 
 
 Then, out of the silence that lies 
 under the world, came over the edge of 
 the sea, the bare, silver, edge of the 
 moon, lighting slowly the tips of the 
 waves. No mist around her; the un 
 roofed, upward depths of the sky, full 
 of suspended stars, that seemed to wink, 
 being alive. She rose out of the sea, 
 reaching toward us the elves-bridge she 
 carries, over which we cannot see the 
 spirits pass; sending out her still beckon 
 ing that she sends to all men. The 
 little waves danced joyously in the light ; 
 there was no sound at all from the 
 shore, only the water whispering on the 
 sands. 
 
 My lord sat black, in the moonlight. 
 After a while he got up and returned 
 toward the shadowy hall. 
 
 He went in and took a great tankard of 
 beer from my hand and drank, then 
 turned toward me. 
 
 "The beer is warm too warm," he said. 
 "What a beautiful night. The beer is too
 
 56 An Incident 
 
 warm." He waved his hand with one of 
 his old indifferent gestures, his mouth 
 trembling. I filled him another tankard 
 of beer; he drank it at a drink and then 
 asked for another, this he also drank and 
 threw himself down on a bench. " Drink ! " 
 he said, "drink!" laughing loud. 
 
 I drink with him again and again. He 
 leans back on his bench laughing. "Ah. 
 old war-follower!" he cries, his voice ring 
 ing strange in the empty moonlit hall. 
 "Dost thou remember our first cruise? 
 We took the battleship ! and that other ; 
 where we were caught in the ice. Dost 
 thou remember Lord Raud ? Ah ! that 
 was a grand time. And when we chased 
 the bears in Lord Snore's forest. Through 
 all our cruises; that old ship off Norway 
 that we chased and frightened so? See 
 the moonlight!" he said, suddenly, and 
 stopped laughing. Then, with a wave of 
 his long arm, he leaned back and called 
 out again. " Jolly war-dog ! Ah ! another 
 tankard; Skaal! Skaal! to our old times! 
 Skaal! Ah! Old war-dog! It is not good 
 for men to put their hearts on women. 
 They find them empty; there is no water
 
 An Incident 57 
 
 in an unfilled pitcher better the old sea- 
 shells, like us, that are always filled. Do 
 you know," and he started up and shook 
 his beer-tankard in the moonlight, a tall 
 figure, "that, since I was a young man, I 
 have loved that woman ! She was a little 
 
 Be silent! A ghost comes!" He grasped 
 
 my arm. 
 
 There, gliding in all in white through 
 the door at the side of the hall came 
 Hildur like a spirit in the moonlight. She 
 spoke from where she stood, and our de 
 lusion of a spirit was scattered. For she 
 spoke cross, empty words, as she stood 
 by the disorderly hearth complaining of 
 neglect. 
 
 I stood by my lord's bench, and I saw 
 the old excitement come into his eyes. 
 She went on complaining; beautiful in the 
 moonlight. My lord raised his tankard and 
 took a long drink, then with the same old 
 cynical laugh, he stood there; and she 
 stopped. Then my hands gripped the back 
 of the bench, for my lord, still laughing, 
 threw the empty tankard at her with all 
 his force. I saw her lie white in the 
 moonlight. So that is ended.
 
 58 An Incident 
 
 The next day we buried her, who had 
 died from a fall from the hall-terrace 
 to the rocks beneath. And in the after- 
 mid-day, we sailed in our ship, past the 
 green woods. We sailed north to young 
 Lord Erik's town, and found him married, 
 and happy with kisses and things. So 
 we sailed away again laughing at this 
 easy consolement, and my lord was very 
 gay at the pleasure of the sea. 
 
 Soon the men were brown, and the sun 
 shone above level waters, and we sailed 
 lazily past dense woods. 
 
 Thus one day, as we landed to cook our 
 meat under the trees, one of the men 
 thought he saw a glance of armour away 
 off in the forest. But thinking it was 
 only the sunlight on one of the beech- 
 trunks, we cooked and sat down to our 
 meat. 
 
 They came running out of the forest, 
 trying to break past us to get to the 
 ship. There was clank of swords on 
 armour, and the smoke from the fire 
 wavered from its straight column; then, 
 they drew back. Their chief came from 
 the beach-reaches now, and laughing said
 
 An Incident 59 
 
 they had lost their ship, so, seeing ours, 
 had tried to rush into it, and get away 
 before we could beat them off. 
 
 So we asked them to sit and have meat 
 with us, and they sat down ; though we 
 were careful of our arms till they had 
 eaten. 
 
 And the next day we landed them at 
 a town, where they might build another 
 ship. 
 
 This is the tale of the marriage of my 
 lord just as it happened.
 
 WHERE THE WOLVES DANCE
 
 WHERE THE WOLVES DANCE 
 
 THREE years before, in the winter time, 
 I had brought my wife Elsa from her 
 father's, loving her as fools and lonely 
 men love dogs and women. So I kept 
 ever near her, but was shy of her. Now 
 this is the tale of a very strange thing, 
 and it begins from her. Though my hall 
 stood far to the west on the main, where 
 even the sight of the sand-hills could be 
 found from the highest tower, yet there 
 were trees and gardens on the other side, 
 and paths ran down to little ponds, and 
 cattle browsed over rich uplands and 
 sheep grew fat. There were sixty men in 
 my hall; heavy men and slow, but slow 
 to change, and as their fathers leant 
 before them, so they leant also from the 
 worn castle windows, and the window- 
 sills were smooth with the rubbing of 
 their elbows. As to the hall and its 
 build, there is little need be said. It was 
 
 63
 
 64 Where the Wolves Dance 
 
 square and large, and partly of stone, 
 with a banquetting - hall, and enough of 
 small rooms and of cellars for the stor 
 age of meat and milk and beer. In the 
 summer sometimes I would go down to 
 the coast, and crossing in my ship over 
 to Foen, buy cattle or grain or go to 
 the south ports for some strange rare 
 thing for my lady; thus it was for three 
 years, and contentment had grown round 
 me like a woof. 
 
 So one day a horseman came riding 
 slowly. He bore to me a message that 
 three of the priests of the Lord-Bishop of 
 Lund demanded shelter that night under 
 my roof. I was standing dressed in my 
 best leather suit and with my handsomest 
 sword-belt by my chair at the head of the 
 table, when the door swung open and 
 they entered. They came slowly up the 
 hall into the light, and lifting their heads 
 when they came to the bottom steps at 
 the top of which I stood, they showed 
 the faces of three old worldly men, fed 
 on the follies and the agonies of man. 
 They were all pale and stooping, but the 
 one to the right, a tall man with one
 
 Where the Wolves Dance 65 
 
 shoulder higher than the other, bent the 
 most, and leant upon the shortest priest, 
 who was in the middle. 
 
 "Greeting," I said; "you are most welcome." 
 They advanced up the steps and the 
 tall old priest stepped towards me and 
 blessed me in a low voice, and then 
 asked to be shown to his room. I con 
 ducted him myself, leading the way to 
 the apartment with a candle, and the 
 two others followed, their arms crossed 
 over their chests. Thus came the learned 
 Father Cefron into my house. Next 
 morning the two other priests departed 
 in haste, the way they had come, to 
 inform the Lord Bishop of Lund that 
 the learned Father Cefron was ill and 
 like to die, which indeed seemed to be 
 true. I sat by his bedside as he lay 
 with his face to the wall, his shaven 
 head looking dark against the bed-clothes. 
 "When will he come? When will he 
 come?" he would murmur; then clench 
 ing his hands and turning towards me 
 and sticking both fists out, " I want the 
 boy," he said; then flinging his face to 
 the wall impatiently. This kept on for 
 B
 
 66 Where the Wolves Dance 
 
 two days, till I sent a messenger to the 
 one of the two priests whom I had liked 
 most (the fat one), asking who he, "the 
 boy," was, and telling him how the 
 learned Father Cefron lay calling for 
 him and would not be quiet. In eight 
 days there came back my messenger, say 
 ing that he, the boy, would follow on, 
 and would probably be at the hall to 
 morrow morning early. So it was. While 
 I was yet in bed I heard the barking of 
 dogs in the courtyard, and the cracking 
 of whips, and the voices of the men call 
 ing to one another, and the clatter of 
 their wooden shoes on the stones. I sent 
 word that he should at once be taken to 
 Father Cefron if so be that Father Cefron 
 was awake ; and he went quickly and I 
 did not see him at all till after noon that 
 day. Then, as I rose from my meat the 
 men had already trooped out of the hall, 
 their dinner over there entered through 
 the tapestried door a tall, broad-backed, 
 narrow hipped, slim - limbed, youth, who 
 held his head high, and bore eyes full of 
 laughter under his wild light hair. 
 
 " My Lord Olaf ," he said, extending
 
 Where the Wolves Dance 67 
 
 his hand, " I ask your pardon for coming 
 late to my meat; but good Father Cefron 
 has wanted me with him. I have been 
 much with him since a child, you know." 
 
 I welcomed him as a guest should be 
 welcomed, and called for more meat to 
 be placed before him and some ale ; but 
 the ale he only sipped and I sent to 
 the back of my cellars for some bottles 
 of Southern wine, which he liked much 
 better and thanked me for, and which I 
 liked him the less for liking better than 
 the ale. When we had drank and eaten, 
 we rose, and taking my arm, he walked 
 with me up and down the end of the hall. 
 "Old Father Cefron," he began, "is 
 a learned man, but a man who has 
 kept too strictly within the rules of 
 his order ; he lacks blood, therefore 
 he lacks heart ; he has only a head, 
 but that head is one whose like will 
 not be seen in Skandinavia again in 
 this century " ; and the youth's voice was 
 touched with enthusiasm. "Now why it 
 is I do not know, but having killed the 
 man in him over ponderous books, he 
 feels he must have me to put some
 
 68 Where the Wolves Dance 
 
 laughter in his life, and give him some 
 thing human to think of for the moment 
 when he is tired of the battles and 
 treaties and that of dead kings; there 
 fore it is, my lord and host, that I would 
 venture to ask of you as Father Cefron 
 has asked me to ask of you indeed has 
 commanded that you let me stay with 
 him here in the castle till the term of 
 his life is ended, which seems not very 
 long." 
 
 So young Heinrick became one of my 
 household, and though I never liked him 
 for his dainty ways and foreign pretti- 
 nesses, yet I became used to him, and his 
 figure was familiar on the edges of my 
 fish-ponds, in the corridors of my hall, 
 and was seldom absent when the time 
 for eating came. He seemed to be much 
 with Father Cefron in the early evening, 
 and I could hear Father Cefron's groans 
 come from his chamber sometimes when 
 I passed by the door ; and he was good 
 at wrestling tricks, and quick to a wonder 
 at southern fence, yet I liked him none 
 the better, and I could see that the men 
 liked him neither, for they would not learn
 
 Where the Wolves Dance 69 
 
 his wrestling tricks till pressed almost to 
 command, and I could see them whisper 
 ing and glancing after him as he passed 
 by. By this time my Lady Elsa and 
 myself lived as most loving people. I 
 would take her to the fish-ponds, and 
 she would scream and find delight in the 
 excitement; or sometimes she would come 
 to meet me through the wood with some 
 of her women and some men to folloAV, 
 and I would come making the wood 
 hoarsely musical through my curved horn, 
 and bring her deer from the uplands and 
 great hares shot with crossbow, and some 
 times little birds, very hard to come near, 
 which dwell among the sand-hills to the 
 westward; then she would always have 
 flowers in her room; in the winter ever 
 greens and the mystical, bunched, mistle 
 toe, and ever my favourite meats and 
 green things, cooked or wild, all the year 
 were before me. 
 
 It was as the winter came on that I fell 
 ill and the fever came into me; and after 
 lying for three days I tried to get up out 
 of my bed. I can remember them carry 
 ing me back there, and I can remember
 
 70 Where the Wolves Dance 
 
 them saying, "He has gone mad with the 
 fever." Then I think that in the night I did 
 go mad with the fever, for they told me 
 afterwards that I howled and yelled and 
 screamed for my sword to fight the gnomes 
 and hobgoblins, and the things of hell and 
 air; but, as I say, this I only learned long 
 afterwards. I strove with death hard- 
 handed, and I held him in my grasp, and 
 he could not throw me; and at last the 
 wrestle came to an end, for he slipped 
 from me and disappeared, and I lay on 
 the bed with wide-open eyes, my white 
 face making the rough men who were in 
 the room use words of which they were 
 ashamed after, to me. Then came my 
 wife, and her hand pulled the last of the 
 fever from me ; but the wrestle had left me 
 very tired, and I lay many days knowing 
 little. At last I could sit in the great 
 chair by the window on sunny days, and 
 look forth over the snows that covered 
 my uplands and count the familiar trees 
 which stuck up black out of the snow 
 drifts. Then they wrapped me in many 
 coats, and with a man on each side of me 
 I came down into the hall again, my wife
 
 behind me. It was the time of noonday 
 meat, and the men rose with a hoarse 
 shout as they saw me and pressed for 
 ward with outspread hands; but my Lady 
 Elsa was before them in a moment, and 
 her green robe shone strangely against 
 their skin-clad bodies. She stopped them 
 with gentle, firm words, asking them to 
 let me get to the great chair that I might 
 sit down, for I was come to eat a bite 
 with them and drink a sup of ale; and the 
 men sat down with a sigh, such as dogs 
 give of contentment after full feeding. 
 So I sat me down, and they brought me 
 a tiny bird on a little plate and I could 
 only eat half of it. Then they brought 
 me a great tankard of ale, and I raised 
 it to my lips and drank the half of it, 
 and I felt the manhood rush to my feet, 
 and then to my head again, and through 
 my arms as I put the mug back on the 
 table, and the men nodded to one another 
 as saying, "It is well done for a sick man." 
 Then slowly I finished the rest of the ale, 
 then walked feebly to the fire and stood 
 there warming myself. Then the two men 
 who stood by me led me back to my
 
 72 Where the Wolves Dance 
 
 chamber, and my wife followed, laying 
 cool cloths on my head. Now every day 
 I walked feebly to my meat in the hall, 
 but it was not till the third day that I 
 began to notice something strange about 
 the men. They would look at me with 
 a great curiosity, and some of them with 
 seeming contempt, at which I said nothing: 
 and one of the two men who had been 
 my nurses in the sick chamber would fol 
 low me even through the gardens, as I 
 walked slowly abroad with a staff for the 
 keen frosty air; so that after some weeks 
 I spoke to my lady about it, but she 
 answered me, shaking her hair about her 
 shoulders, that she knew not these western 
 peasants as I did, and that in her father's 
 hall there had been no suspicions and no 
 glances of double meaning. Then spoke 
 I to the man who followed me so faith 
 fully as I have said, but he would an 
 swer nothing save that he thought that 
 something was in the air, and that the 
 spring would bring new flowers. Then 
 asked I of young Heinrick, who still 
 awaited the death of Father Cefron, with 
 those laughing eyes under the wild light
 
 Where the Wolves Dance 73 
 
 hair; but he laughed at me again, and 
 told me that I was a sick man on one 
 side of my head now and suspected 
 everybody, and that I should send for a 
 physician to plaster me if he could 
 find the side. Now old Father Cefron 
 seemed to have dried into one of his 
 own parchments, and his hide wrinkled, 
 and almost rattled, as he walked. Though 
 he came to eat with us in the hall on 
 holy days, and said long prayers with 
 somewhat worldly warnings after, yet he 
 would on most days eat in his own cham 
 ber, and that of the least and coarsest, 
 and would drink only of the ice-cold 
 water from the well. I went to him at 
 last and questioned him, and asked him if 
 he had noticed the glances cast upon me, 
 and the whispering and the sudden ceas 
 ing of the women's tongues when I came 
 into the room, but he answered "No!" that 
 he had noticed none of these things, for 
 he was too much taken up in battles and 
 kings and the histories of nations, to see 
 aught that passed about him; and then 
 he told me of the ancient days, and of 
 the mighty, warm, strange, empires of the
 
 74 Where the Wolves Dance 
 
 south and east, and spoke a hundred 
 names of battles and knew every half- 
 month of the history of the Church; and 
 so I left him, comforted with learning, 
 and went and sat and looked out on the 
 snow, and thought of all that he had said. 
 
 The acts of the night that broke my 
 life were short and quick, yet they are 
 too long for the telling; still I will try, 
 for without them you will not under 
 stand the strange end of this tale by the 
 grey wolves. 
 
 It was the next night after this, and I 
 had sat late in the hall, just beginning 
 now to find strength enough to think 
 of what I should do with my lands and 
 cattle when the soft weather and spring- 
 tune came at last. Sighing and putting 
 these thoughts away from me as some 
 thing too far off to be yet of use, I rose 
 and through the darkened hall passed 
 through the tapestried doorway and up 
 the dimly-lighted stair, where the candles 
 were distant, to my wife's room, before 
 which hung a curtain that I had bought 
 her in the Port of Swenborg from a ship 
 that had come from the east countries,
 
 Where the Wolves Dance 75 
 
 and as I raised the curtain in my hand, 
 seeing by the faint light of one candle 
 high on the wall behind me the great 
 oak panels of her familiar door, I stopped. 
 I stood still, the curtain in my hand, and 
 the light flickered over the saints' heads 
 carved on the oaken panels, and over my 
 head. At the arch of the doorway stood 
 an oak figure of a saint only the project 
 ing edges of whose robe and face could be 
 seen in the candle-light. I stood there 
 while the candle blew and flamed ; I heard 
 its dripping on the floor ; I glanced once 
 toward the staircase, where the descend 
 ing uncertain lights led down into the 
 dusk and darkness. Somewhere in the 
 distance outside the hall I heard a man 
 singing in a coarse voice, then his com 
 rades joined in the chorus, and I heard 
 their "skaals." I stood there holding the 
 curtain while the stairs creaked mysteri 
 ously as to the ears of a weary and sick 
 man, and while, through the window 
 near me, curtaining clouds flitted past the 
 face of the moon as she looked down on 
 the infinite purity of the untrod white 
 below.
 
 76 Where the Wolves Dance 
 
 Then I dropped the curtain, and stealing 
 down the stairs like a thief in my own 
 house, I came again into the great hall, 
 and I went and took down my sword from 
 its place, and I sat me down in the great 
 arm - chair piling the cushions around 
 me, with my sword across the arms 
 and my hands resting on its sheath. 
 At last the dawn came faintly; then 
 a long stain of yellow light struck across 
 the ribbed and worn floor; then for a 
 moment, a glorious red glowed through 
 the windows, and then this faded and the 
 ashes of the dead fire, and the broken 
 meats that strewed the table, and the 
 tankards that lay on the floor, sprang 
 out under the truthful day. Then began 
 to come in the women to carry out the 
 things of last night, and when they saw 
 me sitting there alone, they curtseyed and 
 looked frightened and would have turned 
 back, but I spoke to them quietly to clear 
 the floor and build up the fire, for it was 
 a cold morning and the men must have 
 good meat; and after a while came in 
 some ragged boys carrying bunches of 
 branches and some hauling great bundles
 
 Where the Wolves Dance 77 
 
 of logs with roots, and these they rolled 
 into the fireplace piling the branches 
 above them. Then one of the women, 
 bringing a sack of dry leaves arranged 
 them carefully among the branches and 
 under the places where the bark of the 
 logs was rough. Then, with a flint and 
 steel, an old woman knelt and touched 
 the dry leaves into a flame that was dull 
 in a moment. The branches caught, and 
 crackling, sent ends of flaming twigs wild 
 up the chimney. Then at last the great 
 logs at the back began to smoke, and soon 
 their bark caught fire, and their chopped 
 ends played with the eager flame, so all 
 the hall was warmed and a thin smoke 
 sailing up about the rafters. Then came 
 they with great hooks that were made 
 fast to turning cranes driven in the fire 
 place wall, and on these hooks were sides 
 of deer and legs of sheep, with pans below 
 and ladles that no richness might be lost, 
 and thick brown cakes were piled along 
 the table-centre in a row; and now four 
 men came rolling in two casks of un- 
 broached beer, and these they set below 
 the table's edge down at the end. The
 
 women lifted a great cauldron on to the 
 fire, that glowed like some sprites' cauldron 
 of black-art ; it held fowls and green things 
 floating in the midst, the gravy sizzing 
 at the sides. Then the old woman who 
 had lit the fire went to the doorway 
 and took down a great sea-shell that 
 hung there and she blew a hateful blast 
 that broke the very air, and all the men 
 came trooping to their meat. 
 
 That morn was the holy morn of Easter, 
 and Cefroii came to share our meat, his 
 elbow sideways over Heinrick's shoulder. 
 My wife came later, and was blessed 
 and sat. When Father Cefron had done 
 his prayers, and given his pious warnings 
 to the men, the food went from the 
 table in a turn of the hand, for the 
 morning was very cold and the men were 
 hungry and the ale warm from the fire, 
 where the men placed it. It flowed down 
 thirsty throats like strong streams into 
 caverns. When all had eaten and turned 
 their stools apart from the board and 
 leant their backs thereon or stretched 
 their legs and arms in full content, I rose 
 from my great chair at the head of all
 
 Where the Wolves Dance 79 
 
 the table of my house, and with no word 
 to her who was my wife, I pointed and 
 I spoke to Heinrich quietly: 
 
 "You will meet me in holmgang, in 
 the cleared snow, before the hall's great 
 door, when the sun is even overhead, and 
 you will light me till you are dead, or 
 I am dead." 
 
 He rose slowly to his feet, his face 
 grew a dark red and his eyes seemed to 
 go back under his brows in his anger. He 
 said no word but stood there steadily look 
 ing at me. I seemed to feel his question 
 how much I knew, and with one glance at 
 Father Cefron's lifted claw-like hand, and 
 one glance at the white face of Elsa, who 
 was my wife, I answered in a low voice : 
 
 "I stood outside the door of Elsa, my 
 wife, last night, after the moon had risen, 
 and I held the curtain, and I listened to 
 the voices, and I listened for a long time, 
 and then I came away." 
 
 There was a sudden tearing of cloth, 
 and a flutter behind me, and looking I 
 saw Elsa, who was my wife, fall through 
 the doorway which led from the banquet- 
 ing-hall. Then young Heinrich turned
 
 so Where the Wolves Dance 
 
 the broadness of his back to me and 
 stood a moment his right hand to his 
 chin. Then he came to his place at the 
 board again and sat down and began 
 to eat; but as he raised the first mouth 
 ful of meat to his lips, he nodded to me, 
 as to a horse - cleaner. I sat down and 
 drank, for I would eat no more, while 
 Father Cefron wept the tears of a very 
 old man in a corner, laughing some 
 times, and then raising his hand and 
 seeming to curse us in laughing. The 
 men sat silent with their brows drawn 
 down. Only there was a smile on some 
 of their faces when they looked at me 
 a heavy smile of kindness. 
 
 As the shades grew shorter and we 
 could hear the sound of the swish of 
 the brooms in the snow outside the door, 
 Father Cefron regained his senses, and 
 rising, and tottering toward me, and 
 grasping each shoulder with a clutching 
 hand, he tried to shake me, murmuring 
 curses on the old gods meanwhile and 
 sending them all to Hell in Latin and 
 Danish. Then he began to blame me, 
 and though he did not curse me as he
 
 Where the Wolves Dance 81 
 
 had done the gods, yet he so poured out 
 words that I had need to stop my ears 
 to get away from their cold reasoning. 
 Then he spoke for a long time on the 
 hereafter, and told me the stories of the 
 saints, and then he cursed the devil and 
 his works, and then he prayed for me. 
 Then rising, he commanded us both by 
 name, his hands raised in the air and 
 his white sleeves falling back from his 
 bony forearms, to leave this holmgang 
 or else we were cursed. He sank upon 
 his knees and prayed to us, and then 
 the shadow from a tall, gaunt tree that I 
 was watching from the window touched 
 its foot, and lifting my sword I turned 
 to where young Heinrick sat, his deep 
 brows wrinkled and his hair pulled down, 
 and walked to where he stood. He did not 
 move. I reached and touched him with 
 my sheathed sword. Slowly he got up, 
 and turning from me he went to the 
 wall where his fair rapier hung. Then 
 he came back to where I stood, and 
 stopped. We stood so for a little while ; 
 then calling to one of the men who stood 
 near, I cried hoarsely, "Touch him with 
 F
 
 82 Where the Wolves Dance 
 
 the spit," and I could see the red of the 
 back of his neck fail into whiteness as 
 he went before me striding fast dow r n 
 the hall. I turned when we got to the 
 doorway. Far away, by my great chair, 
 knelt old Father Cefron, his head covered 
 with the sleeves of his robe, and by the 
 fireplace three or four women were cry 
 ing with their faces in the corner. 
 
 It was a short holnigang. When we 
 were ready I rushed him quickly, for I 
 had my old heavy sword and his thing 
 was light; but he sprang aside from me, 
 and my sword whizzed past his shoulder. 
 Then I turned and rushed him again, and 
 again he sprang aside, his sword brushing 
 my hair; and again I rushed him, and 
 again he jumped aside, this time he struck 
 me through the right forearm. So it went 
 on till the shadows began to creep a little 
 way from the trees, and I was very bloody 
 and he had but one hurt; and then as 
 I drew back to hit him, caring little for 
 myself, his sword was through me, and I 
 fell and kicked up the snow, then turned 
 on my back. Then suddenly I was still 
 and men pressed around me, saying, "He
 
 is dead"; but, I saw with my open eyes, 
 Heinrick leap upon the ice-crust, and with 
 his naked sword cutting the air as he 
 ran in rage or wantonness, he fled, and 
 was so far away that my men stood 
 there staring. Then they carried me back 
 to the banqueting-hall and through into my 
 own chamber, and as we passed the kneel 
 ing figure of Father Cefron, I heard the 
 men who carried me answer to the women 
 by the fire, who whispered to them, " Dead 
 on Easter morning, 'tis an awful day; but 
 old men die, and so has Father Cefron 
 though he was a learned man." 
 
 Late that day the women came and 
 washed me in my chamber and swathed 
 me in white folds, and they pulled down 
 my eyes so that I could not see, and they 
 pushed up my jaws, but it seemed I needed 
 not to breathe ; and that night three women 
 and a man sat with me all night, and the 
 next night after that two women, and the 
 next night after that one man, he who had 
 followed me through the gardens before I 
 had found about Elsa, who was my wife ; 
 and on the fourth morning, late after the
 
 sunrise, they lifted me and carried me 
 forth upon their shoulders, a great white 
 cloth with fringes hanging over me; and 
 then I heard the tramp of many feet, and 
 women crying, and the consoling tones of 
 men, and I heard the pipe of children 
 in the distance, and the crackling of the 
 snow beneath the feet of the four men who 
 bore me; and at last they laid me down 
 upon the stones and they pulled down 
 the cloth from my face and then I heard 
 a voice speaking very low the voice of 
 Elsa, who had been my wife, "Peace be 
 to thee where thou art"; and I tried to 
 turn from the cold breath for I could 
 feel the cold as I could feel the warmth of 
 that breath but I could not, for my flesh 
 was dead but my spirit lived within me. 
 Then they carried me into some dank- 
 smelling place ; I knew they had to stoop, 
 for I could hear their shoulders scrump 
 along the passage, they laid me down on 
 a shelf of stone and took the white thing 
 quite away, and then they left me, and 
 then I heard a sound of labouring at 
 the door, and then a crash. 
 Slowly in the darkness I fell away, but
 
 Where the Wolves Dance 85 
 
 the life that runs through the body 
 gathered itself away from the fallen parts, 
 and when I was brown and thin my self 
 burnt strong, and then I heard a note 
 of freedom in the dark. It was like 
 music, as my body went, and as my legs 
 and arms became slim sticks, and as the 
 years made my hands and feet not like 
 human hands and feet, and as the inside 
 of my body dried and fell; and one spring 
 and summer passed and my spirit grew 
 ever nearer its birth, I heard the sound 
 less music breathing freedom night and 
 day. At last my brain grew hard as my 
 heart had grown years before, and all the 
 parts of me decayed and shrivelled up 
 until I was a brown, slim, wrinkled, hide 
 that held some bones : no more. At last 
 a great storm shook the place one night, 
 and snow came in and wind and rain, 
 and then my spirit was freed at last ; 
 for, sagging from its place, a rock fell 
 inwards where I lay, and my brown bones 
 were crushed and scattered. 
 
 Then I rose through the storm of the 
 night, and I held to the tops of the trees, 
 and I dropped and the water drenched
 
 86 Where the Wolves Dance 
 
 me as it rushed past the banks of the 
 streams, and I seized branches in the 
 moonlight and threw them aloft and had 
 joy to see the wind carry them. Then I 
 came to myself again, and coming to the 
 earth, tramped through the wood, to give 
 me customs as live mortals have; for I 
 was alive, having been killed, and though 
 my body was dead and myself invisible but 
 potent with hard grasp of hand, and flight 
 in air, and strength of foot, I walked on 
 the earth a thing that no God surely 
 ever wished to make in his creation. I 
 was a man with all a man's forces and 
 all a man's heat, but I was as air to 
 everything, and I held myself as I pleased. 
 Soon I came to the old hall, and entering 
 through the great door for doors were 
 nothing to me, yet I could open and shut 
 them with my hands I found the banquet 
 ing hall most desolate and only some few 
 seats now near the fire; and passing on 
 into the upper rooms I heard deep snor 
 ing coming from one of them, and look 
 ing in, I saw a young man that I did 
 not know, who lay and slept beside a 
 great wolf-dog. The wolf-dog turned and
 
 Where the Wolves Dance 87 
 
 raised its head and howled, and I crept 
 down the stairs again and out and on. 
 
 So all that night I journeyed toward 
 the shore, and as the morning broke the 
 far blue ice stretched before me and I 
 travelled on. I travelled on over the ice- 
 cakes, shoving on with my rusty sword 
 where water was; and so from crack 
 to crack and block to block, I crept 
 until 1 was half-way across ; then I sat 
 down and laughed and nearly fell back 
 into the water, for the ice-block tipped. 
 I had forgotten that the air was mine, 
 and that as the birds, or as the winged 
 men and women that the priests have 
 in pictures, I could go where I would; 
 so I rose from the ice, and the wind 
 sang across my rusty sword-hilt, and the 
 air was keen, so that I opened wide 
 my mouth and crossed the ice to land. 
 So in three days I saw a great smoke 
 rising, and a low stone hill that lay be 
 tween the last snow and the bend of the 
 sky. This I passed over in the night 
 time, and the lights shone there for 
 miles from the city and then I went on 
 through the moonless night, until a great
 
 88 Where the Wolves Dance 
 
 hall stood against the sea there. This I 
 knew was Elsinore, and so I stopped and 
 rested in a pack of straw that lay in a 
 stable near the castle's rearward gate. 
 The tempest howled around me and the 
 straw whistled as if for fear, but I lay 
 quiet, for all long cares had quite dropped 
 away. 
 
 The next day and the next night too, 
 I lay and rested there in a strange con 
 tent that hurt me sometimes when I 
 felt it most; but on the third night, 
 having gained great strength, and ground 
 my sword when lights gleamed down 
 from the castle windows and Elsinore 
 was gay for some king's whim I went 
 across the moat and through the gates, 
 and by the side-door of the castle to 
 where a sleeping soldier stood, his lantern 
 flaring. I entered into a long corridor, 
 and passed down to a door that just 
 shone at the other end. I opened it, and 
 came into a small, gay room where three 
 young pages sat, who cried out at the 
 draught from the opened door: they did 
 not see me. and I kept my sword away from 
 them, though I remembered that, I being
 
 Where the Wolves Dance 89 
 
 invisible, they could see as well on which 
 ever side of me I held it. Then opened 
 I the other door: at once the full 
 lights blazed upon me, and the hum and 
 sweet wail of dance-music came, with 
 smell of flowers, and I wondered as 
 the old flowers sent me their greetings 
 if he was here, as I thought he would 
 be. Then stealing through the room, 
 through the dancers, I passed into a 
 corner where sat some young tired men 
 who looked like sleeping. He was not 
 there. I passed between the dancers 
 once again, and came into a corner 
 where there sat some foreign-looking 
 men with light - haired dames bowing 
 and paying them compliments, I think. I 
 passed between the dancers then again, 
 and passed before where sat the king 
 and queen both weary-looking; yet with 
 quick eyes, I could not find him. Then 
 the music ceased and the dancers went 
 back to their seats once more. Then 
 passed I down the middle of the hall into 
 the farthest corner, where there sat a 
 group of ladies speaking in low voice, 
 and men who leaned and talked and
 
 90 Where the Wolves Dance 
 
 laughed and grinned, and as I passed 
 through the crowd I saw the face of Him, 
 and all the floor trembled. He sat back 
 in the corner, very old: his long white 
 hair fell on his sloping shoulders; his 
 thin white hands were clasped upon his 
 knees and his thin legs were thrust in 
 velvet boots from which the fur stuck 
 out. He had strange gold things on his 
 chest and front, and a short beard that 
 straggled round the chin, but his long 
 hair fell over it; and every moment he 
 would lean forward and mutter to the 
 women near him some tale of woman's 
 talk forgotten when half finished. I 
 stood looking, in a corner where the 
 stair ran up to the musician's gallery, I 
 stood beneath the stair where I could 
 see his face from out the shadow and 
 where no one could see the sword, and 
 there I stood and I hated him until there 
 was a sound of rustling in the hall and 
 of men's feet upon the smooth wood 
 floor; and as I turned to look I saw the 
 king and queen rise and go out, and then 
 after a little time the others also went, 
 and nearly last, he rose, A man had
 
 come to him from the pages' room and 
 now held him under one arm as he 
 tottered across the floor. I followed 
 slowly, my old sword tight grasped. At 
 last we reached the little gay-draped door. 
 The pages' room was empty, and the cor 
 ridors laughed to our heel taps as if mock 
 ing the dancers. And so we went out. 
 There was a great chair there held by 
 two men ; into this he went ; but I had 
 my own mind of where to go so my old 
 rusty sword was through the back of the 
 hind chairman in a moment's time, and 
 as he fell, the forward man ran round to 
 try the door again, crying out; but I 
 swung my sword and hit him in the side, 
 and the old blade grided in so that the 
 stuff came out, and he fell down dead on 
 the steps. When the noise these men 
 were making had stopped, I went and 
 opened the door and sat me down in 
 side with Him, and in a very few soft 
 words told Him who I was; but being so 
 old He could not understand though He 
 was very frightened and knelt down trem 
 bling in the bottom of the chair. Then I 
 asked Him where were horses, and He told
 
 92 Where the Wolves Dance 
 
 me, mumbling, and I went to a farmer's 
 stable and took a horse out, first feeding 
 him well and giving him drink ; then on 
 this horse I put Him and wrapped Him in 
 the horse -cleaner's old rugs and cloths. 
 Then mounting up behind him, I guided 
 the beast to the main road that runs 
 along the water, and for many hours we 
 travelled, jolting, in the darkness. Then 
 the moon rose, and all the world was 
 silver, and the sea lay black except 
 where the sword -blade from the moon 
 was laid across it. The moon was high. 
 It was as light as day when I turned 
 inland from the sea at last, and under 
 neath great trees, and past small hills 
 that rose and left dark hollows where 
 drifts lay, we went. It was as light 
 as the light of day, when all the hills 
 seemed to rise up about us in their 
 whiteness, and the trees stood black on 
 the summits, white on their tops, and 
 casting huge shadows that moved. 
 
 "Here," I said; and getting down from 
 the horse, I turned to Him and lifted 
 Him down also. "This is the place," I 
 said; and taking Him under the arms as
 
 Where the Wolves Dance 93 
 
 I had seen the serving -man do, I led 
 Him. down into the valley where the 
 snow did not break to our tread, and 
 standing there in the valley, holding Him 
 under the arms, I called aloud three times 
 the cry of a wolf. For a long time we 
 stood there in silence till the cry had 
 long echoed away; then from the right 
 of me there slid a white wolf from the 
 hill-top. He slid to the bottom of the 
 hill a little way from me, and then sat 
 on his haunches and looked at us with 
 his red eyes. Then came three more 
 wolves, slowly, over the snow; they 
 came down from under the beech trees 
 that were in front of us, and these 
 also sat down on their haunches and 
 stayed looking at us with their eyes. 
 Then came one wolf more from in 
 front of me, who did as the others 
 had done. Then others came, till 
 there were almost thirty of them, and 
 they sat and stared at us; but whether 
 they could see me I know not. The 
 moon was just over us, and neither He 
 nor the wolves cast any shadow. I 
 turned and took Him in my arms, and
 
 94 Where the Wolves Dance 
 
 holding Him to me, I whispered in a 
 low voice, "You will fight holmgang 
 here with me to-night." He did not un 
 derstand, and His fine white hair lifted 
 a little in the breeze. From above on 
 the hill -top looked the horse that we 
 had ridden, stupidly; I had tied him to 
 a branch of beech, and the wolves sat 
 round making no noise except the whis 
 pering and the brushing of their tails in 
 the snow-glaze. I still held Him in my 
 arms. "You will fight now," I said, "be 
 fore the moon casts its shadow, and then 
 I will leave You"; and he shuddered a 
 little, and shook his head, this time half- 
 understanding. I held Him close, pressing 
 the horse - cleaner's cloths about Him. 
 " You must take out your sword, and 
 you must fight with me you must fight 
 with me here, now." 
 
 "Why?" He murmured feebly, His head 
 sinking on my shoulder. 
 
 " Because I say it ! " I answered in the 
 same low voice; and with that I held 
 Him from me and began to untie the 
 cloths. When He was free, I drew my 
 self apart and unsheathed my old sword,
 
 Where the Wolves Dance 95 
 
 leaving the belt and scabbard lying on 
 the snow by one of the wolves. Now I 
 went up and whispered to the trembling 
 figure again, " You shall fight ! " I whis 
 pered, still in a low voice. 
 
 " I will not fight ! " He said. 
 
 " You will fight for your honour ! " 
 
 " I will not fight ! " He replied. 
 
 " You will fight for your name." 
 
 " I will not fight," He said once again. 
 
 Then I stopped for a moment. Then I 
 went up to Him slowly, and whispering 
 to Him, " I was the husband of Elsa, and 
 you broke my life when you were young, 
 and now that you are old and I am 
 dead, I shall kill you here where the 
 wolves stand " ; and with that, lightly, 
 that I might not strike Him down, I hit 
 Him on the cheek. 
 
 For an instant He stared at me, one 
 side of His face white as the other grew 
 crimson, and His old eyes flashed for a 
 moment, and His shoulders squared them 
 selves ; but His arms, after one quick 
 motion, hung still at His sides, and I 
 heard Him murmur again, "I will not 
 fight ! " Then a wrath seized me, and
 
 96 Where the Wolves Dance 
 
 swinging my sword on high I stepped 
 slowly towards Him and let my point 
 drop back slowly over my shoulder till 
 it hung down to the snow, then wheeling 
 suddenly and bringing it forward with a 
 shortening of the arms and a yell that 
 echoed through the empty forest, I hit 
 Him with the rusty blade where the neck 
 branches to go to the shoulder, and my 
 blade travelled till it struck the hip-bone 
 on the other side. Then with my foot 
 on His waist, I drew my sword out and 
 wiped it on the snow ; wiping it many 
 times till it was quite clean, then pick 
 ing up the sheath and buckling the belt 
 around me, I covered my sword and 
 passed between two of the wolves and 
 up the hill, and away to where the 
 horse was tied. The moon fell down 
 straight into the valley, and as I rode 
 back again the way I had come under 
 the dark trees and past the glittering 
 hill-tops, I heard behind me melancholy 
 howling coming from the place where 
 the wolves danced.
 
 Where the Wolves Dance 97 
 
 This is all of my tale, except that I 
 stabled the horse before dawn at the 
 farmer's, and gave him food and drink, 
 and then walked by the sea road as the 
 dawn broke. 
 
 G
 
 THE SACKILEGE
 
 THE SACRILEGE 
 
 THE hall was raised at one end into 
 a square stage, where the smoke would 
 gather when the men sat late near the 
 fire, and from this stage two doors 
 opened at the back corners. One of 
 these doors was curtained and led to 
 the apartments of the men of the castle. 
 The other was carved with strange images, 
 and by it stood a long square table of 
 carved oak. We men sat below at the 
 long board which ran the length of the 
 hall. It was my lord and the monks 
 who lived upon us who sat upon the 
 raised staging; the monks eating at their 
 carved table apart. 
 
 It was after the dinner, and Father 
 Peter rose in his place. Motioning to 
 his followers to pass through the door 
 that led to the chapel, he came and 
 bent and whispered to my lord, who set 
 down his beer-mug on the instant, frown- 
 
 101
 
 102 The Sacrilege 
 
 ing ; then, after a moment's thought my 
 lord lifted his hand and spoke to us all 
 in a loud, clear voice: 
 
 "Father Peter and I would speak alone 
 in the hall. It would please me that 
 you men take your beer on the battle 
 ments." 
 
 The men went shuffling, all but myself, 
 for I was my lord's own man and counted 
 as nothing more than his follower, doing 
 things which women usually do for men, 
 for he would have no women-folk about 
 him. 
 
 Now Father Peter, folding his fat hands 
 across his chest, lowered his head and 
 frowned reflectively. My lord sat silently 
 in the great chair with one leg over the 
 arm. 
 
 "Lord Rolf," said Father Peter at last. 
 
 "Yes, Father Peter," answered my lord. 
 
 "Lord Rolf, Christian of this castle," 
 said Father Peter again. 
 
 "Ay! Christian, and certainly lord of 
 this castle," answered my lord, smiling. 
 
 Father Peter raised his head, and lifting 
 one arm, pointed at my lord. 
 
 "I have caused it that we should be
 
 The Sacrilege 103 
 
 alone, that I might pray with you, for 
 you are not so good a Christian as I 
 would have you be." 
 
 "Yes," said my lord. 
 
 Then Father Peter, tumbling to his 
 knees, prayed for a long time, while I 
 standing by the fire, cursed his Latin. 
 Then he got up again and coming to my 
 lord he touched him on the shoulder. 
 
 "Have you felt that prayer?" he said 
 in a deep voice. 
 
 "I have heard it," said my lord looking 
 down. 
 
 "Then I will even say something that 
 will appeal to you in a more militant 
 way something that has been in your 
 mind for a long time, my lord." Father 
 Peter became impressive. "The black 
 frocks that sit and bend over that carved 
 table by that carved door are a greater 
 nation than ever the nation of Dan- 
 mark will be, or any nation will be, 
 until another nation of such frocks rouses 
 itself against us; and so long as we shall 
 hold the souls of men, and their hopes 
 and fears of the hereafter, in our hands 
 as a sword, so long shall we be more
 
 104 The Sacrilege 
 
 powerful than any sword forged by 
 gnome or fairy." 
 
 Father Peter, extending both hands in 
 blessing over Lord Rolfs head, turned 
 hastily and went through the door 
 that leads to the chapel. Now, this I 
 would not stand, nor my lord, and we 
 dared not tell it to the men for fear of 
 violence, that the priests, who had forced 
 themselves upon us in our house, and 
 built their chapel leaning against our 
 keep, should threaten us over the tables 
 where they fed with us. This had been 
 a long time coming, for Christianity sat 
 hard upon us. There were no tortures 
 in the time of Thor and Odin; and, as 
 I said, Christianity sat grievously upon 
 us. 
 
 Ah! Well! To the next scene. My 
 lord was in the passage before Father 
 Peter's room, and he knew that Father 
 Peter would return alone from the 
 chapel after his last devotions, and 
 when Father Peter's dark bulk turned 
 the corner of the oak stair my lord 
 spoke to him out of the shadow. 
 
 "Father Peter, you have said some
 
 The Sacrilege 105 
 
 words to me to-night in my hall. They 
 were not churchmen's words." 
 
 Father Peter hesitated a moment, then 
 throwing back his head: 
 
 " No," he said ; " they were words militant, 
 for the Church is born militant ; and she 
 shall ride you as a plough-horse. Let me 
 pass on from my devotions." 
 
 "No, Father Peter," said my lord in a 
 quiet voice, reaching one arm out of the 
 shadow. "You go where you have taught 
 us that there is more devotion than 
 there is upon this earth. For three 
 years you and your crew have eaten, 
 slept, and builded on my lands, until now 
 my house is but very little my own." 
 
 Father Peter took a step forward, but 
 the long white arm barred him across his 
 thick throat. He strode one step farther 
 forward, pushing the arm aside, and, turn 
 ing in the direction of my lord's voice, 
 snarled like a dog, calling him long names 
 from books I never read. Whether my 
 lord was mad, or whether the humiliation 
 of the past three years had hurt his heart, 
 I do not know, but he reached both arms 
 around the priest, and lifting him in the
 
 106 The Sacrilege 
 
 air, flung him face-downward against the 
 window, where it ran to the floor. I 
 went to my lord and caught his hands 
 behind him. Then drawing long breaths, 
 we walked silently toward the black 
 form at the window foot. Stooping, I 
 put my hand over its mouth and over 
 its fat chest. There was a drawing up of 
 legs and something like a laugh, deep in 
 the throat. Then Father Peter died. 
 
 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
 
 The Sacrilege 107 
 
 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 moon 
 light kept me awake as it shed itself
 
 108 The Sacrilege 
 
 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
 
 The Sacrilege 109 
 
 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 horse 
 men 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
 
 no The Sacrilege 
 
 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.
 
 The Sacrilege ill 
 
 "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 hill 
 side, 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, try 
 ing to make out any light near in the 
 dark evening. Suddenly my lord sighed, 
 and, falling forward on his knees, he
 
 112 The Sacrilege 
 
 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 Sacrilege 113 
 
 The three men ran toward us, shouting. 
 My lord heard the sound and looked up ; 
 then rising slowly to his feet, he hesi 
 tated 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." 
 H
 
 114 The Sacrilege 
 
 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 Ros 
 kilde now. 
 
 I am very glad that the story is done.
 
 THE 
 STORY OF THE OAR-CAPTAIN
 
 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 cloud 
 less. 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 
 
 117
 
 118 Story of the Oar-Captain 
 
 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,
 
 Story of the Oar-Captain 119 
 
 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 remem 
 ber 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 lean 
 ing ship. The thin ropes creak, the shields 
 over the sides rattle and jerk. I and an 
 other 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.
 
 120 Story of the Oar-Captain 
 
 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 mer 
 maids 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 for 
 ward. 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
 
 Story of the Oar-Captain 121 
 
 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, conies 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,
 
 122 Story of the Oar-Captain 
 
 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
 
 Story of the Oar-Captain 123 
 
 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
 
 124 Story of the Oar-Captain 
 
 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
 
 Story of the Oar-Captain 125 
 
 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 kind 
 ness. 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
 
 126 Story of the Oar-Captain 
 
 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 play 
 ing 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-
 
 Story of the Oar-Captain 127 
 
 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 door 
 ways. 
 
 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 un 
 known 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
 
 128 Story of the Oar -Captain 
 
 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.
 
 Story of the Oar-Captain 129 
 
 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 harp 
 ing, 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 be 
 trothed, 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 un 
 finished hall where the men were busy 
 thatching the roof and making the fire-
 
 130 Story of the Oar-Captain 
 
 place 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 re 
 member 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.
 
 Story of the Oar-Captain 131 
 
 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 ten 
 derness 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
 
 132 8tory of the Oar-Captain 
 
 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. Some 
 one 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 remon 
 strance ; 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 gradu 
 ally thins down to a single vt>ice speak 
 ing, 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!"
 
 Story of the Oar-Captain 133 
 
 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 dark 
 ness; 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 light 
 ning 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
 
 134 Story of the Oar-Captain 
 
 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
 
 Story of the Oar-Captain 135 
 
 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 understand 
 ing, 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 sud 
 den 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 curs 
 ing weakly in a childish feeling of im-
 
 136 Story of the Oar-Captain 
 
 potency 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 re 
 lief, 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
 
 Story of the Oar-Captain 137 
 
 sea -weed drifting northwards. My lord 
 had become very brown, and had a way 
 of always turning toward the light, look 
 ing east when the sun rose and west when 
 it set. 
 
 Now, for some days we went north 
 ward ; 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 fly 
 ing through the half - dusk the moon 
 shone sometimes we heard a deep rush 
 ing before us just a little louder than 
 the sea's rushing. In a moment there 
 grew up in the darkness a shore of
 
 138 Story of the Oar-Captain 
 
 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-drip 
 ping 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
 
 Story of the Oar-Captain 139 
 
 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 accom 
 pany 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
 
 140 Story of the Oar-Captain 
 
 things. The man to whom she was be 
 trothed 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 with 
 in ye? Can ye never be mad, and rock 
 to the torment of it? Do ye under 
 stand? 
 
 "Well, the music went out of my harp, 
 and tore me Are ye stone walls, that ye 
 would not have shaken down like the
 
 Story of the Oar-Captain 141 
 
 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 be 
 calmed." 
 
 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.
 
 142 Story of the Oar- Captain 
 
 "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 sud 
 denly. 
 
 For months we waited for a year.
 
 Story of the Oar -Captain 143 
 
 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 "justi 
 fication," as my lord said.
 
 THE LAST VOYAGE 
 
 K
 
 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 be 
 fore, 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 out 
 ward on one leathern hinge. The rest 
 of us looked lazily up. A brown expanse 
 of burnt vinelands, and in the distance a 
 
 147
 
 148 The Last Voyage 
 
 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 near- 
 ing 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 out-
 
 The Last Voyage 149 
 
 side 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.
 
 150 The Last Voyage 
 
 Men who had grown up on these ravaged 
 vinelands, and who had come from no 
 where 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 side 
 ways, 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 stream 
 ers 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
 
 The Last Voyage 153 
 
 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 after 
 noon. 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
 
 154 The Last Voyage 
 
 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 be 
 tween his leather glove and the sleeve of 
 his chain-shirt. Then we went on, with 
 him cursing and groaning and he pulled
 
 The Last Voyage 155 
 
 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 run 
 ning, 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
 
 156 The Last Voyage 
 
 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 suck 
 ing 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
 
 The Last Voyage 157 
 
 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
 
 158 The Last Voyage 
 
 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 backplate 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.
 
 The Last Voyage 159 
 
 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 indif 
 ference 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.
 
 160 The Last Voyage 
 
 I was very weak; now they brought 
 me meat and strong, flame-coloured water 
 to drink; and the meat did me much good, 
 but the flame-coloured water sent me to 
 sleep under one of the forward benches, 
 out of the arrows' flight. And when I 
 waked a new dawn was breaking, and I 
 heard the shouting of men outside the 
 ship, the shouting of men in the language 
 of those countries; and I lifted my sick 
 head and gazed at them, but they curved 
 and numbered and unnumbered them 
 selves, till at last I heard in my brain 
 a twanging of bows, and looking up 
 ward to the fore - deck, I saw our few 
 men gathered there, crouching, and sending 
 their arrows fast. The sea had not gone 
 down, but the wind did not whistle, and 
 in the west the clouds looked like heavy 
 rain and thunder. As the mist that is 
 over the sea-beach in those countries in 
 the morning cleared off, I looked again, 
 and I found that the men who dis 
 puted with us from the beach were 
 few, they being but six knights in half- 
 armour. Now, lying and watching, for 
 I felt that I could do nothing till the
 
 The Last Voyage 161 
 
 world was level again, I saw the fifteen 
 of our men jump from the fore-deck at 
 a word from the oar-captain, and thrust 
 ing the long oars over the sides, strain 
 on them in the sand as each wave came 
 in, and as they strained upon them the 
 ship would lift and glide out more, and 
 faster; till at last we were quite afloat 
 and the great waves took us, and turned 
 us about, like a piece of bark. Then the 
 men fell into their places and we headed 
 the white seas, the half-armed men on 
 the beach riding knee - high on their 
 horses into the foam, and calling curses 
 at us. So, after weary rowing, and every 
 man of us wet as the sea, we came out 
 of that bay and rode the great smooth 
 waves that had been white the day 
 before. 
 
 Well, we kept far from the land, only 
 seeing, one dusk, a white cliff on our 
 right from a distance ; then the gale 
 took us again and drove us westward 
 and then northward, till the men would 
 throw down their oars and cry out to 
 the gods of the sea, to say which one of 
 them should be sacrificed to their hate. 
 L
 
 izi The Last Voyage 
 
 We were half mad with the drink we had 
 in the ship for we had no beer and 
 as we lurched and swayed in the depth 
 beween two seas, or as we climbed up 
 sideways and balanced for a moment 
 while the foam flew and then surged 
 down with sick motion, the men would 
 trail their oars on the water and sink 
 their heads on the handles. So, for many 
 days we were driven as the wizards drive 
 the storm-ships across the face of the 
 icy moon, as the waves kiss her wet sides 
 and the clouds break over her. So north 
 ward we went, till the cold struck into 
 our bones and we ate fried fat like the 
 savages of Finland; and we passed great 
 ice-fields sometimes, at night, when the 
 moon shone on them for miles and gave 
 them smoothness which the sun took all 
 away again, and made them grey and 
 rugged and small. 
 
 Still we went north ; our water was 
 almost gone and we had only the devil's 
 drinks, and the wet bread and fish. Now, 
 when we passed the ice-fields the oar- 
 captain would order us to fasten to 
 them, and we would bring into the ship
 
 The Last Voyage 163 
 
 great chunks of ice and melt them in 
 the cauldron by the mast -foot. But 
 there came a time when for three days 
 we saw no ice and the men's tongues 
 were stiff for thirst. Their eyes looked 
 cruel and sad. Thus, one night, as I 
 lay at my place under the forward seat, 
 wrapped in a bear -skin, I saw the black 
 figure of a man on the rail at the other 
 side of the ship. He crept to where the 
 rail ends in the lift of the fore -deck. 
 Then, dropping to the bench under which 
 I lay, he crawled to the cauldron where 
 a little water was left, and putting in 
 his hand he broke off, little by little, 
 pieces, until I could see by the long time 
 that his hand rested in the cauldron 
 that there was no more there. Then I 
 reached out and grasped him by the 
 leg and pulling him off the bench I 
 rolled myself about him and called out 
 for the oar -captain. The oar -captain 
 came and all the men came after and 
 they lit a light, and I lay off him, and 
 we saw his face; and the oar -captain 
 said and to every man it seemed just 
 " You have stolen the last of our
 
 164 The Last Voyage 
 
 water, more than your share, therefore 
 you shall go to join your comrades under 
 the sea ; when you are ready." 
 
 The man drew himself up and walked 
 the length of the ship stepping from 
 bench to bench, we all following, our 
 feet making a clatter as we went. He 
 came to the upper- deck and climbed up, 
 and went to the rail and stood there 
 and looked on the moveless sea under 
 the moonlight. 
 
 " Are you ready ? " asked the oar- 
 captain. 
 
 " Get out your oars," answered the man. 
 
 Some half of the men went to their 
 places and shoved the oars out. 
 
 "When I go, row!" he said, in a loud 
 voice. 
 
 Then, climbing across the bulwark, he 
 stood at the edge a moment his hands 
 on his hips, then suddenly he raised his 
 clenched fists in the air, and in perfect 
 silence met the sea. As we rowed away, 
 we could see his dark head in the moon 
 light as he swam, and until we had 
 shifted the position of the ship many 
 times we could not lose it, as the men
 
 The Last Voyage 165 
 
 rowed on, the oars creaking, and the 
 indifferent moonlight silvering their slow 
 dips. 
 
 We are bound in by the ice, and the 
 ship lies high in the bow, white, like a 
 lord's tomb in the snow. It has been 
 snowing all day, and the oar-captain 
 makes us tramp one after the other 
 round the half-buried ship till we can 
 walk no more, when we sleep in the 
 skins under the fore-deck till a comrade 
 shakes us, and we groan and rouse and 
 walk again. The dull sky has turned 
 to the colour of ashes. Sometimes the 
 air lifts for a moment into a slight 
 wind that sends the frost -lace scurrying 
 over the ice -blocks, and then falls still 
 again. Our feet leave great tracks; we 
 can hardly see through the white drift, 
 we are silent in the wonderful white 
 feathers . . . and the silence ! 
 
 Lars puffs near me, swinging his arms. 
 The Icelander is staring out into the 
 storm, with his hands thrust into his 
 belt. When at last we rest in our 
 furs, we are huddled, leaning, against
 
 166 
 
 one another for warmth. We cannot 
 see the sun-set; only a dying-out of the 
 pale half-light of the snow-drift. The 
 men grow superstitious, and begin to 
 talk of robbing churches, and making no 
 restitution to the widows of killed men ; 
 and they mutter about old days talking 
 crossly of things we have long forgotten. 
 
 On the third night, Kai, a good man, 
 died; on the fourth night three other 
 men, on the fifth night, none; on the 
 sixth day we had eaten the last of our 
 fish, and Rudolf of Schleswig went out into 
 the mist with his cross-bow to see if he 
 could find anything. So, we lost him, for 
 though he was a very strong man he 
 never came back. It was on this same 
 day that one of the men, Hans, a man 
 from the south countries, little liked, 
 went mad, and became a child again, 
 till he wandered off and I think killed 
 himself by a fall from a great ice-block, 
 for we saw his black figure there, and 
 then we heard a sound as of something 
 striking on the ice; then more men died, 
 I do not know, until old Ole, the oar-
 
 The Last Voyage 167 
 
 captain, and I only were left strong. The 
 rest ate snow and wandered off cursing 
 the sacking of churches or prattling non 
 sense of house affairs ; sometimes they 
 would come back, but I do not know if 
 I spoke to them, for they were very dim. 
 
 It was some time in the light, when, 
 after sitting against the side of the ship 
 for a few moments I got up to walk 
 again, that I saw come hopping toward 
 me over the snow a white rabbit with 
 white eyes. 
 
 He hops almost to my feet and then 
 jumps into the ship; then comes a snow 
 ball rolling itself, of the height of a small 
 man, and when it comes just before me 
 it breaks into smoke and I cannot see 
 through the smoke for a moment. 
 
 Music light music, daintily, faintly play 
 ing. ... It comes from far away ... it 
 is just over my head . . . then it tinkles, 
 trills, breaks, and jingles, and falls down 
 into the inside of my head making dark 
 ness. Now comes a long waste of clouds 
 over the snow-fields, and the ship seems 
 to rise to them as they billow under her 
 bows,
 
 168 The Last Voyage 
 
 They come, innumerable long fat white 
 clouds; clouds of no shape; clouds that I 
 hate. 
 
 I awake ; I am leaning against the side 
 of the ship; I stagger; we are tramping 
 on the old path. A fine snow sifts down 
 into my neck; my skin is so hot and my 
 bones are so cold. There is no sky, only 
 something that moves above there. Then, 
 as I turn to the stern of the ship, I seem 
 to hear in the distance the sound of great 
 drinking, and the echoing of the warm 
 beer -tankards as they strike in the air, 
 and there comes a small and weak voice 
 beyond me neither above nor below: 
 
 "I am Odin, the thunder - holder, and 
 I speak to you greeting, thus, passing 
 on." 
 
 And again the voice comes as I lean 
 against the ship with my arms outspread. 
 
 "I am Thor, of the hammer; hail to 
 you, man, passing on." 
 
 The sounds of the mirth of the gods 
 die down. Then a voice speaks deeply, 
 with no ringing in it as was in the voice 
 of Thor, and I do not understand. The 
 snow comes driving into my eyes, and the
 
 ship seems to lean toward me, and then 
 away again, then all is still. 
 
 The snow comes into my eyes again, 
 and I hear faint music as of churches 
 and sweet voices singing, and it seems to 
 me when I can see again that there are 
 dim ships before me ; ships whose names 
 only I have learnt from scanty books 
 no more; and all those gods come danc 
 ing toward me; then the music breaks, 
 and there is great cracking of the ice, and 
 I fall down. There is no voice of Chris 
 tian God, for I have sacked his churches. 
 The snow is in my eyes, and I am mad. 
 I lean my head against the ship. There 
 is no warmth, and I am afraid, alone. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 M
 
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