A Sea Queen's Sailing Part 11

She gave me no time to say more, and I do not know what I could have answered, save that I hoped that I might be worthy. Little chance of much fighting were we likely to have--and yet there was just a hope that we might fall in a ring of foes on the deck of the pirate.

Gerda buckled on those weapons for us. And then Dalfin must end his song, and it was good to see and hear him, if only he and myself understood the words. But Heidrek crept up to us all the time, if we forgot him for the moment under the spell of the wild song.

The clear voice ceased, for the song was ended. A dimness crept across the decks, and the sail shivered and filled again. Bertric looked up at the sky and out to windward, and his face changed.

"What is it?" asked Gerda anxiously.

"Running into a fog bank," he said. "Look ahead."

One could not see it. Only it was as if the ring of sea to windward had of a sudden grown smaller. Heidrek was not a mile astern of us, and still his ships were in bright sunshine. Even as we watched them, a grayness fell on them, and then they grew dim.

Then the fog closed in on us, and swallowed us up, and drifted across the decks so thickly that we could barely see from gunwale to gunwale, damp, and chilling. Still, the wind did not fail us, hurrying the fog before it.

"We must hold on until we know if this is but a bank of fog, or if it is everywhere," Bertric said. "What say you, Malcolm?"

I thought a while, knowing the cold sea fogs of the north pretty well.

"Heidrek will be in it by this time," I said. "Fog bank or more, I would about ship and run back past him with the wind. If it is a bank, we shall go with it, and he must lose us. If it is more, we can get on our southward course in it shortly, and if he sights us again, he will have all his work to catch us, for his men will be tired of rowing."

"What if the fog lifts directly?"

"We shall be little worse off than now--and we shall be heading down on Heidrek before he knows it."

"Aye," he answered, "with way enough on us to sink him offhand, and maybe take this ship clear through his. Get to the sheets, you and Dalfin, and we will chance it."

Bertric luffed, and we hauled the tack amidships. Then he paid off to the wind, and we slacked off the sheet with the help of a turn of its fall round the great cleat of the backstay. The wash of the waves round the bows ceased, and there was only the little hiss of the water as the sea broke alongside of us. It always seems very silent for a little while when one puts about for a run after beating to windward.

"Listen," said Bertric under his breath, "we shall hear Heidrek directly on the starboard bow somewhere. Pray Heaven he has not changed his course, or we shall hit him! He will not have luffed any more, for certain."

"Suppose he thinks that we have tried some such trick as this?"

said Dalfin.

Bertric shook his head.

"He thinks we shall go on as we steered, making for the Norway sh.o.r.e. It is likely that he will think that we may have paid off a bit, for the sake of speed. Even if he did think we were likely to do this, what could he do? He cannot tell, and to put about and run on the chance would be to give away his advantage if we had held on after all. Listen!"

"I hear him," said Gerda, who was leaning on the gunwale with parted lips, intent on catching any sound.

The sound she had heard came nearer and nearer as we slid silently through the water into the blinding fog. It was like a dull rumble at first, and then as a trampling, until the roll and click of the long, steadily pulled oars was plain to us. The ship was pa.s.sing us, and not more than an arrow flight from us. It seemed almost impossible that we should not see her.

Suddenly, there came a sharp whistle, and the roll of the oars ceased. Gerda started away from the gunwale and looked at us, and Dalfin set his hand on his sword hilt. It was just as if they had spied us, and I half expected to see the tall stemhead of the ship come towering through the thickness over our rail. There was nothing to tell us how fast we were going through the water, and we seemed still. I saw Bertric smiling.

"Shift of rowers," he said in a whisper, and Gerda's pale face brightened. Then I heard Heidrek rating someone, and I heard, too, the tramp and rattle of the men who left and came to the oars; but by the time the steady pull began again we had pa.s.sed the ship by a long way, and lost the sound almost as soon as it came. Then there was silence once more, and the strain was past. Our course would take us clear of the other ship by a mile or more.

So we held on for half an hour, and the fog grew no thinner.

Overhead, the sun tried to shine through it, but we could not see him, and still the wind drifted us and the fog together, and the decks grew wet and the air chill with the damp which clung round us.

Gerda sat very still for a long time after the last sounds were heard. But at last she rose up and shivered.

"Let me go to my awning," she said unsteadily. "I have seen three brave men look death in the face, and they have not flinched--I will never wear mail or sword again."

Then she fled forward, and something held us back from so much as helping her to cross that barrier. We knew that she was near to breaking down, and no wonder.

There fell an uneasy silence on us when she was within the shelter of the awning and its folds closed after her. Dalfin broke it at last.

"Well," he said, "I suppose that you two seamen know which way you are steering in the fog--but it pa.s.ses me to know how."

Bertric and I laughed, and were glad of the excuse to do so. We told him that we steered by the wind, which had not changed. But now we had only one course before us. We must needs head south and try to make the Shetlands. Eastward we might not sail for fear of Heidrek, and westward lay the open ocean, Still, we held on for half an hour, and then, still shrouded in the white folds of the fog, headed south as nearly as we might judge.

In an hour the wind fell. The fog darkened round us as the sun wore to the westward, and the sea went down until only the long ocean swell was left, lifting the ship easily and slowly without breaking round her. There was naught to be done; but, at least Heidrek could not find us.

"There may be days to come like this," Bertric said, with a sort of groan. "What is to be planned for him who lies yonder?"

Now, I told them what Gerda had said to me, and I could see that Bertric was relieved to hear her thought of a sea burial.

"I had thought of the same," he said at once. "It is not fitting that here the old warrior should be drifted to and fro, well nigh at the mercy of the wind, with the chances of a lee sh.o.r.e or of folk who make prey of hapless seafarers presently. A sea burial such as many a good man of our kin has found will be best. I could ask no more for myself."

"And what of the treasure?" I asked. "Shall that go with him?"

"It is Gerda's, and she must say," he answered. "Yet she will need it."

Then Dalfin said:

"It will be hard to tell her so, but she must not part with it. It stands between her and want, if it may be saved for her. Yet, if it was the will of the old king that it should be set in his grave, I do not know how we can persuade her to keep it. He is not here to say that he does not need it; for he has learnt that now."

I glanced at the penthouse with the thought of that strange vision of mine. I could not tell my comrades of it, but I thought that, if need was, I might tell Gerda presently. I said in answer to Dalfin that he was right, and that we must set the matter thus before Gerda.

"The sooner the better," said Bertric. "Do you go and speak with her. We must not let the night pa.s.s without this being done, as I think"

Chapter 7: The Treasure Of The King.

Gerda heard me coming, and met me at the same spot where we had first spoken of this matter. She saw that I had come to tell her what we had said thereof.

"What of the others?" she asked anxiously.

"They have spoken in all thought for you, even as I knew they would," I answered. "We are at one in thinking that the sea grave is most fitting."

She asked me why, as if to satisfy some doubts which she yet had, and I must needs tell her therefore what our own dangers were, though I made as light of them as I could. I told of the perils of a lee sh.o.r.e to this under-manned ship; of the chance of meeting another ship at any time here on the Norway coast; of crews and of wreckers who would hold naught sacred; of the chance of our drifting thus idly for many days in this summer weather--all chances which were more likely than the quiet coming to the islands where my father's name was known and honoured enough for us to find help. From these chances it was best to save the king, who was our care, and at once. She heard me very bravely to the end.

"So let it be," she said, sighing. "You will suffer the treasure to go with him?"

"That is as you will, lady," I said; "it is yours. Was it the wish of Thorwald that it should pa.s.s to the mound with him?"

She glanced at me, half proudly and half as in some rebuke.