Neither sound nor motion was on his blue lips.
But the light on the Wonderstrand is a wondrous light. When they had raced over some hundred yards of beach, the dark object—instead of growing larger—dwindled suddenly from whale size and boat size to the size of a human body. Involuntarily, they slackened their pace and a whisper went around: "It is one of the Skraellings, overtaken by the storm!"
Only Alrek shook his head and pressed forward. "That is no animal hide wrapping him," he said.
A dozen yards more brought him to the side of the stark form; he bent over it—and remained bent as though petrified with astonishment. When the others had reached him and looked, their voices went from them in a cry of amazement:
"The Huntsman!"
And the Huntsman's gigantic figure it was, sea-drenched and wave-battered, kelp snarled about his feet, starfish tangled in his hair. As he had lain upon the rock that winter day, so he lay here upon the sand,—flat on his back with his hands clasped over his breast; though now his eyes were closed, and neither sound nor motion was on his blue lips.
Doubting their senses, the explorers stared at him and then up and down the shore. Never was scene more yawningly empty; between the sweep of sand and the stretch of water he lay as though fallen from the sky.
"I would give much if he had not died until he had told us how he came hither," Gard remarked, presently.
"And what he was employing himself about in the north of Vinland when he set out to explore the country south of it!" Brand cried; while the Glib One added:
"Yes, and how it went with Hallad and the others he had with him!"
Then they became aware that Erlend's handsome brown face—three shades browner than his hair—was turned toward them in reproach. "It may be that Alrek will get the belief that a Greenlander's loyalty to his countrymen is somewhat shallow," he suggested.
In those days, disloyalty to a comrade was held a contemptible thing. Two of the three reddened; and Brand bent his tongue to apology.
"He knows that we care as much as any one. Eric of Brattahlid had the Huntsman for his steward, because they found pleasure in talking evil together about Christianity; but that was all the friend I ever heard of his having. It is understood that we will do him the favor to bury him, however."
Gard the Practical rubbed his ear. "That will not be easy unless we carry him far inland," he said. "If I am not much mistaken, this sand will move about like snow,—and I have heard that if dead men come uncovered and sleep cold, they are wont to get up and walk around to warm themselves."
A dozen of them crossed themselves involuntarily; and the Strong One squared his magnificent shoulders.
"Quickly will I proclaim my choice to carry him to the bay!"
"That would best be left unsaid until we see how heavy he is," Alrek advised. "Raise his other shoulder, Domar, and let us see how—One thing is that he is not yet stiff. Wait! What is this on his neck?" With his finger, he followed a cordrunning from the grizzled beard across the motionless breast to lose itself in the shelter of the rigidly clasped hands. "It is a deerskin bag."
"I know he did not have it on when he went south!" Harald Grettirsson cried, excitedly.
And a chorus added; "Here is something of importance!"—"Something of value!" "To think of it then—" "Yes, to grasp it when he was drowning!"
Sitting back on his heels, Alrek gazed down at the figure curiously. "He has grasped the bag too close to move, but it would be possible to pry a finger into the top and see what is inside,—if you would allow it? He is your countryman." He glanced inquiringly at them as they stooped around him, their hands grasping their knees.
The Greenlanders looked down at him; then around at one another; then Brand spoke under his breath; "If you dare——"
"Dare?" Alrek's mouth curved disdainfully. Picking out the cord-ends from between the chill palms, he undid the knot that fastened the mouth of the bag and inserted a thumb and forefinger. "A chain," he said as they closed upon something;then, as they began to draw it out, "What a chain!"
All echoed him: "Whata chain!"
For it was of shining gold, set here and there with a rough-cut gem; while its girth was that of his largest finger, and it unfolded itself coil after coil to the length of his arm. What a keepsake to bring out of a waste peopled only by wild men! Devouring it with hungry eyes, they drew closer; and Rane Thin-Nose put out a hand to feel of it, at the same time sending an apologetic glance toward the rigid face.
As he did so, the drawn eyelids rose slowly and silently as curtains; and the Huntsman's small evil eyes looked back at him. Rane's hand was withdrawn as though it had encountered fire; and the circle fell back, screaming. Even the Sword-Bearer was startled enough to drop the chain, as the eyes rolled in his direction and remained turned on him in a baleful glare.
Through the blue lips came a voice, so faint that it seemed to be one of the smothered voices which cry through the roar of the surf; "You would rob me?"
At that the circle rallied indignantly, shouting, "We wouldnot!" "It was our intention—" "You need not reproach us for—" "We thought——"
"Put it back."
Alrek hesitated, his face coloring with resentment. Then he asked himself of what use it was to argue with a piece of driftwood, and gave up justification with a shrug. While the rest spent their breath wrathfully, he complied in silence. When the last knot was tied—and not before—the eyes left him to roll around the circle.
"Swear—" the voice said faintly.
Before the glare they shrank in spite of themselves, fluttering like birds around a snake; until Erlend said, with quiet haughtiness:
"There is no need for us to swear that we will not rob you."
The voice was so faint that they barely made out the words; "Swear—to keep it secret. On the edge of your blades!"
"I suppose he has the right to ask it," Erlend gave judgment after a while. "It was his secret and we thrust ourselves in. It seems to me that itis his right?" He looked at the Sword-Bearer with questioning eyebrows.
No one ever disputed the decisions of the Amiable One in matters of honor. Alrek answered by unsheathing his sword, with another shrug of his shoulders.
Drawing each a knife from his belt, they grasped them by the blades so that the sharp edges cut red grooves in their bare palms. Holding the knives aloft thus, they spoke the oath together; the Huntsman's eyes telling them off, one by one. When he had come to the last—little Olaf the Fair twisting his face to keep back tears of pain—his eyes stopped and settled slowly into their unwinking stare; but that they were less dull than fish-eyes, his stark figure would have differed little from the myriad fish bodies strewed upon the sand.
Though they rattled their weapons blusteringly in putting them up, a kind of panic chill crept over the band. The stare was so awful in its dumb evilness; and the scene was so weirdly desolate,—the stretch of bleak sky, the sweep of naked shore, and the breakers' unending boom out of which stifled voices seemed trying vainly to call. The lad whowas called the Hare—alike for fleetness and for timidity—voiced the feeling in a quavering outburst:
"Let us leave him! I do not believe he is alive at all. I believe a troll hides in him and uses his mouth to speak with. I know evil will come of this. Let us leave him." He plucked nervously at Alrek's coat. "Come on!"
Alrek was strung high enough to be irritated by the clutch. "Keep off!" he ordered, jerking himself free. "It is no lie about you that you are cowardly, if you would desert a shipmate!" Then regaining possession of his cloak, he regained possession of his temper, and spoke quietly; "If we get some big branches and make a litter with our mantles, it will not be difficult to get him to the bay. It seemed to me that you were all eager in having him alive to tell you news?"
If it had not been for that hope, it is doubtful if the twenty would have toiled to bring such a burden over the sand-hills; and it is certain that the sailors had this end in view as they rubbed the Huntsman's limbs and poured ale down his throat. Had they been polishing a knife or oiling a lock,they could scarcely have been more business-like or less tender.
"As soon as he gets strength to talk he should be able to tell tidings worth hearing," they said to one another when at last they left him rolled in skins and went about their preparations for returning to the ship, a rift having come in the gray toward the west.
The main difference between their attitude and that of their juniors was that they felt merely dislike for the Huntsman, while for the one-and-twenty he had the fascination of fear. To them, his eyes were twin demons keeping guard from their cave doors over the treasure bag below. It is safe to say that they never lost him out of their minds through all the bustle of going on board and resettling themselves, as they awaited a surer sign of the Storm King's reformation.
With the sunset, the rift in the gray widened. Thrym, the giant who herds the clouds, drove the hulking masses northward, lagging from their own weight. In the clearing west, the sun dropped golden behind a jagged bar; and while the rosy glory of it was still in the southern sky, the moonlooked out of the east. To a rousing cheer, the Wind-Raven shook out her storm-beaten plumage and skimmed away over the silvering waves. The change was so grateful that Alrek was able to shake off depression one time more; while the loungers on the benches were noisy with satisfaction.
"Never was there a better time to experience the Wonderstrands!" they jubilated afresh, as the curving stretch of shining dunes pushed itself into their vision.
Passing that curve was little less than an experience; for the bend of the shore made it ever appear as though a cape lay just ahead, yet the cape ever receded as they approached, a flying point that could never be caught.
"Certainly it makes the world seem a place of strange wonders!" Faste the Fat marveled, when they had sat a long time watching it in silent fascination. "It makes one curious about everything. If the Huntsman would only speak now and tell us what he has seen, this would be a good time to amuse ourselves with a tale."
"How do you know that he has seen anything?"sneered a harsh voice—harsh for all its faintness—from the pile of skins upon the forecastle.
They wheeled so eagerly that the ship rocked under them. "Are you ready to tell the tidings you have seen?" "Will you tell us about—?" "Tell about the south country, Huntsman." "Did you see any Skraellings?" "No, tell us first how you came here—" "Yes, your adventure—" "Yes, yes!" "We beg of you—" "Go on! Go on!"
They were all speaking at once now, boys and men, and their greed proved their downfall. For, the clamor reaching the helmsman on the after-deck, he descended with unusual agility and waddled toward them.
"If you are going to talk to any one, you talk to me, your chief," he commanded; "and tell me what you have done with the boat and the men I lent you."
The Huntsman's manners gained little at sight of his superior. "I do not see thatIhave done anything with them," he answered sullenly, "because the boat went to pieces on a sand-bar andRann drew Svipdag and Black Thord down to her. It is seen that I saved you the best man of the three."
"Four men were in the boat when you started out on that foolish trip," the helmsman caught him up. "Biorn's foster-son is worth speaking about; what have you done with him?"
The blood settled in the Huntsman's sunken cheeks as water in a hollow. "Is the boy of so much importance that I must carve his rune on a separate stick?" he snarled. "What else could he be than drowned? Is it likely that Valkyrias came down for him? I think you are a fool. If Freydis, Eric's daughter, had not married you for your wealth and sent you out here after more, you would never have had manhood to set foot on a ship.Youmy chief! You can think what you like; I will not answer you another word." He flung himself over on his face in one of the black sulks no man had ever yet sounded; his officer's threats might as well have been addressed to the mast.
At last the fat helmsman was forced to pause to take in breath, standing puffing and glaring and tugging at his belt. And it was this unpropitiousmoment which his roving eyes took to remind him of Alrek's existence. The Sword-Bearer felt the gaze when it fell, and shut one eye in an expressive wink at Brand; nor were his forebodings without foundation.
The helmsman let his recovered breath go from him in a snort. "You! What are you doing here? Did I not order that you should be shut up for the rest of the voyage?"
Alrek unclosed his eye to gaze out of the pair in respectful surprise. "I?" he inquired. "Was it not your intention to free me when you ordered all hands to the oars?"
Before the Weathercock found adequate words he had stamped three times in uncouth capers of rage; when he did find them, however, they came with such force that they burst the buckle off his belt.
"Go back!" he wound up in a bellow. "Go back, and do not dare come forth again until I haul you before Karlsefne. If I were your chief, I would hang you!"
For once, exasperation got the better of Alrek's soldier training. He looked the fat figure up anddown as he arose. "You would not need to take the trouble," he retorted. "If you were my chief, I would hang myself."
He heard applauding laughter from his mates as he walked away, simultaneously with a roar from the helmsman, and after that a confusion of sounds; but his mind was too full of bitterness to leave any room for curiosity. It roused him with a start when the solitude in which Fat Faste was reinstalling him was disturbed by a second consignment of captives,—Brand with torn clothes and flashing eyes; at his heels, little Olaf striving to quench a bleeding nose as he panted with unquenched partizanship; back of him Gard the Ugly, made uglier by a swollen lip; and behind the three, Strong Domar, a purple lump on his forehead and breathless delight in his voice as he shouted the explanation over the others' heads:
"I knocked him down, Alrek, as sure as I stand here! He tried to cuff Brand for laughing at you, and I laid him flat before Lodin could lay hold of me,—and he will have to come before Karlsefne with a black eye! Think of it!"
Apparently Alrek did think of it, for he staredfor the space of a minute before he spoke. "You struck your chief!" he repeated at last.
The Strong One chortled with relish. "Andblacked his eye! It will be shut tight, I know it will,—and he thinks so much about making a fine appearance before the Lawman! And maybe his nose will swell also, and—" He broke off abruptly as the meaning of Alrek's expression came home to him; and his freckled face reddened. "Now I forgot that you are soldier-bred. I suppose that in the Earl's camp they would not call it a jest to knock down a chief?"
The Sword-Bearer leaned back on his bale of fur with a long-drawn yawn. "They would not be likely to call it anything," he said drily, "for it could not happen there at all."
As he said nothing more in congratulation, it was rather a sulky group that the torches left to darkness when the last walrus-hide knot was tied.
And that night was as long as two nights; and the sunrise into which it melted lasted until noon; and the day which finally grew out of that sunrise had no end whatever! Apparently, the Weathercock had managed to tie walrus thongs around Time's ankles also.
Glimpses of banks, caught through the doorway, showed when they turned from the highroad of the ocean up the river-lane which led into the Vinland bay; but the banks kept on unraveling like witch's weaving that has no end. They had turned their attention from watching the landscape to robbing a fish keg, when the drone of voices on the deck above broke suddenly into shouts:
"A boat! Coming from behind that island!" "Who—" "—thralls, the two in white—""But the man in blue?" "Karlsefne is wont to wear blue——" "By the Hammer, I believe it is the Lawman himself!"
If cheers rose from the forecastle, silence fell on the foreroom. Eager as they were to reach camp, to run upon this portion of it in midstream was little less than startling. The face of every Greenlander confirmed Domar's fervent gasp:
"Now I am thankful that Karlsefne is not my chief!"
Into Alrek's quiet came a kind of constraint. "Other men wear blue mantles," he suggested. "Hold your tongues and listen."
Crouching on rope-coils and piles of fur, they held their breath as well as their tongues while they tried to separate the tumult into meanings; the scuffle of feet on the deck above was like a blur over all other sounds. But finally the feet rushed down the steps; there was a lull in which could be heard the sound of oars backing water; then, through the quiet a new voice, deep and kindly:
"Greeting and welcome, friends! Tell me before anything else if you are all here, sound and whole?"
The prisoners' mouths shaped one word as they gazed into one another's faces: "Karlsefne!"
How thinly and sputteringly the Weathercock's voice fell on their ears after that! "All here, Lawman! And all sound,—saving this eye of mine which has met with a mishap of which I will tell you later."
Very likely he rambled on with his wonted long windedness, but the five eavesdropping in the foreroom heard no more. The throng that had surged forward receded noisily; and through the rift the prisoners had a glimpse of the gunwale and a sinewy blue-clad form rising beside the fat helmsman like a tree beside a bush, a towering might-full figure with a face of rugged beauty framed in locks of iron gray. Even after the rift had closed up again they crouched motionless, staring at the shifting backs and straining their ears for tones of that deep voice, until—jangling through it like clattering pottery—came the helmsman's lament:
"But ask not what success we have had, Lawman, for I will tell you without delay that the plan you had most at heart has been marred past mending!By no fault of mine, but through the blood-thirstiness of your brother's son; who has not only thrown your commands aside, but has kindled outlawry in the heart of every boy on board, who would otherwise be obedient to my——"
Brand got on his bound feet—no one knows how—and on them got to the door.
"That is not true, though you or others say it!" he shouted; and when his leader stopped out of sheer amazement and every one turned, gaping, he followed his voice through the door. "We endure him altogether against our will. To obey him is a disgrace to all with manhood in them. Domar made his eye black——"
"Yes, that is true," bellowed Domar. Followed by Gard and little Olaf, he in his turn worked his way to the door, where a sudden lurch of the ship caught them and rolled them in a struggling heap almost to Karlsefne's feet; when the crew began to laugh and the Weathercock began to accuse and the rebels began to deny.
Looking after them Alrek's lips curled in soldier scorn; that gave way to amusement when the clamor ended abruptly at a single word from the deep voice,and he had a glimpse of Brand's fiery locks drooping like captured flags. But after a moment, he turned and stretching his bound arms across a cask, hid his face upon them.
"Whatever they do, they can not serve him so badly as I have done. Certainly I can find no fault with his act if he hangs me up like a sheep-killing dog, for little better has my service been," he murmured; and lay there with his face hidden until the jar of Hjalmar's heavy foot brought him suddenly upright.
"Karlsefne sends for you," the Thick-Skulled announced in his wonted roar; then, coming close to cut the thongs, he spoke in hoarse whispers; "Hear great wonders! Your luck has not quite shown its heels, after all. It has happened that the Lawman also has seen the Skraellings! The day after you met the one on the Cape, a host of them appeared before the Vinland booths,—to see, it is likely, if the others had your mind toward them. But Karlsefne made so plain his good intentions that they went away after doing nothing worse than stare. And yesterday they came again, with bundles of fur which they traded with much friendliness.It is his belief that they also have young fire-heads among them so that they understand how little value is to be put upon——"
Stretching out his freed arms, the Sword-Bearer gripped Hjalmar's hand to the point of crushing. "You make my heart merry in my breast!" he breathed.
"Yes, certainly; I am in high spirits also," Hjalmar assented, returning the pressure. "It is an exceedingly useful thing for you. But see to it that you bear yourself boldly as a hawk; and keep it all the time before his mind that no real harm has been done."
Alrek began suddenly to laugh. "It may be that I would better tell him that he owes me thanks for sending the Skraellings to him?"
"That might have no small power," the Thick-Skulled responded gravely; and Alrek laughed again, as he caught at the huge shoulder to steady himself in rising upon his stiff legs.
If the shoulder had been Grimkel's, the mouth belonging to it would have advised differently. During all the time that the helmsman was bewailing the evils to come out of such rashness, and Karlsefnewas courteously explaining how luck had warded off such evils, the old seaman's weather eye had scanned the sky of his chief's face with deepening gravity. Now his speculations broke out into words.
"If the boy tries to make light of his disobedience because it ended luckily, the Lawman will spare him neither in words nor deeds," he muttered to himself; and the impulse came to him to try to push through the crowd pressing him mast-ward and impart this prognostication to the Sword-Bearer. But even as he moved to carry out his kindly intention, the boy's erect red-cloaked figure appeared in the doorway of the foreroom and it was too late to do anything.
Though his dress of blue was merchant garb and the staff in his hand was a farmer's symbol, the face of Karlsefne was the face of a law-giver. Above the beard of iron gray his mouth showed firm-lipped as a mouth of stone, and the gaze of the steel-bright eyes under the bushy brows was such as none with guilt in their hearts might sustain. Meeting it, the Sword-Bearer's eyes fell and the blood was drawn to his cheeks, and he cameforward and bent his knee before the Lawman.
Hard as measured steel were Karlsefne's measured words: "For a long time I have been watching to know whether you deserved favor or starkness, and held my hand from you lest it deal unjustly. I thought, long ago, that I smelled hot blood which would one day break out and sweep away all bounds. Now that day has come, and the worst things I have thought of you are proved the true things."
As he bowed his head under the rebuke, Alrek's teeth cut a blood-line on his lip; but he attempted no defense. For the space of a second it seemed to Grimkel that the Lawman's face showed surprise.
Yet his voice was even sterner when he spoke again. "They are no less true things because good fortune has enabled me to ward off the damage which would otherwise have been caused by your deed. If you are at all versed in camp ways, you know that this happening does not make you any less liable to punishment."
Rising from his knee, the young Sword-Bearer faced him without fear. "My fate is for you todecide over, kinsman, according to your pleasure," he said with soldier submissiveness.
Then there was no question whatever about Karlsefne's surprise. After a moment's silence, he spoke slowly; "I think it best to hear first from your own mouth about this happening."
"I have no excuse why you should withhold your anger from me, yet I would not have you believe that I wished the thing to happen," Alrek answered. "When I set out for the light, my one thought was to get honor with you by finding out the news you wanted; and I think I should have remembered your order if the Skraelling had been where I first looked for him. But after I had given him up I saw him suddenly, hiding in the shadow; and something in me cried out that he was aiming and—and I have not been wont to jump backward when I saw a foe. Yet I ask you to believe that I wished least of anything to hinder your plans."
A while the steel-keen eyes probed him; but he did not flinch. "That is not in every respect as the helmsman relates the story," Karlsefne remarked at last.
"That is very likely," Alrek replied, "for the helmsman knows nothing whatever about the matter." Whereupon the helmsman let his stored-up breath go from him in a snort.
A dozen seamen endeavored suddenly to hide laughter under fits of coughing; but the Lawman said gravely: "Nevertheless, I now see that there is truth in the other things he told me about your behavior toward him;" then turned away and stood a long time pondering, his hands gripping his silver-shod staff, his half-closed eyes resting on the group of gaping boys. And gazing at them, he seemed to forget the Sword-Bearer in a new problem.
"Here are more rebels," he said to the helmsman, with a sweep of his staff. "Little order will there be in camp if they are turned loose on it in no better state of mind. How is it your intention to deal with them?"
The Weathercock shifted his weight peevishly; he was tired of standing; and his mind was upset within him; and he wanted besides to get back to his ale horn. "Since they are free-born, it seems that I can not even give them the flogging they deserve,"he snapped, "but if they were thralls, I would drown them."
"It may be then that you would be willing that I should offer them to come under my rule?" Karlsefne suggested; and went on to say more in an undertone.
Astonishment opened the helmsman's eyes at first; then, slowly, he wrinkled into a fat smile. At last he reached out and grasped Karlsefne's hand.
"If you will rid me of the twenty plagues, who are turning me thin, I will feel as though you had given me twenty marks of gold," he declared. Whereupon the Lawman turned to the group of blank faces.
"Now this is my offer to you," he said, "that you part from the rest of the Greenlanders and form yourselves into a band and build your own booth and choose one of your own number to rule over you."
The faces lighted in ecstasy,—then gloomed in unbelief. Brand spoke for all when he inquired timidly:
"Is this apunishment?"
"It is not a reward," Karlsefne answered; andfor a moment his gaze sharpened so that the Red One winced under it. "If I did not believe that it is because you know no better that you act thus, there would be hard things in store for you. I take this way to show you why lawfulness is needful. Yet is there no trick to it; all I have promised shall be fulfilled,—and more. You shall have your own table if you can furnish it; your own boat if you can build it; in every way like men——"
They thought his pause the end, and burst into jubilant chorus; "It will not take us long to know what to answer to this!"
But he raised his hand for silence. "Answer nothing until you have heard the whole. If you form yourselves upon the manner of men, so must you also bear men's burdens. You must furnish your share of hunters and fishers and of workers in the fields; and you must do your share of guarding against outside foes or lawlessness within. Even as Thorvard, here, and Snorri and Biorn, answer to me for the behavior of their following, so must your chief answer for you——"
"Yes! Yes!" they cried eagerly.
But he lifted his hand again; his measuredtones became like tolling bells. "Think well! I speak not in jest. If you accept, I take you in grim earnest. You may not have men's liberty without men's care, and I shall hold you like men to your word though the matter cause death itself. Think well!"
They did pause; his manner was impressive enough to insure that. But in a moment, Brand flung back his red locks daringly.
"Much should we lack in manhood if we would refuse a fair offer! Take our word!"
Every one of the twenty echoed him wildly. "Take our word!"
"It is taken," Karlsefne said gravely; then bent his gaze on the Red One. "It appears likely that you will be the chosen head, since you seem always to speak for your comrades?"
Brand flushed with delight. But before he could answer, Domar spoke bluntly:
"I do not see in what Brand is above the rest of us Greenlanders. I raise my voice for Alrek Ingolfsson."
"Alrek Ingolfsson, by all means!" Erland seconded; and Brand joined him generously.
In another moment, all were shouting, "Alrek! Alrek!"
Plainly, this was something the Lawman had not expected. "Alrek?" he repeated in surprise. "Yet I do not know that it would not be a punishment to answer for such a band!" Turning, he looked again where the Sword-Bearer stood with folded arms, awaiting his sentence.
Perhaps with mouth firm-set and troubled eyes he looked more than ever like his father. Old Grimkel's watchful gaze saw the Lawman's hardness break up like Greenland ice before a warm land wind. Taking a slow step forward, he laid his hands upon the square young shoulders and looked long into the brown young face.
"Since you left in the spring," he said, "a son was born to me, but I swear I do not love him more than I love you when that look is on you, bringing back my brother and my boyhood and the time before our ways parted." His voice softened to very grave gentleness. "Since you did not mean offense toward me, I will take none; and you shall accept this chiefship and use it to prove what nature is in you. All I have of love and honor lies ready foryour gaining,—it will not gladden you more than me if you are strong enough to take them. Will you accept the test?"
He held out his hand, and the Sword-Bearer grasped it in both of his and looked him full in the face, his eyes in a golden glow. "I accept the test,—and I give you thanks for it from the bottom of my heart," he said.
"Whether you think so or not, I know that Gudrid would not keep milk in a fish-pail," the Bull's voice rose above the racket.
There was not a little racket to surmount, for it was rising time at the new band's new booth. In the high-seat that had been built for him midway the length of the hall, the red-cloaked chief occupied the interval before breakfast with rune-carving; but that was the only employment which was being carried on in silence. Whistling boys were lacing their high boots along the benches right and left of the high-seat; grumbling boys were just turning out of the bunks behind those benches; jeering boys were throwing bedclothes at the sluggards, and disputing boys were clattering bowls and trenchers on the tables which stood on either side the fire. One of these table-boys was the short and chesty Bull, sniffing hostilely at themilk he was pouring; and the head of the division was Brand, the long and loose-jointed.
Over a platter of cold venison, he frowned on his scullions. "Gudrid has nothing to do with this house," he snubbed the faultfinder; then, in peremptory aside, "Olaf, keep that door shut! Do you think it is warm outside?"
"Do you think that any one who eats your cooking needs to be told that Gudrid did not do it?" retorted the Bull, refusing to be snubbed.
A sigh came out of Erlend's handsome mouth as he looked up from hunting a lost button among the pine branches of the floor. "Ah, Gudrid! After that last meal she invited me to take in their booth, eating here has been like living on seaweed!"
Brand's frown took on an edge of scorn. "Fussers! Go and live in Gudrid's house! It may be that she would allow you to crawl into the cradle with the baby. Yesterday the grumbling was because I put my head out of the door to look at a dog-fight and the bread got a little burned. If I were as womanish as the rest of you, I would braid my hair and put on skirts!"
Still bending over his rune-carving, the young chief spoke with a drawl: "Here is something worth a hearing! Is it in truth your opinion that there is the most manfulness in you?"
Surprise took the head-cook a little aback; then defiance took him a long way forward, flourishing his red mane. "Yes, I think so. You also found fault with the bread, for all your Viking training. I think I am the most hardy man here."
When Alrek's knife had cut another rune upon his stick, he straightened deliberately. "Yesterday," he explained, "Karlsefne gave the chiefs the advice to pick out each week five men who should have it for their sole service to keep the camp in fire-wood——"
A prolonged groan interrupted him; of all the burdens of housekeeping, fuel-getting weighed the most heavily.
"——and he bade me send the hardiest man in our booth. I intended Domar to go, but now I see that Brand Erlingsson is the man to do it."
"Hail to the chief!" yelled Strong Domar.And Brand's flame of defiance sank in ashes of sulkiness; and from the others came shouts of laughter.
"He will wish he was back at kitchen work!" "Tree-chopping is the least interesting—" "And the weather is such that wood lasts the shortest time—" "Still Karlsefne is lacking payment—" "Never will we get to cutting timber for the ship!"
The Hare made a pettish flourish with the knife he was using to trim away the rags from his garments. "Who wants to prepare for anything so far in the future? Why will you, Olaf, open that door? What I should be glad of is a chance to exercise myself for the spring games. Since we began this way of living, I have not had one race worth talking about."
"I should be thankful if we could get a chance to go north where the big game is," Erlend said with a disapproving glance at the empty walls. "All the booty we have to show is the Skraelling hatchet, and Alrek has the habit of carrying that in his belt. Many hunting journeys will be required to make this booth equal to theothers in outfittings. Let your eyes run over it and then think of Karlsefne's!"
Thinking, they were silent for a little, gazing around at the great room which even in the fire-glow showed so baldly white with newness. Karlsefne's walls were decorated with bears' heads and eagles' claws and antler-racks of shining weapons; and Karlsefne's benches were covered with rich furs, and his high-seat had velvet cushions stuffed with eider-down.
"Alrek, when is it your intention to take the time to get furnishings?" Erlend besought.
The chief shook his brown head steadily. "Not until we get out of the debt which we got into to build this booth," he answered, and closed the opening discussion by putting aside his rune-stick and rising. "Now it seems to me that you are all looking too far into the future. I should be content if I could get something to eat. Who has gone after the fish? And what is the reason that he is not back again?"
As head-cook, Brand answered him, though sulkily: "Gard has gone after the fish, and it is high time that he was back again."
"That is what I have been trying to do, look for him," little Olaf the Fair spoke up for the first time, in aggrieved tones. And secure at last from interference, he flung the door open to the nipping January wind. "No, I see nothing of him—but I do hear the snow crunch!"
"It is certainly time," Brand blustered.
Nevertheless he bent his lank length over the fire with recovered good-humor; and greater alacrity came into the movements of those who were not yet dressed, while those who were, turned toward the door, gibes at each tongue's end.
The nature of their greeting changed, however, when Gard the Ugly had stamped into the room and they saw the size of the catch swinging at his side. Waking, their sleeping appetites cried out in alarm:
"Only three!" "Go into the hands of the Troll—" "—gone long enough to get thirty!" "What in the Fiend's name has come to the fishing?"
Tossing his fish to the clamoring cooks, Gard was a long time pulling off his fur-lined glovesbefore he answered: "Nothing has come to the fishing."
"What has come toyouthen?" Brand demanded.
After a while Gard said gruffly: "I forgot to take any more."
"Forgot!" echoed the chorus; and Erlend laid his plump hands on the Ugly One's shoulders and shook him good-naturedly.
"Are you asleep?" he inquired.
Gard pushed off his brown cloak and with it his questioner. "Since I can feel your grasp, I am not asleep. I think I have seen Hallad's ghost."
"What!" cried the chorus; and Domar, mistaking it for a joke, burst into his uproarious laugh. He stopped abruptly when he found that he was alone, and Gard spoke without further interruption:
"It happened that the first set of lines I stopped at had been robbed, so I was obliged to go across the river, which is what makes me rather late. Over there I had pulled up three fish when I heard a noise on the bank and looked around. Some evergreen trees hang down their branchesthere, and they are white with snow; he had on a white cloak that mixed him with them, at first. But suddenly I saw him looking out at me, as near as that bowl. His eyes were very wide open, and his face was white as milk. It may be that he would have spoken to me, but I did not wait to see."
"And therein you showed sense," Domar breathed in sympathy. But again he was on the unpopular side, for Ketil began to hoot:
"If you had waited, it is most likely you would have found out that you are a simpleton. Why should Hallad be dressed in white like a slave? He wore green when he went on his death-journey. Is it likely that Ran keeps new cloaks for drowned people?"
"Certainly, I think you are asleep after all!" Erlend laughed; which was the signal for a flight of chaff until Brand at his fish-fork endangered the peace by scoffing:
"I think you are lying."
To have said that to some of the band would have been to bring on a fight to the death, and many caught breath apprehensively before they remembered that this was one of the points aboutwhich Gard's thrall-blood gave him feelings different from theirs. He answered without resentment:
"I am not apt to lie when nothing is to be gained by it. I call Thor as witness that I have spoken the truth!" His oath he directed toward the chief, who had returned to his high-seat and from there listened intently to what passed.
But in the very act of nodding, Alrek Sword-Bearer broke off to ponder; and in the midst of pondering, he began to grin. "If you want to know my belief," he said, "it is that you saw the Weathercock's thrall, Tunni."
Instantly the chorus seconded him. "That is certainly the truth of the matter!" "Their hair is of the same color—" "—the branches hid its shortness—" "and explains the slaves' cloak——"
"And explains why his look was fear-full," Alrek added, "if, as I think, it was he who robbed the lines to save himself the trouble of going farther. He would think his hide in danger of a flogging——"
"Which it will get!" roared Gard; whereupon the chorus redoubled its delighted jeering.
This one time, however, the Ugly One's patience had a limit. Gradually his swarthy face turned mottled red; slowly a gleam came into the dull eyes above the high cheek-bones. Suddenly his voice rumbled through theirs: "If any of you tell this so that outsiders make derision, you will feel the edge of my knife."
They knew then that they had gone as far as was safe. When each one of them had spoken one gibe more to show that he dared to, there was a lull, of which Erlend the Amiable took advantage to make a tactful suggestion.
"I shall think those fish are ghosts if I do not get some of them between my teeth before long," he observed. And lo! ghosts and threats were, of a sudden, things of the past.
"Get to your places," commanded the head-cook, sweeping them aside that he might place before his chief the first portion of the crisp and rosy dish, savory with garlic and sweet with its own freshness.
There was an eager scrambling of feet, a joyful clattering of brass-hilted knives, a flurry of half-spoken requests; and after that allnoise gave way to a pleasant munching sound, enforced now and then by a contented sigh or a long-drawn "Ah—h!" of satisfaction.
A mumble of applause greeted the Bull when, having licked the last morsel from his fingers and pushed back his bowl, he looked around to say, stretching: "I should like to see the man who could make me go back to the old way of living!"
To keep such a band supplied with food was an occupation in itself.
"Certainly I begin to believe there is truth in the things women say about a boy's stomach being like the bottomless horn which Thor tried to drink dry!" Brand jested. With his week of fuel-duty far behind him and a day's hunting immediately before him, it was a light heart that beat under his deerskin tunic as he followed his chief and the Ugly One out of the booth door.
On the threshold the hunters paused to call back in mock admonition: "See to it this time that the meat is hung where the dogs can not get it—" "Watch Njal, if you do not want the cheese cut with the garlic knife—" "Put a bone in the Bull's mouth! If the Skraellings shouldcome while he is bellowing like that, they would get more scared than they were at Karlsefne's bull."
Then Brand shut the door upon the counter-chaff, and the three began to burrow for their skees in the pile beside the house.
Trees—such trees as Greenland never dreamed of—rose snow-laden behind the booth, and before it a sweep of snow-buried meadow sloped away to beaches of white sand; for the little settlement was built across a neck of land that reached down between a river and a great lake-like bay. But the lads went neither forward nor back when at last they were shod for the trip, but turned to their left and moved across the camp toward the river bank.
It was so early in the day that no wind had yet arisen to stir the fleecy snow-blanket which the night had spread, and to look up a sunbeam was to look up a track of swirling star-dust. From the provision shed next their booth the first camp dog to leave night quarters had only just emerged, yawning, and dragging his hind legs after him. Passing the great log-built sleeping houses withgray banners flying from every smoke hole, they caught a rattle of dishes and a hum of jovial voices which told pleasantly of the breakfast hour. Farther on, they overtook the thralls carrying the pails of milk to the dairy, and had—for a wink of time—a glimpse of Gudrid herself. Looking out to hurry the milkers she stood an instant in the dairy door, tall and straight and deep-bosomed, carrying her baby on her hip as though he were a doll. For all the white matron's cap upon her sunny locks, her face showed young and flower-fresh as she turned to smile at them. When they had lost sight of her, Brand spoke reflectively:
"Women are as helpless in hardships as a rowan tree in the open; but if they must be in the world, let them be like that."
"It is a good thing to be in a country where there are but seven women," Gard assented.
What Alrek would have said no one knows; for they reached just then a corner of the last booth, and rounding it, encountered Karlsefne returning from an early search for a favorite hound which he now carried in his arms, badly torn by fighting.
As he was coming out of the snow-mantled grove, so he might have been coming out of the finest trading booth in Norway, so splendid were his garments of blue, so rich the silvery furs that bordered them. On the iron of his hair and his beard and his bushy brows, the morning light was sparkling like rime frost; and a glint of kindly humor lighted his deep-set eyes as they fell upon the approaching three.
"I salute the Chief of the Vinland Champions and his men!" he greeted them. "We old bones need to look to ourselves when young blood is on the trail so early."
Drawing up his soldierly form in salute, the Sword-Bearer replied that young blood had need to stir early when it had young appetites to provide for.
"That is true," the Lawman assented; then added politely: "Yours is certainly a hard-working household, chief. I hope your debt to me does not lie heavy on your shoulders?"
Involuntarily the Champions of Vinland exchanged wistful glances, and their chief paused to consider his answer.
"Why, the truth of the case is this," he said at last. "It is only a little time that is left over after we have got the food and fuel which are needed to keep us going; and since we have to spend that time in working out our debt to you, there is left no chance whatever to employ ourselves with accomplishments or skin-hunting. That some have found this hard can not be denied, yet it should not be thought either that our knees are in any way weakening under us."
"Ah?" said Karlsefne, and stood a while stroking the head of the hound that had just strength enough to lick his hand. Presently he spoke with much graciousness: "It is an old saying that 'necessities should be taken into consideration.' Let us therefore look upon the debt as paid. In a short time to come you will find your hands full with ship-building. I expect that your boat will stand to Vinland's aid and strengthen us greatly, when it is ready."
So unexpected was the turn that for a time it took their breath away, but at last their chief recovered enough of his to answer gratefully:
"To let the matter rest so would be a greathelp for us, Karlsefne. If we do not serve Vinland well, it will not be for lack of trying."
"That is well-spoken, as was to be expected from you," Karlsefne made courteous return; whereupon they shook hands all around with the ceremony which becomes a dealing between chiefs.
After they had parted from the Lawman, however, and were skimming through the grove which was the back dooryard of the little settlement, dignity gave way to delight. Reaching the trail that zigzagged up the bluff, they streaked down it cheering, and cheering slid far along the sparkling track of the river.
Though black rifts yawned here and there in the middle of the stream, the ice within a hundred paces of the shores was as solid as a rock and as smooth-carpeted as a floor, a shining temptation to any with red blood in his veins. From sliding they went to racing, cleaving the air like swallows. There is no knowing when they would have stopped if they had not been halted, on turning a bend in the river, by the sight of smoke curling up from behind in a low white bank ahead of them.
In the same breath Brand cried: "Skraellings!"and Gard cried, "Dwarfs!" At which Alrek repeated the last word with lifted eyebrows:
"Dwarfs?"
Somewhat shamefacedly, Gard explained himself: "I said that in jest. It came into my mind how Biorn Herjulfsson's men used to think that this land was inhabited by them. But the rocks are not large enough here. It is more likely to be Skraellings."
"It is most likely to be some of our own hunters," Alrek dissented, "but it lies on our shoulders to investigate. We will leave our skees on the ice and creep close to the bank and listen; the tongue they speak, and their voices, will tell us something. If they are Skraellings, remember to behave well toward them, but on no account allow them to get hold of your knives. Karlsefne would blame the man strongly who should give them a weapon."
The plan was simple enough to carry out, for the shore was flat at the river's edge. With a sudden freak of perverseness, Brand decided that doffing his skees was unnecessary, and edged his way up sidewise, the six-foot runners threateningmore than once to trip his neighbor. But they did not have to get very close to hear, as the place was still and the voices loud.
Their first expression was disappointment, for the language spoken was nothing more novel than Norse, and the voice was the hoarse one of the vagabond Greenlander known as Faste the Fat.
"——they are contented with no better excitement than hunting," he was saying.
"And to get only such wealth as is to be got from trading with Skraellings," added the grumble of Ale the Greedy.
In the faces of the eavesdroppers disappointment began to give place to curiosity.
"Better two followers like you than twenty cinder-biters," returned a third voice, harsh and sneering for all the flattery of the words. "I have not brought my news forward in the hall because I do not want the chiefs to take the power out of my hands. I have told only men who——"
Snap! Snap! Recognizing the Huntsman, Brand had moved involuntarily; and his cumbersome foot-gear came in contact with a bush and the dry twigs broke. Before the lads could more thanstraighten, the giant form of Thorhall appeared at the top of the bank, his knife bare in his hand.
"Prying again!" he snarled, in his small eyes so evil a look that Gard's fingers began instinctively to shape runes against charm-spells, and Alrek's deliberate voice became fiercely swift as at a challenge.
"A man must be doing something which he expects to have pried into who makes his council-hall in the wastes," he retorted. "We thought the smoke must be from a Skraelling cook-fire, and crept up to see."
The Huntsman tossed his knife back to its case, and his anger sheathed itself in contempt. "If a man in the wastes is unable to escape the meddling of fools, what would he not have to endure who remained in camp?"
To that there did not appear to be any satisfactory answer; and as he remained standing with folded arms, plainly awaiting their departure, there did not seem to be any adequate reason for staying. The only revenge they could take was to move away in the most deliberate manner possible and mutter scathing comment to one another,feeling all the while his eyes like knife-blades in their backs.
"It has something to do with that bag of his." "He is trying to get another ship-load of fools to accompany him south—" "If he thinks the Weathercock will lend him another boat—" "None but the scum will listen to him—" "I wonder if Ale and the Fat One were ashamed to show themselves?" "Let us turn around suddenly when we get to this bend and see if they are not all looking after us."
Agreeing, they reached the bend and turned,—but it was a day of surprises. Though each boy would have taken oath that he felt that gaze on him as he wheeled, neither Huntsman nor followers were anywhere to be seen. And as they stood staring, Gard uttered a smothered cry and flung out his arm in another direction, toward the middle of the stream.
Through a broken place in the ice not twenty paces away, two claw-like hands were reaching up; as the trio gazed, a head followed, covered with carrot-yellow hair which hung in dripping points about two starting eyes set in a ghastly blue-whiteface. Finally a white-cloaked body raised itself over the edge of the ice and stood before them.
Whether it would retreat or advance none waited to see. With a yell of "Hallad!" Gard was off up the river at a deer's pace, the others at his heels. When he came to another place where the bank was flat, he turned his long toes up it and plunged into the forest, the others still following.
Guiding six-foot runners in and out between trees, however, is less easy; and before long they were forced to moderate their speed. As soon as they did that, Alrek's wonted coolness was able to overtake him. He stopped disgustedly.
"We are simpletons to run. Hallad would do us no harm."
Gard devoted the only breath he had to triumph: "You do not claim that it is Tunni, now!"
"It is Hallad," the Red One agreed in a gasp. "If we could cut off his head and put it between his feet, that would make him rest quiet."
The Ugly One shook his black mane. "You forget that a wave-covered man can not be dug up again. It is said to be a sign that they have beenreceived well when drowned men come back after their death; yet Hallad has scarcely the look of one who has been well entertained——"
"He was always wanting something different from what he had," Brand sniffed.
"However that is, it is unlikely that he has come back to make trouble," Alrek said. "That is only done by men who were unruly before their death. Hallad had less spirit than a wood-goat when he was alive. I think we were fools to run."
"If you had been that kind of a fool on the Cape of the Crosses, you would have made more by it," Gard muttered in rare resentfulness,—though he was not rash enough to speak so that his chief could hear him.
The Sword-Bearer on his side knew better than to ask over. Instead he said: "This is the first time I have been in this part of the country. I wonder what kind of game they have here," and moved leisurely away where a treeless space left a white page crossed and recrossed with woodland runes.
Preferring to discuss their last adventure before they sought a new one, the other two sat down towait for him. But they were hardly settled before his whistled call brought them again to their feet.
They found him kneeling beside a trench-like trail, testing with his bared hands the condition of the snow that had fallen back into it.
"If this were a five days' journey north, I should declare them elk tracks," he said. "Snorri of Iceland shot many a one of them up there, last winter, which he thought greatly superior to any we have in Norway. I would give my head for another elk hunt." He remained gazing at the trail in pleased retrospection, which moved the two Greenlanders to say enviously that they had never seen an elk.
"You will find it sport when you do," the Sword-Bearer assured them. Then he came out of his musing and arose, once more Alrek the Chief, brief and purposeful. "They can scarcely be less than deer's, however; and they were made this morning. It is easier to find tracks than to find what made them, as it is one thing to sight land across drift-ice and another to land on it; but we shall have poor luck if we can not get our meat out of this."
Instinctively they fell again under his leadership, straightening as he rose and turning their runners in the direction he was facing.
"Certainly the snow could not be in better condition," Brand gave tacit assent, and reassured himself of the safety of the quiver at his back.
"I knew that we should have luck to-day, because I heard a wolf howl last night," Gard added, with a hitch to his belt.
Then they glided away, single file, under the white arches spanning the white aisles.