All day the Blind Harper steered the galley of the dead. There was a
faint wind moving out of the west. The boat went before it, slow, and
with a low, sighing wash.
Torcall saw the red gaping wounds of the dead, and the glassy eyes of
the nine men.
"It is better not to be blind and to see the dead," he muttered, "than
to be blind and to see the dead."
The man who had been steersman leaned against him. He took him in his
shuddering grip and thrust him into the sea.
But when, an hour later, he put his hand to the coolness of the water,
he drew it back with a cry, for it was on the cold, stiff face of the
dead man that it had fallen. The long hair had caught in a cleft in
the leather where the withes had given.
For another hour Torcall sat with his chin in his right hand, and his
unseeing eyes staring upon the dead. He heard no sound at all, save
the lap of wave upon wave, and the _suss_ of spray against spray, and
a bubbling beneath the boat, and the low, steady swish of the body
that trailed alongside the steering oar.
At the second hour before sundown he lifted his head. The sound he
heard was the sound of waves beating upon rocks.
At the hour before sundown he moved the oar rapidly to and fro, and
cut away the body that trailed behind the boat. The noise of the waves
upon the rocks was now a loud song.
When the last sunfire burned upon his neck and made the long hair upon
his shoulders ashine, he smelt the green smell of grass. Then it was
too that he heard the muffled fall of the sea, in a quiet haven, where
shelves of sand were.
He followed that sound, and while he strained to hear any voice the
boat grided upon the sand, and drifted to one side. Taking his harp,
Torcall drove an oar into the sand, and leaped on to the shore. When
he was there, he listened. There was silence. Far, far away he heard
the falling of a mountain-torrent, and the thin, faint cry of an
eagle, where the sun-flame dyed its eyrie as with streaming blood.
So he lifted his harp, and, harping low, with a strange, wild song on
his lips, moved away from that place, and gave no more thought to the
dead.
It was deep gloaming when he came to a wood. He felt the cold green
breath of it.
"Come," said a voice, low and sweet.
"And who will _you_ be?" asked Torcall the Harper, trembling because
of the sudden voice in the stillness.
"I am a child, and here is my hand, and I will lead you, Torcall of
Lochlin."
The blind man had fear upon him.
"Who are you that in a strange place are for knowing who I am?"
"Come."
"Ay, sure, it is coming I am, white one; but tell me who you are, and
whence you came, and whither we go."
Then a voice that he knew sang:
O where the winds gather
The souls of the dead,
O Torcall, my father,
My soul is led!
But a river is here,
And a whirling Sword--
And a Woman washing
By a Ford!
Torcall Dall was as the last leaf on a tree at that.
"Were you on the boat?" he whispered hoarsely.