when the darkening trees began to seem familiar, and the coast-line
stretched in remembered curves, and the ripples along the icy beach
seemed home-like. In the dusk, as we plodded crouching behind a drift of
snow that ran along the hillside, there rose before us something gaunt
and white and very tall and very still in the valley below us, and we
stopped, for we saw it was a building: it seemed a keep of the old days
that they build no more now. So we stood looking, trying to make out any
light near in the dark evening. Suddenly my lord sighed, and, falling
forward on his knees, he put his face down in the snow, and when I bent
and whispered to him he only answered, "They have burnt it, but the old
keep would not burn." It was our own hall that we had come back to. So,
the next morning we struck inland again, from the hill-top, thinking to
find refuge in a forest of leafless oaks whose rattling branches
glittered in the pale sunlight; and when we reached it my lord sat down
on a great root of one of the trees and would go no farther into the
forest. So I stayed by him all day feeding him on the last of our fish,
and making him cold water to drink, for though he shivered very much he
drank always. Thus it was that midway between the noon and the evening
there came three men, cross-bowmen, suddenly, from over the hillside,
and seeing us they stopped; then after a moment's speaking one with
another they ran forward, their cross-bows stretched.
My lord was sitting dejectedly at the foot of the ice-sheaved oak, and I
was cooling water for him in my helmet. The three men ran toward us,
shouting. My lord heard the sound and looked up; then rising slowly to
his feet, he hesitated a moment and unbuckled his sword, at which the
three cross-bowmen stopped, for they were not great men. Then my lord
spoke to me, half turning: "You have followed me faithfully, though to a
bad end, and I can give you nothing; nor do you want it; but I will not
be killed by Bishop's men. My fathers knew how to die, and their Gods
took them, so I---- and my Gods will take me." Then ramming the hilt and
the upper part of his sword into the snow, my lord fell over it
awkwardly and lay groaning, the sword through him. All this before I
could do aught but cry out.
Well---- Then came the bowmen, who shot him so that, after a few minutes,
he was dead indeed, and they brought his body and his sword down to the
snow-covered keep in the valley, where they delivered it to the Bishop
of Lund's legate; and they showed me over the doorway the heads of many
old women whom they said had been "left behind." I do not know. And
there were children's heads hanging from them. What became of the men of
the hall? It is something that I cannot remember. They bound thongs of
leather round my brows to make me tell of Father Peter and how he died,
and again in Roskilde, and they twisted them. But at last they permitted
me to enter the church here, as a server, and I look out on the fair
fiord of Roskilde now.
I am very glad that the story is done.
THE STORY OF THE OAR-CAPTAIN
This is the story of the Oar-Captain, that they used to tell to harps;
and that, after, was made a saga of. The story is rough, like the
natures of men, and full of storm of Nature and sea, as if a fury had
run down the pages. But there are soft threads in its rough woof--I tell
it just as the Oar-Captain told it.
The sun sank over the right-hand side of the ship--red, while the sky was
cloudless. And the light breeze fell, just as the dusk came, and our
brown sail trembled for a moment, and then sank back against the mast.
The men, laughing, leaned in a row along the bulwarks, while my lord
paced up and down on the aft-deck. The steersman pulls in his oar, the
ship swings idle, and soon the blue smoke ascends in a straight, fine
line through the evening air from the open dish of black charcoal where
they cook at the mast-foot.
It is evening, and soft clothes are spread about on the deck. Far away
the sea stretches, till it fades into the glow of the almost dark sky;
while on the other side, where no man looks, is dusk-darkness, cold,
abandoned, the dead regions of what was morning. After a while, when the
glory has quite faded out of the sky, the men murmur and slowly lie down
on their clothes talking for a while. That gradually ceases, and we lie
silent, while there comes faint creaking of cordage as the ship lazily
swings. My lord has ceased pacing the aft-deck. We lie watching the
stars come out.
Slowly they come, the eyes of other worlds. Lying close under the rail I
see a little track of lights come from far away, till it seems they
become scared and stop, and other lights come out behind them--a
twinkling row, till they reach the bulwark over my head. Next me a man
sighs in his sleep.
I lie thinking of the lands to the south, and of my lord. When I turn
my head I can still see him in the gathering dark, where he leans dim by
the black line of the steering-oar. Looking up my soul leaves the ship,
and seeming to gaze down from the stars I feel very far away. Slowly
they come, silent lights. I remember old sagas and faces--old faces----
It is morning. The fresh wind lifts the sail outward; the hair is blown
in the men's faces; the water whispers and chuckles merrily under the
side of the leaning ship. The thin ropes creak, the shields over the
sides rattle and jerk. I and another swing on the steering-oar, and the
men run along the decks with glad faces.
It is afternoon. The ship lies on her side; the flying water runs over
as it goes by. Dark clouds have come out of the east, and are streaked
from their low-lying bank in long streamers along the sky. The mast
bends, the bows shoot the spray up into the winds, where it is whirled
away before us. The water hisses; the wind moans and sings; and the ship
is full of the rattle of the oars along the benches.
It is evening. The moving sky is as black as the water between the
foam-streaks, by which we rush; through a vapour-veiled hole, dimly, the
pale sun is going down. Men shout to each other in the dark, and the
water splashes in waves along the benches. My lord gives orders for the
sail to be rolled fast and that all men shall come off the fore-deck.
Morning. By the hazy light from far up in the heavens, I see our bare
mast with the tangled bunch of ropes whipping forward from the top.
Broken oars swim in the water in the waist of the ship, and from
outside, heard in the twilight, comes the sound of mermaids singing I
think, answered by the dull roar of the mermen's shells. I look around;
before me are the men holding to anything that is firm on the
after-deck, where my lord stands, looking forward. They are pale, and
the glistening of their clothes shows in the misty light, that shows the
foam hissing over the side of the ship.
So, all day we crouch, gnawing pieces of bran-bread, and holding fast
to the sides of the ship.
Evening. The sun has gone out, and a roaring that sounds like the
rushing of pine-trees falling, comes from the dark. The shields are
gone, and the men laugh grimly thinking of death, when the seas rush
over the flying bulwarks.
It is morning again, and the clouds rolling and flying in jagged flags
in the wind, are broken at sunrise, and the wind sings now, not roars.
The ship shows, a bare-sided, dripping, unfamiliar thing beneath the
morning light; full of wreckage and ropes, the sail lying, and the yard
gone, the bunch of ropes at the top of the mast. The pale men that have
ceased to laugh now, untie themselves from the bulwarks and creep
stiffly forward to the food-chest. The sea rises in waves, but the still
stiff breeze keeps them down and we ride on, plunging; our bare mast
shakes in the wind.
That is how, when Lord Uffe stood on the seaweed-brown beach four days
later, he was cried to over the side of a bare-masted ship as it rowed
round the point along the rocky shore, and asked the name of the
country.
Lord Uffe brought us up to the hall where his people ran to cook meat
for us, and where we sat gladfully drinking the warm ale by the fire.
Then the great platters of meat came in seething, and we sat and ate,
warming ourselves, while Lord Uffe talked to my lord at the end of the
table--sitting by a great red-haired man that he ever glanced at kindly,
but who with thoughtful eyes sat gazing as one seeing nothing.
As we sat there, when our first hunger was done and men were beginning
to stretch out their legs under the table, I looked about the hall. And
there was something that seemed strange about it. For some time gazing,
I could not see; then with a half-afraid feeling, a wonder, I saw that
everything was old--the benches, the arms rusted on the walls--it was as
if men had been dropped back three centuries. Even while I was yet
wondering at this and looking curiously at the old-patterned arms on
the walls--such as I had seen in the old halls we had stopped at in our
sailing, kept from ancestors--the lord of the place, Lord Uffe--a short,
stout, strong, old man, with kind face and a beard to his waist and eyes
that shut in his laughter--rose, and standing with his hand on my lord's
shoulder, spoke to him and to the table so that all might hear.
"Ye care to know," he said, smiling, "what country this may be. Then I
will tell a story to you all--see that ye are comfortable--
"Four men's lifetimes ago if they were old men there was a ship blown
off the coast while it bore a boat-load towards the south, from a burnt
town in the hard north; searchers for new places. And for days a great
wind blew them the same as it has blown you, till, in the night, no
moon, they fell upon this place, the ship shocking onto the sands and
falling in pieces, and some of the men killed. They sat in the hiding of
the rocks till the sunrise, then with the strong wind blowing in their
faces, they found their home, built it, and saved some things from out
of the ship--they were my fathers. A pleasant country; we are content; no
ships ever come; we are alone; we mow our easily-sown fields while our
children grow about us; we cut timber in limitless forests--why should we
leave it? The name of the place?" And he stood, his great beard falling
on his chest, his eyes looking kind along the board to see if we wanted
anything.
"We are lost in the seas," he said again. "Whether far or near, or north
or south, no man knows; no ship ever comes; the forest begins behind us;
nothing that shows sign of man's hand is washed to the shore; we are
alone, lost and contented. Listen to the sound of the sea; we have never
crossed it; no man has crossed it to us; we know not where it goes; or
where we are."
The old man spoke grandly, but his kind eyes ever glanced along the
table to see if we wanted anything.
We men drew long breaths, and I saw my lord draw down his brows, and
tug the fair hair over his forehead. Some of us got up, and began to
walk about.
Then in the midst of the silence my lord spoke hesitatingly.
"We thank my Lord Uffe for his kindness. What can we do--can we sail
home--and where? Still, for the present, we thank my Lord Uffe for his
kindness."
The old man, pulling his beard, stood, looking at my lord for a moment;
then, a smile coming to his lips and showing in his eyes, he held out
his hand and said, "Stay."
It was some days before we got the things out of the ship and the ship
well hauled up on the beach. Then we looked about for a place for our
houses; for we had decided to stay, at least for a while.
The land seemed good; the sand, broken with rocky points, stretched
straight along the bright sea; and, protected from the sea-winds and
storms by a line of oak forest left standing, lay fields now just green
in the spring-time. Beyond these fields, fenced off from one another by
little walls of stone, drew in the forest again, the colour of the
light-green of a curling wave, and as limitless as the sea. In the edge
of the forest, surrounded by a few of the great trees, the others being
taken away, on a little rise in the ground, stood the old wooden hall of
Lord Uffe, shaded by the green branches, or crossed by the patches of
sunlight when they waved--the hall, a low building, old, with many
passages inside and far-away little rooms, and the one great
dining-chamber; built very stoutly. Around, in the edge of the forest,
were little houses of wood from which the smoke curled lazily up in the
spring air, and about which ran children playing while their happy-faced
mothers watched from the doorways. The sky was very blue, birds sang in
the trees, and about the fields hopped little hares.
We decided to build our hall, not a large one, but enough for us,
farther down the row of fields in a little point of great old trees that
ran out a little way toward the cleared place. Here with our axes we
hewed for many days, cutting great timbers and raising them upright
along the sides of our house-floor. Then came dragging of logs through
the forest and the laying them one on the other along the timbers for
the walls of the house and the driving of wooden pins and hewing of
doorways.
All this time we lived at the hall of Lord Uffe, except some of us who
stayed in the houses round.
I lived at the hall. Thus I saw from the beginning, the trouble that
came to us, and that brought storm and madness. Here, lost from all men,
with the unknown sea between us and all things but the birds and woods
and trees and waters and our little selves, was played a thing that was
unchanged from the far places we had left, as though we had never left
them.
While the fields grew greener, and the birds sang, and our house was
growing nearer finishing, while Lord Uffe walked in the forest and our
ship lay on the beach and our men ate in the hall, my lord, with his
yellow hair, and his soft harping, made love to the daughter of Lord
Uffe's dead brother, the betrothed of the friend of Lord Uffe, the
great man who had sat in the hall silently when we found welcome there.
It was this way. One day, when the noon held all the fields in stillness
and the little singing things were silent in the grass, I walked--for the
day was too warm to work in the mid-day--slowly, along one of the forest
paths, just shut off from the glare of the sun in the open by a screen
of trees whose leaves hung still in the silence. Then, far before me, I
saw at the end of the path two figures, and stopped, I do not know why.
I saw who the figures were--my own lord and Hilda, the betrothed of his
friend.
They were coming toward me, but their heads were bent down, and they did
not yet see me. I waited; though they walked slowly it seemed but a
moment till they were close to me; they were walking in silence. I know
not why, but I turned softly and went back, they not seeing me. As I
went back the silence oppressed me and I wanted the sound of the
crickets in the grass.
When I came into the hall that night for my meat, and looked up at the
end of the table where she sat by the great man, I sat down in the
shadow and was ashamed, for I saw it all.
Perhaps it was that we were new and strange, or perhaps it was my lord's
harping, and songs, and gentle ways, that took the maiden's liking--she
to whom the world was a legend. The people about her were rough; she, in
her simple dress, had learnt from the delicate flowers and things of the
woods where she had lived, to find them so perhaps. But when I looked up
from the shadow and caught the gleam of my lord's eyes as they met hers,
looking across the forms of Lord Uffe who had welcomed us, and her
betrothed, in this old hall; where below, sat our men and Lord Uffe's
together, all their hands hard from the work on great timbers--I grew
sick.
I have no heart for this part of the tale; let me go on to the ending.
For many days I stayed by our unfinished hall where the men were busy
thatching the roof and making the fireplace and windows; it was almost
done. At last one night I trod wearily up for my meat at Lord Uffe's,
while the air felt heavy and the occasional thunder that had rumbled far
away all day, growled in the west, as the sun sank. I came into the hall
when they were all seated, and without looking up at the end of the
table sat myself down silent, while the man next to me growled like the
thunder as he shoved me the meat-dish.
After dinner they called on my lord for a song. He took down his harp
from where it hung on the back of his chair, and striking it three
times--I remember all these small things--bent his head for a moment as if
listening. Then turning, and facing down the hall, he lifts his head;
and, playing softly, his voice rings out in a love song, that brings the
tears into the eyes of the women by the fire in a moment. As it rises,
it wakes even us men--what was that? Only thunder. The song goes on. It
speaks of love and despair, softly, but with a strange tenderness in the
notes that makes each man apply it to himself. The sorrowful notes
droop through the hall to the running music of the strings--he turns
toward the figure in white behind him--What a roar of thunder!--the song
goes on.
It speaks of division and of sorrow, and love unknown; it speaks of the
tenderness of love that is hid, of longing. A crash and volley of
thunder just overhead, and the hall is lit up for a moment by the
lightning--it is gone and the fire shines out again.
My lord is standing facing her; he leans forward, his eyes on hers, and
plays softly, his voice falling low. We bend forward to listen. He is
singing of love and its fulfilment; he sings of love, and the tenderness
of it. Slowly the words fall, his head is bent forward and his eyes gaze
into hers. Slowly she rises from her place, slowly she comes toward him,
her head raised, her eyes on his, slowly she sinks at his feet--the notes
fall--low----
Crash and roar! and a dying-away of the tumult into a distant roll while
the hall is lit up for a moment by the lightning. The light flickers on
the walls, showing the still raised harp, the kneeling figure, the men
half-risen from their places. It is gone, and the fire that has died
down glows feebly.
As I awake from the waking sleep I hear voices raised angrily, and in
the dusk see two figures, one tall, risen by the bench at the end of the
table. Someone throws a log on the smouldering fire and the sparks fly
up. In a moment it is light.
I hear a voice shouting, "Dost thou love this man?"
And Lord Uffe's voice raised in remonstrance; and from the white figure
now standing leaning against my lord comes a low voice saying something
we cannot hear.
Then there is more tumult that gradually thins down to a single voice
speaking, and Lord Uffe's words are heard as the silence falls. "Before
thou cam'st we were content; but thou hast brought the noises of the
world with thee, and broken peace. Thou cam'st to us out of the storm;
go back into the storm, my guest!"
Slowly my lord went down the hall, we behind him. Turning my head--I was
the only man who turned--I saw the white figure on its knees again by the
bench, its head hidden. Our host stood, his hand out towards us; away by
the fireplace a face shone over a huge black form on whose hair the
firelight played. I wish I could forget that face!
As we passed in silence through the door the thunder roared and died
away.
Soon we were at the ship in the darkness; we shoved her off in the
darkness; we men hoisted the mended sail in the darkness; we heard the
water begin to sound under our sides, then--a faint roll of thunder from
far away, a long flicker of light across the sky. We saw my lord
standing alone on the hind-deck, the beach, the lights of the hall--the
lightning gone, and we heard the water rushing around our bow in the
darkness.
Not a drop of rain fell; the air was very still.
When the day broke pink over the far level waters, my lord was leaning
on the rail yet. As the yellow light reached over the water till it
touched our ship I saw his face, and it surprised me, being quite gay. I
went up to him, and, the men gazing silently at us, spoke to him.
"The men," I said, "will carry you home, or east, but then----" I stopped,
for there was something in his face that made me stop.
"Yes," he said.
"And then we will leave you. If you wish, you can get a new crew."
"Ah," he said.
"I do not know how many days--when----"
"Yes," he said.
I stood silent; in the silence again; "Yes," he said, smiling to himself
as if in fun.
I moved myself so as to get a look at his face. There seemed a horror in
the eyes, and a stopping of all hope, that made me uncomfortable.
Waiting for a little time, I said again:
"If we come home----"
He did not answer. I was angry with him, and stood one foot
uncomfortably over the other for a little while, and then went back to
the men.
"He will answer only 'Yes,'" I said angrily. The men grunted, and I sat
down, angry, yet not quite understanding, leaving him still smiling.
All day I sat, angry, and when evening came and we had eaten, grumbling,
and cursing--all save my lord, who had eaten nothing--I got up and
clambered again on to the hind-deck.
When I came to him I stood, all the words having left me. I seized my
courage hard and spoke.
"When we get back, if we ever do, the men will leave you."
I waited; he gave no answer. I started to speak again, but no words
would come. I tried again. Then, with a sudden movement I leaned round
on the bulwark and saw his face. For a moment yet I stood impatient;
then with a cry of rage and pity I seized his hand and held it a moment,
then dropped it and rushed back among the men, and hid my face in a dark
corner, and sat there cursing weakly in a childish feeling of
impotency--oh, the shame; and the great woe he carried in his smiling
face!
Toward evening the wind fell, and as the sun went down the water shone
smooth, and the light blazed in our faces. The cool of the dusk was a
relief, and long after the great red moon had risen, we lay, restlessly,
surely a strange ship-load, lost on the limitless seas.
When morning came we pushed out our oars and toiled regularly,
creakingly, over the level water. The sun blistered the wood of the
bulwarks and burned our faces, and we longed for evening. So for twelve
days; till the yard was crooked, and our faces the colour of tanned
skin. The men used to groan at the oars. On the twelfth day, midway
between sunset and dark, came a little breeze over the water, that made
the men shout. And for two days we went unsteadily eastward and
northward with the little puffs of wind.
All this time we saw no land and no streak of foam upon the sea, that
was the colour of wood-ashes; only brown seaweed drifting northwards.
My lord had become very brown, and had a way of always turning toward
the light, looking east when the sun rose and west when it set.
Now, for some days we went northward; then for more days we went east,
till one morning, just after sunrise, we saw land, black hills which we
had come near to during the night. And for two days we coasted along the
great cliffs where the water beat white at their black bases. Then we
came to some houses, then to a curve and dying down of the cliffs. Then
a great wind took us and we were blown in, and all the rest was storm.
Once we drove past a sandy desolate point of land that was gone in an
instant; and once the ship grew almost full of water which we baled out
in the darkness.
On the second night, as we were flying through the half-dusk--the moon
shone sometimes--we heard a deep rushing before us just a little louder
than the sea's rushing. In a moment there grew up in the darkness a
shore of waving trees--we were among rushes--the ship high on the ground.
We were splashing ashore in the dark and the swishing wind, and we sat
and listened under the tossing, complaining trees till daylight.
Two days' travelling under darkly-dripping branches brought us to a
hall. It looked familiar--it was our own hall!
We had come home!
How quickly wonders fade under joy, though sorrow preserves them long.
By that evening we had come to think of it as very natural.
Three days we passed in eating and drinking, and on the evening of the
third one we sat pale from our drinking along the board. Outside the
ship lay, having been brought round by those sent.
My lord sat on a low stool by the corner of the fire. The talking grew
slack and we yawned, the edge of our home-coming having been ground down
by welcoming. Some of us rose to go to our sleep.
Then my lord stirred, uneasily, for a moment, got up, walked slowly to
the end of the long room, and sat down. We glanced around at the sound
of his tread and then the little talking ceased, for we saw that he
meant to speak. After a moment he spoke.
"I will go there to-morrow, and I would know what men would accompany
me." His lips were tight closed and he was pale across the forehead.
No one spoke.
"Will no one go?" he asked softly.
After a moment, I said, "Where?" all the men frowning.
"To where we have come from, across the water," he answered, pressing
his lips together till he showed white round the mouth.
The men sat, perfectly silent.
He came slowly to his feet, stopped, and then began to speak, softly and
strangely, with a great kindness.