THROUGH WHICH THE STORM GIANT BLUSTERS
A stooping black shape against the sunshine, Hjalmar Thick-Skull came
through the doorway and began to paw over bales and boxes in search of
extra oars.
"Your luck is great, young one," he remarked. "You would not be sitting
quiet if you were outside. Perhaps you think, because you see sun
through the door, that the whole sky is like that; but you should see
the clouds ahead of us! The only thing equally black is the
Weathercock's face since he finds that he must put into the Keel harbor
after all. And on top of it the wind has failed, and he has commanded
all hands to the oars----"
Rising to his fettered feet, Alrek held out his bound hands. "Here are
mine! Take your knife to the knots."
The Thick-Skulled gaped over his shoulder. "Why--why--he did not mean
you."
"Have I not hands?" the Sword-Bearer demanded. "With a troll's strength
in them this morning! Certainly he meant me."
He strove to speak carelessly while his fingers were twitching, but some
breathlessness must have betrayed him. Scratching his tow mane and
staring as he scratched, Hjalmar began slowly to grin. After a little,
Alrek laughed also and spoke in frank appeal:
"Do me this good turn, shipmate, that I may stretch myself some while.
If he did not mean me, yet might you easily have mistaken him. You can
tell him so when he makes a fuss,--it is not likely that he will notice
me until the storm is over. You know it is a saying that 'the wolf
allays the strife of the swine.'"
After a while, the Thick-Skulled stooped, grinning, and laid his knife
against the thongs. "Behold what a good thing it is to have a reputation
for dulness!" he said. "But see to it that you bear me out by giving
good service at the oar."
The Sword-Bearer stretched his arms with a sigh of relief. "Only let me
get at it!" he breathed, and plunged into the air like a fish into the
water.
True enough! Though sunshine lay bright on the Wind-Raven's decks and
blue sky was above her, before her--like the entrance to another
world--sagged a canopy of slate-colored clouds. Swollen with rain, they
hung low over the shore-line of forest and dune and darkened all the
distant water save where, here and there, streaks of white gleamed like
monsters' bared teeth. Full of ominous warning was the calm that had
fallen on land and sea, robbing the sail so that it hung like a live
thing gasping for breath.
"If he did not put into the harbor he would be likely to share the fate
of Thorwald Ericsson, and be cast ashore in the same place, and likewise
with a broken keel," Alrek commented after a look at the sky; then laid
hold of his oar and bent himself almost to the bottom of the boat in the
relief of spending his energy.
Perhaps his appreciation of a small favor touched the Fates in their
woman hearts, for presently they extended it. When the Wind-Raven's
brood had brought her safely behind the wooded bar that lay across the
harbor mouth like a screen in front of a door, the helmsman gave out
word that since they were plainly storm-bound for the night, at least,
they would not deny themselves the comfort of a camp on land, but would
proceed immediately ashore. Ashore! the Sword-Bearer could scarcely
believe his good fortune, until Brand dared to lean over and poke him in
congratulation.
"I knew the Old One would take care not to have his fat jolted," he
whispered; "and he can not leave you behind. Your luck will last until
we come back again."
"Until we come back again!" Alrek repeated as though it were a toast,
and threw himself resolutely into the work of the hour.
There was field for action. They had barely reached the shore and found
refuge in a hollow below a wooded knoll when the tempest burst upon
them, rushing through the forest with a swelling roar that rose above
the thunder of the breakers. After that every minute of the day was a
battle--a fight over the tent canvas which the wind threatened to pick
up and carry off like a kerchief with all of them hanging to it in a
fringe; a skirmish for fuel through forests into which sand from the
dunes beyond was rushing like yellow swarms with biting mouths; a
contest over the fire, blown out or struck out with lances of glittering
rain; a struggle to hear or be heard through the thundering downpour, to
see the very food in their hands through the suddenly fallen darkness--a
battle between giants and pygmies!
Exhausted yet exhilarated, as after a day at the sword-game, the band
fell over from eating to sleeping. When the lightning tore apart the
darkness and disclosed the deserted ship reeling in terror upon the
twisting black water, they only laughed and burrowed deeper, falling
asleep to the thunder of breakers booming along the shore as to a
lullaby from a mother's lips.
The ocean was still booming when they awoke, late the next day, and the
wind was still blustering in the tree tops. The leader, with his mind
reaching out toward Vinland fires and Vinland fare, cursed peevishly;
but the juniors of his following greeted the delay with open rejoicing.
"Here is our chance to see the land!" Brand cried, shaking out his ruddy
locks like fiery banners. "Let us take it before anything gets it away
from us. I will wager a ring that I will beat any one to the top of this
steep!"
So promptly did they respond that although he won his wager, the next
boy was only a step behind; and none of the twenty was more than a pace
in the rear. Once on the crest, they streamed, whooping, into the grove
of oak and pine and sassafras which they had seen from the water, lying
along the bay shore like a ragged rich-hued mat.
Raggedness showed more plainly than richness, upon a nearer approach,
though nothing could take away the beauty of coloring where pines spread
their ever-living green over the windy crests and the oak trees on the
slopes had turned yellow and russet and red without losing a leaf. But
it was no such forest as Vinland boasted; compared with Vinland trees
the growth was stunted and there was not enough underbrush to give it
even the wildness of a thicket,--only tangles of rose briar and berry
bramble where the ridges sank into hollows cupping reed-fringed ponds.
Perhaps the best that could be said for it was that its endless
undulations kept curiosity awake. Passing over them was like breasting
billows; one gained a height only to behold another deep.
After a while, it stirred Alrek to restlessness. When it was suggested
that they should stop at one of the ponds for a duck hunt, he objected.
"Who knows what the next ridge may be hiding?" he said obstinately. "Let
us find out first what lies before us."
"What but the ocean?" Erlend asked in surprise. "That can not be far
away now; the sand wastes between the trees are getting much wider."
But Alrek was already moving on, dealing blows of his hatchet at the
trees on either side of him. "Do as you like," he answered over his
shoulder. "I shall not stop until I come to the end."
Erlend sent him a glance of surprise; but the others had caught the
fever of his mood so that they dashed after him in a cheering charge.
Their run did not keep up long, however, for the walking was momently
becoming harder. In the next hollow the pond had been smothered beneath
a sand blanket, and the bushes were strangling in sand. In the next
there were no bushes at all, only mats and tufts of wiry grass. On the
slopes the trees became fewer, the sand piled between them like drifted
snow; in one place it had buried a clump so that only their tops showed,
bush-like, above the creamy surface.
"There you can see what kind of place this would be to set up a
landmark," Njal of Greenland observed, pointing at them. "In twenty
years more it is likely the whole forest will be covered and the man who
comes then will say that we lied because we told of trees being here. I
doubt if we would be able to find much of the keel that Thorwald set
up----"
"Then do not let us spend time looking for it," Alrek finished. And so
completely had his mood taken possession of them, that they consented
without argument; plodding on doggedly over the dunes that had become
like yellow snow-banks, bare of a single tree, rounding in absolute
baldness against the gray of the sky.
Gradually, feverish expectancy grew in them all. It was as though the
vast shifting mass were a living monster, whose depredations they had
seen, whose lair they were now approaching. They stopped in a hushed
group when the last dune revealed the beach sweeping down to the water.
The scarred and furrowed ocean was another monster, still growling and
showing his tusks at the wind giant.
Northward, the ocean was all they saw. Westward, they saw it over a
yellow waste as the dunes sloped down to the Cape point. Southward, lay
the land over which they had come; beyond it, the bay in which their
ship rode at anchor. Eastward, unbroken drifts, unspotted beach--their
silence ended in a cry:
"Yonder! Yonder is something washed ashore!"
All saw it, so plainly did it show against the sand,--something dark and
motionless which the waves had flung up there out of their way. So large
did it loom in the strange light that, as they went plunging and
floundering toward it, some declared it to be a whale; and others, an
overturned boat.
[Illustration: 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.