ABOUT THE STRANGE FIND ON KEEL CAPE
"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 cord running 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: "_What_ a 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 would _not_!" "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 it is 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 who was
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
moon looked 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 that _I_ have done anything with them," he answered sullenly,
"because the boat went to pieces on a sand-bar and Rann 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. _You_ my 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
unpropitious moment 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 and down 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 stared for the space of a
minute before he spoke. "You struck your chief!" he repeated at last.
The Strong One chortled with relish. "_And_ blacked 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.