The gale held without much change through the night, and then with morning shifted a few points to the westward, which was nothing to complain of.  The sea rose, and a few rain squalls came up and passed; but they had no weight in them, and did not keep the waves down as a steady fall will.  And all day long it was the same, and the ship fled ever before it.  There was no thought now of reaching any port we might wish, but least of all did we think of making the Lindsey shore, which lies open to the north and east.  When the gale broke, we must find harbour where we could; and indeed; to my father at this time all ports were alike, as refuge from Hodulf.  When darkness came again one of the wounded men died, and Havelok was yet ill in the after cabin, so that my mother was most anxious for him.  The plunging ship was no place for a sick child.

Now it was not possible for us to tell how far we had run since we had parted from the Viking, and all we knew was that we had no shore to fear with the wind as it was, and therefore nothing but patience was needed.  But in the night came a sudden lull in the gale that told of a change at hand, and in half an hour it was blowing harder than ever from the northeast, and setting us down to the English coast fast, for we could do naught but run before such a wind.  It thickened up also, and was very dark even until full sunrise, so that one could hardly tell when the sun was above the sea’s rim.

I crept from the fore cabin about this time, after trying in vain to sleep, and found the men sheltering under the break of the deck and looking always to leeward.  Two of them were at the steering oar with my father, for Arngeir was worn out, and I had left him in the cabin, sleeping heavily in spite of the noise of waves and straining planking.  Maybe he would have waked in a moment had that turmoil ceased.

It was of no use trying to speak to the men without shouting in their ears, and getting to windward to do that, moreover, and so I looked round to see if there was any change coming.  But all was grey overhead, and a grey wall of rain and flying drift from the wave tops was all round us, blotting out all things that were half a mile from us, if there were anything to be blotted out.  It always seems as if there must be somewhat beyond a thickness of any sort at sea.  But there was one thing that I did notice, and that was that the sea was no longer grey, as it had been yesterday, but was browner against the cold sky, while the foam of the following wave crests was surely not so white as it had been, and at this I wondered.

Then I crawled aft and went to my father and asked him what he thought of the wind and the chance of its dropping.  He had had the lead going for long now.

“We are right off the Humber mouth, to judge by the colour of the water,” he told me, “or else off the Wash, which is more to the south.  I cannot tell which rightly, for we have run far, and maybe faster than I know.  If only one could see—­”