“Else had I not been here!” answered the Dane.  “They are good shipwrights.”

Then Kenulf and the men set to work, and it was no easy matter to come by the boat; but it was done at last, and glad was I to see her safely lashed on deck.  Then the time had come, and we up anchor and plunged homewards through the troubled seas of the wide harbour mouth.  It was I who steered, as I ever would of late, while the Dane stood beside me, stroking his hawk and speaking to it now and then.  And once or twice he looked long and earnestly at the breakers, knowing now from what he had escaped; and at last he said to me: 

“Many a man, I know, would have rather let me go on than have run the risk of saving one from the sea.  Do you dare go against the saying?”

“Why not?  I may not say that it came not into our minds,” I answered; “but Christian men will put such ill bodes aside.”

“Ah!  I had forgotten your new faith,” said Lodbrok.  “Now from this time I, for one, have naught to say against it, for I think I owe it somewhat.”

And he was silent for a while.

Now my father came aft, and sitting down by the Dane, asked him how he came to risk sailing in the little boat.

“I know not if you can believe me,” answered Lodbrok, “but I will tell you in a few words.  I have been blown from off the Jutland shore and have won through the gale safely.  That is all.  But it was by my own fault, for I must needs take the boat and put out to sea with my hawk there to find fresh sport.  It seemed to me, forsooth, that a great black-backed gull or fierce skua would give me a fine flight or two.  And so it was; but I rowed out too far, and before I bethought myself, both wind and tide were against me.  I had forgotten how often after calm comes a shift of wind, and it had been over still for an hour or so.  Then the gale blew up suddenly.  I could have stemmed the tide, as often before; but wind and tide both were my masters then.

“That was three days and two nights ago.  Never thought I to see another sunset, for by midday of that first day I broke an oar, and knew that home I could never win; so I made shift with the floor boards, as you saw, for want of canvas.  After that there is little to tell, for it was ever wave after wave, and gray flying clouds ever over me, and at night no rest, but watching white wave crests coming after me through the dark.”

“Some of us thought that you were a Finn, at least,” said my father as the Dane paused.

“Not once or twice only on this voyage have I wished myself a Finn, or at least that I had a Finn’s powers,” said Lodbrok, laughing; “but there has been no magic about this business save watchfulness, and my sons’ good handicraft.”

Then I asked the jarl how he called his sons, with a little honest envy in my heart that I could never hope to equal their skill in this matter of boat building, wherein I had been wont to take some pride of myself.