But old Kenulf cried out on the man, saying: 

“Rather is it one of the holy saints, and maybe the blessed Peter the fisherman himself,” and he bared his gray head, crossing himself, as he looked eagerly to catch sight of the glory of light round the seafarer; and that rebuked my fears a little.

But squall or crown of light was there none.  Only the brown waves, foam crested, which we feared not, and the gray light of the clouded sun that was nigh to setting.

My father heeded naught of this, but watched the boat, only wondering at the marvellous skill of her steersman.  And when the boat was so near that it was likely that the eyes of the man were on us, my father raised his arm in the seaman’s silent greeting, and I thought that the boatman returned the salute.

Now the course that the boat was holding when that signal passed would have taken her wide of us by half a cable’s length, but she was yet so far distant that but a little change would bring her to us.  Some sort of sail she seemed to have, but it was very small and like nothing I had ever seen, though it was enough to drive her swiftly and to give her steering way before the wind.  Until my father signed to him the man seemed to have no wish to near our ship, going on straight to what would be certain destruction amid the great breakers on our largest sand bar, and that made the men more sure that he was a wizard, and there were white faces enough among them.

“Now,” said my father to me, “doubtless this is what was put in my mind when I felt I must watch.  Had I not seen him, yon man would have been surely lost; for I think he cannot see the breakers from his boat,” and again he signed to the boatman.

Then from the little craft rose a great, long-winged hawk that cried and hovered over it for a little, as if loth to leave it; and one man said, shrinking and pale, that it was the wizard’s familiar spirit.  But the wind caught the bird’s long wings and drove it from the boat, and swiftly wheeling it must needs make for us, speeding down the wind with widespread, still pinions.

Then cried aloud that same terrified man: 

“It is a sending, and we are done for!” thinking that, as Finns will, the wizard they deemed him had made his spells light on us in this visible form.  But my father held out his hand, whistling a falconer’s call, and the great bird flew to him, and perched on his wrist, looking bravely at us with its bright eyes as though sure of friendship.

“See!” said my father loudly; “this is a trained bird, and no evil sending; here are the jesses yet on its feet.”

And Kenulf and most of the men laughed, asking the superstitious man if the ship sank deeper, or seas ran higher for its coming.

“Hold you the bird,” said my father to me; “see! the boatman makes for us.”

I took the beautiful hawk gladly, for I had never seen its like before, and loved nothing better when ashore than falconry, and as I did so I saw that its master had changed the course of his boat and was heading straight for us.  Now, too, I could make out that what we had thought a sail was but the floor boarding of the boat reared up against a thwart, and that the man was managing her with a long oar out astern.