Then that fight ceased, for all Athalbrand’s people were dead or wounded to the death.  Meanwhile, on the right, I was fighting the ship that was commanded by Steinar, for it was fated that we two should be thrown together.  Here also the struggle was desperate.  Steinar and his company boarded at the prow, but I and my men, charging up both boards, drove them back again.  In that charge it is true that I, Olaf, fighting madly, as was my wont when roused, killed three of the Lesso folk with the Wanderer’s sword.  Still I see them falling one by one.  Followed by six of my people, I sprang on to the raised prow of Steinar’s ship.  Just then the grapnels parted, and there we were left, defending ourselves as best we could.  My mates got their oars and once more brought our boat alongside.  Grapple they could not, because the irons were lost.  Therefore, in obedience to the order which I shouted to them from the high prow of the enemy’s ship, they began to hurl their ballast stones into her, and thus stove out her bottom, so that in the end she filled and sank.

Even while she was down the fray went on.  Nearly all my people were down; indeed but two remained to me when Steinar, not knowing who I was, rushed up and, having lost his sword, gripped me round the middle.  We wrestled, but Steinar, who was the stronger, forced me back to the bulwarks and so overboard.  Into the sea we went together just as the ship sank, drawing us down after her.  When we rose Steinar was senseless, but still clinging to me as I caught a rope that was thrown to me with my right hand, to which the Wanderer’s sword was hanging by a leathern loop.

The end of it was that I and the senseless Steinar were both drawn back to my own ship just as the darkness closed in.

An hour later came the dawn, showing a sad sight.  My father, Thorvald’s, ship and one of Athalbrand’s lay helpless, for all, or nearly all, their crews were dead, while the other had drifted off and was now half a mile away.

Ragnar’s ship was still grappled to its foe.  My own was perhaps in the best case, for here over twenty men were left unhurt, and another ten whose wounds were light.  The rest were dead or dying.

I sat on a bench in the waist of the ship, and at my feet lay the man who had been dragged from the sea with me.  I thought that this man was dead till the first red rays of dawn lit upon his face, whereon he sat up, and I saw that he was Steinar.

“Thus we meet again, my brother,” I said in a quiet voice.  “Well, Steinar, look upon your work.”  And I pointed to the dead and dying and to the ships around, whence came the sound of groans.

Steinar stared at me and asked in a thick voice: 

“Was it with you, Olaf, that I fell into the sea?”

“Even so, Steinar.”

“I knew it not in the darkness, Olaf.  If I had known, never would I have lifted sword against you.”

“What did that matter, Steinar, when you had already pierced my heart, though not with a sword?”