Alwin did not seem to hear him.  His eyes were still intent on the swaying tree-tops.  “It is a fair land to be alive in,” he said, dreamily; “yet, I cannot help wondering how it will be to be dead here.  Does it not seem to you that if my spirit comes out of its grave at night and finds none but wolves and bears to call to, it will experience a loneliness far worse than the pangs of death?  Think of it!  In this whole land, not one human spirit!  To wander through the grove and the camp, and find only emptiness and silence forever!”

His body stiffened suddenly, and he flung his arms high above his head and clenched his hands in agony.

“God!” he cried.  “What have I done to make me deserving of such a doom?  Why could I not have died when Leif cut me down?  Why could I not have been buried where human feet would pass over me, and human voices fall on my ear at night?” He flung himself over on his face and lay there motionless.

Rolf laid a hand on his comrade’s shoulder, and for once his voice was honestly kind.  “It is hard to know what to say to you, Alwin, my friend.  You who have borne trials so manfully have a right to a better fate.  There is only one thing which I can offer you:  choose what man you will—­so long as he be no one with whom I have sworn friendship—­and I promise you that before we sail to-morrow, I will pick a quarrel with him and slay him; so that, if worst comes, your spirit shall have at least one ghost for company.  I—­”

He did not finish his sentence.  Suddenly his touch upon Alwin’s arm became an iron grip, that dragged the Saxon to his feet.

“Look!” the Wrestler gasped, as he pulled him behind the great oak in whose shelter they had been lying.  “Look!  Are those ghosts, or devils?”

Half-dazed, Alwin could do no more than stare along the pointing finger.  On the opposite bank, some hundred yards below their point of observation, stood two long-haired, skin-clad men.  Another pair had already plunged into the river and were nearly half-way across.  And as the white men gazed, four more beings crashed out of the underbrush and joined their companions.

“Praise the Saint who hung leaves upon the trees as thick as curtains!” Rolf breathed in his comrade’s ear.  “Up with you, for your life!  And make no rustling about it either.”

With the agility of cats they went up the great bole, and the kind leaves closed behind them.

“Is it your opinion that they are ghosts, or devils?” Alwin asked, when each had stretched himself along a branching limb and begun a curious peering through chinks in the enveloping foliage.  “It has always been in my mind that ghosts were white and devils black, while these creatures appear to be of the color of bronze.”

“We shall see more of them before the game is over,” Rolf returned.  “The first ones are even now coming to land.”

As he spoke, the two shaggy swimmers clambered out of the water, like dripping spaniels, on the very spot that the white men’s bodies had pressed less than an hour before.