ted in
his eyes. He loosed me, and gripped O'Keefe's arm. "Staerk!" he said.
"Ja--strong, and with a strong heart. A man--ja! He comes too--we
shall need him--ja!"

"I tell," he muttered, and seated himself on the side of the bunk.
"It was four nights ago. My Freda"--his voice shook--"Mine Yndling!
She loved the moonlight. I was at the wheel and my Freda and my Helma
they were behind me. The moon was behind us and the Brunhilda was like
a swanboat sailing down with the moonlight sending her, ja.

"I heard my Freda say: 'I see a nisse coming down the track of the
moon.' And I hear her mother laugh, low, like a mother does when her
Yndling dreams. I was happy--that night--with my Helma and my Freda,
and the Brunhilda sailing like a swan-boat, ja. I heard the child say,
'The nisse comes fast!' And then I heard a scream from my Helma, a
great scream--like a mare when her foal is torn from her. I spun
around fast, ja! I dropped the wheel and spun fast! I saw--" He
covered his eyes with his hands.

The Portuguese had crept close to me, and I heard him panting like a
frightened dog.

"I saw a white fire spring over the rail," whispered Olaf
Huldricksson. "It whirled round and round, and it shone like--like
stars in a whirlwind mist. There was a noise in my ears. It sounded
like bells--little bells, ja! Like the music you make when you run
your finger round goblets. It made me sick and dizzy--the hell noise.

"My Helma was--indeholde--what you say--in the middle of the white
fire. She turned her face to me and she turned it on the child, and my
Helma's face burned into my heart. Because it was full of fear, and it
was full of happiness--of glaede. I tell you that the fear in my
Helma's face made me ice here"--he beat his breast with clenched
hand--"but the happiness in it burned on me like fire. And I could
not move--I could not move.

"I said in here"--he touched his head--"I said, 'It is Loki come out
of Helvede. But he cannot take my Helma, for Christ lives and Loki has
no power to hurt my Helma or my Freda! Christ lives! Christ lives!' I
said. But the sparkling devil did not let my Helma go. It drew her to
the rail; half over it. I saw her eyes upon the child and a little she
broke away and reached to it. And my Freda jumped into her arms. And
the fire wrapped them both and they were gone! A little I saw them
whirling on the moon track behind the Brunhilda--and they were gone!

"The sparkling devil took them! Loki