he bows shoot the spray up into the winds, where it is whirled
away before us. The water hisses; the wind moans and sings; and the ship
is full of the rattle of the oars along the benches.

It is evening. The moving sky is as black as the water between the
foam-streaks, by which we rush; through a vapour-veiled hole, dimly, the
pale sun is going down. Men shout to each other in the dark, and the
water splashes in waves along the benches. My lord gives orders for the
sail to be rolled fast and that all men shall come off the fore-deck.

Morning. By the hazy light from far up in the heavens, I see our bare
mast with the tangled bunch of ropes whipping forward from the top.

Broken oars swim in the water in the waist of the ship, and from
outside, heard in the twilight, comes the sound of mermaids singing I
think, answered by the dull roar of the mermen's shells. I look around;
before me are the men holding to anything that is firm on the
after-deck, where my lord stands, looking forward. They are pale, and
the glistening of their clothes shows in the misty light, that shows the
foam hissing over the side of the ship.

So, all day we crouch, gnawing pieces of bran-bread, and holding fast
to the sides of the ship.

Evening. The sun has gone out, and a roaring that sounds like the
rushing of pine-trees falling, comes from the dark. The shields are
gone, and the men laugh grimly thinking of death, when the seas rush
over the flying bulwarks.

It is morning again, and the clouds rolling and flying in jagged flags
in the wind, are broken at sunrise, and the wind sings now, not roars.

The ship shows, a bare-sided, dripping, unfamiliar thing beneath the
morning light; full of wreckage and ropes, the sail lying, and the yard
gone, the bunch of ropes at the top of the mast. The pale men that have
ceased to laugh now, untie themselves from the bulwarks and creep
stiffly forward to the food-chest. The sea rises in waves, but the still
stiff breeze keeps them down and we ride on, plunging; our bare mast
shakes in the wind.

That is how, when Lord Uffe stood on the seaweed-brown beach four days
later, he was cried to over the side of a bare-masted ship as it rowed
round the point along the rocky shore, and asked the name of the
country.

Lord Uffe brought us up to the hall where his people ran to cook meat
for us, and where we sat gladfully drinking the warm ale by the fire.
Then the great platters of meat came in seething,