the oar-blades were broken
and tied to their stems with ropes. I ran to our boat that lay against
the side-of-grass, and hurriedly tumbled its stone anchor on board.

"He must have sunk the other ship or he would have come home in her," I
said, shipping the steering-oar.

Lord Snore raised himself from the bottom of the boat where he had been
stooping to place the two deer, and turning his shaggy head, looked at
me curiously. "I will sit in my own right now!" he answered.

Beneath the lord's long strong strokes the sharp-prowed skiff went
rapidly over the still water, and now we could see the broken
dragon's-neck and the rents in the shields hung over the sides more
plainly. We were almost within the shadow of her mast when a tall man--I
knew his face for that of Esbiern the oar-captain--with a great red cloth
round his head, leaped on the bow, waving his long arms wildly and
shouting to us over the sunny waters, wild words of some sea-fight.

Our prow cut the shadow; half-unwilling hands reached over the gunwale
to grasp our boat; we clambered over the side and turning, we looked
along the length of the battered ship, over the half-empty rowers'
benches, past the pale faces of five or six men with linen-swathed
heads and arms--on, over the confusion and wreckage that littered the
centre of the ship, to where, leaning against the edge of the fore-deck,
lay the body of Sigmund the lord with the half of the crew of his
returned ship arranged in a long sitting row beside him.

So, with Lord Snore at one of the big oars to help the weary men with
one more rower, and I heaving on the great steering blade and guiding
the ship slowly over the shallows, we went silently up the fjord through
the afternoon.

That night, when the men and the household were done eating and only the
horns and wooden tankards of beer stood along the board, my Lord Snore
spoke from the great seat where he sat moodily, with his fist on the
table, and the chair-cushions thrown on the floor beside him; and thus
he spoke, with the men leaning silently forward to hear him:

"The men of the ship have told ye of the fight; how in the south, off
Lolland, they met a Viking-ship which attacked them. How they fought and
drove the Viking; how that the Viking led them along the coast till,
our men weary with rowing, there came two fresh ships from a bay,
hidden, friends of the Viking; and how that Lord Sigmund died in the
fight, and how that our men fled no