swimming.

Now, if there is one thing that the northern folk of our kin think
much of in the way of sports, it is swimming, and it seems that I
won high praise from all. Maybe they did not consider how a man who
is trying to win his home again from captivity is likely to do more
than his best. At all events, I had never so much as tried a swim
like that before, nor do I think that I could compass it again.
Presently, when the turn of the tide brought with it no eddy into
the bay which set me homeward, Thorleif would let me go no longer,
and followed me in the boat with two men; which was easy enough,
for I swam between the ship and the place where the red glow of
burning Weymouth still shone in the northern sky. He could not
leave me to drown.

For a time, in the growing dusk, he could not find me. Then the sea
fires showed me black against their glow, and the sea tempted him,
and he leaped in after me, singing to cheer me, for it was plain
that I was nearly spent. When he brought me up from the depth again
I had little of the drowned man about me, for I had fainted. I
remember coming round painfully after that swoon, and eating and
drinking, and straightway falling into a dreamless sleep on the
deck of the ship; and I also remember the untoldly evil and fishy
smell of the seal oil they had rubbed me with.

When I came to myself, my first thought was that a solid wall of
that smell stood round me; but such were the virtues of the oil and
the rubbing that when I woke after eighteen hours' sleep I was not
so much as stiff. It would ill beseem me to complain thereof,
therefore, but it might have been fresher.

When I woke from my great sleep it was long past noon. I lay in the
shelter of the gunwales under the curve of the high stern post,
wrapped in a yellow Irish cloak, and in my ears roared and surged a
deep-voiced song, which kept time with the steady roll of oars and
the thrashing of the water under their blades. The ship was
quivering in every timber with the pull of them, and I could feel
her leap to every stroke. The great red and white sail was set
also, and the westerly breeze was humming in it, and over the high
bows the spray arched and fell without ceasing as oar and sail
drove the sharp stem through the seas. Thorleif was in a hurry for
some reason.

Only one man was on the after deck, steering, and he was fully
armed. Save that his brown arm swayed a little, resting on the
carven tiller, as the wave