on the war gear for the
last time, as she told me. She would dress herself even as she had
been clad for the funeral and as we had found her.

Then the tide turned, and slowly the current from the sea found its
way up the fjord and reached us, and we warped out of the narrow
berth between the rocks, and manned the oars and set out on the
last stage of our voyage. The mast was lowered and housed by this
time, and the ship ready for aught. Only we did not hang the war
boards along the gunwales, and we had no dragon head on the stem,
for that Heidrek had not carried at any time. We had no mind to set
all men against the ship at first sight as an enemy who came
prepared for battle.

We entered the northern branch of the fjord, and at once the high
cliffs rose above us again, for the waterway narrowed until we were
in a deep cleft of the mountains. The water was still as glass in
the evening quiet, and as the stars came out overhead, we seemed to
be sailing under one deep sky and on another. But the oar blades
broke the water into brighter stars than those which were
reflected, and after us stretched a wake of white light between the
black cliffs, for the strange sea fires burnt in the broken waters
brightly, coming and going as the waves swirled around the ship's
path.

So we went steadily for a long way, and then we came to a place
where the rocky walls of the channel nearly met, so that one could
have thrown a stone from the deck on either as we passed. High up
on the left cliffside a little light glimmered, for a cottage hung
as it were on a shelf of the mountain above us. The measured beat
of the oars sounded hollow here as the sheer cliffs doubled their
sounds. Some man heard it, and a door opened by the little light,
like a square patch of brightness on the shadow of the hillside.

Then he hailed us in a great voice which echoed back to us, and one
of the pilots answered him cheerily with some homely password, and
we saw his form stand black against his door for a moment before he
closed it, and he waved his hand to the friend whose voice he knew.
The pilot told me that it was his duty to listen for passing ships
thus and hail them. Beside his hut was piled a beacon ready to
light if all was not well, and in the hut hung a great, wooden
cattle lure wherewith to alarm the town. We were close to it now.

By this time it was as if I knew the place well, so often had Gerda
told me of it. The fjord opened out from t