"To some small degree I can," he answered. "I learned in my boyhood; but last summer, on the dairy farm of Gilli of Trondhjem, I practised on sheep-skins--"

"Gilli of Trondhjem?" Leif repeated. He sat suddenly erect, and shot a glance at the unconscious Helga; and the old German, peering from the shadows behind him, did the same.

Alwin regarded them wonderingly. "Yes, Gilli the trader, whom men call the Wealthy. It was he who first had me in my captivity."

For a long time the chief sat tugging thoughtfully at his yellow mustache. Tyrker bent over and whispered in his ear; and he nodded slowly, with another glance at Helga.

"But for this I should never have thought of him,--yet, it is certainly one way out of the matter."

Suddenly he made a motion with his hand, so that the circle fell back out of hearing. He turned and fixed his piercing eyes on the thrall as though he would probe his brain.

"I ask you to tell me what manner of man this Gilli is?"

It happened that Alwin asked nothing better than a chance to free his mind. He answered instantly: "Gilli of Trondhjem is a low-minded man who has gained great wealth, and is so greedy for property that he would give the nails off his hands and the tongue out of his head to get it.

He is an overbearing churl."

Leif's eyes challenged him, but he did not recant.

"So!" said the chief abruptly; then he added: "I am told for certain that his wife is a well-disposed woman."

"I say nothing against that," Alwin a.s.sented. "She is from England, where women are taught to bear themselves gently."

His eulogy was cut short by an exclamation from the old German.

"Donnerwetter! That is true! An English captive she was. Perhaps she their runes also understands?"

Finding this a question addressed to him, Alwin answered that he knew her to understand them, having heard her read from a book of Saxon prayers.

Tyrker rolled up his eyes devoutly. "Heaven itself it is that so has ordered it for the shield-maiden! You see, my son? This youth here can make runes,-she can read them; so can you speak with her without that the father shall know."

"Bring torches into the sleeping-house," Leif called, rising hastily.

"Valbrand, take your horse and lay saddle on it. You of England, get bark and an arrow-point, or whatever will serve for rune writing, and follow me."

What took place behind the log walls, no one knew. When it was over, and Valbrand had ridden away in the darkness, Rolf sought out the scribe and gently gave him to understand that he was curious in the matter. But Alwin only cast a doubtful glance across the fire at Helga, and begged him to talk of something else.

Late the next afternoon, Valbrand returned, his horse muddy and spent, and was closeted for a long time with Leif and the old German. But none heard what pa.s.sed between them.

CHAPTER X

THE ROYAL BLOOD OF ALFRED

Brand burns from brand, Until it is burnt out; Fire is from fire quickened.

Man to man Becomes known by speech, But a fool by his bashful silence.

Ha'vama'l

Brave with fluttering pennant and embroidered linen and sparkling gilding, amid cheers and prayers and shouts of farewell, on the third day the "Sea-Deer" set sail for Greenland.

Newly clad from head to foot in a scarlet suit of King Olaf's giving, Leif stood aft by the great steering oar. The wind blew out his long hair in a golden banner. The sun splintered its lances upon his gilded helm. Upon his breast shone the silver crucifix that had been Olaf's parting gift. His hand was still warm from the clasp of his King's; no chill at his heart warned him that those hands had met for the last time, no thought was in him that he had looked his last upon the n.o.ble face he loved. Gazing out over the tumbling blue waves, he thought exultantly of the time when he should come sailing back, with task fulfilled, to receive the thanks of his King.

Bravely and merrily the little ship parted from the land and set forth upon her journey. Every man sat in his place upon the rowing-benches; every back bent stoutly to the oar. Dripping crystals and flashing in the sun, the polished blades rose and fell, as the "Sea-Deer" bounded forward. To those upon her decks, the ma.s.s of scarlet cloaks upon the pier merged into a patch of flame, and then became a fiery dot. The sunny plain of the city and the green slope of the camp dwindled and faded; towering cliffs closed about and hid them from the rowers' view.

Leaving the broad elbow of the fiord, they soon entered the narrow arm that ran in from the sea, like a silver lane between giant walls.

Pa.s.sing out with the tide, they reached the ocean. The salt wind smote their faces; the snowy sail drew in a long glad breath and swelled out with a throb of exultation, and the world of waters closed around their little craft.

It was a beautiful world, full of the shifting charms of color and of motion, of the joy of sun and wind; but Alwin found it a wearily busy world for him. Since he was not needed at the oars, they gave him the odds and ends of drudgery about the ship. He cleared the decks, and plied the bailing-scoop, and stood long tedious watches. He helped to tent over the vessel's decks at night, and to stow away the huge canvas in the morning. He ground grain for the hungry crew, and kept the great mead-vat filled that stood before the mast for the shipmates to drink from. He prepared the food and carried it around and cleared the remnants away again. He was at the beck and call of forty rough voices; he was the one shuttlec.o.c.k among eighty brawny battledores.

It was a peaceful world, stirred by no greater excitement than a glimpse of a distant sail or the mystery of a half-seen sh.o.r.e; yet things could happen in it, Alwin found. The second day out, the earl-born captive for the first time came in direct contact with the thrall-born Kark.

Kark was not deferential, even toward his superiors; there was barely enough discretion in his roughness to save him from offending. Among those of his own station, he dispensed even with discretion. And he had looked upon Alwin with unfriendly eyes ever since Leif's first manifestation of interest in his English property.

It often happens that the whole of earth's dry land proves too small to hold two uncongenial spirits peaceably. One can imagine, then, how it fared when two such opposites were limited to some hundred-odd feet of timber in mid-ocean.

"Ho there, you cook-boy!" Kark's rough voice came down to the foreroom where Alwin was working. "Get you quickly forward and wipe up the beer Valbrand has spilled over his bench."

For a moment, Alwin's eyes opened wide in amazement; then they drew together into two menacing slits, and his very clothing bristled with haughtiness. He deigned no answer whatsoever.

A pause, and Kark followed his voice. "What now, you cub of a lazy mastiff! I told you, quickly; the beer will get on his clothes."

With immovable calmness, Alwin went on with his grinding. Only after the fourth round he said coldly: "It would save time if you would do your work yourself."

Kark gasped with amazement. This to him, the slave-born son of Eric's free steward, who held the whip-hand over all the thralls at Brattahlid!

His china-blue eyes snapped spitefully.

"It does not become the bowerman of Leif Ericsson to do the dirty work of a foreign whelp. If you have the ambition to be more than--"

He was interrupted by the sound of approaching thunder. Valbrand descended upon them, his new tunic drenched, the scars on his battered old face showing livid red.

"Is it likely that I will wait all day while two thralls quarrel over precedence?" he roared. "The Troll take me if I do not throw one of you to Ran before the journey is over! Go instantly--"

"I am sharpening Leif's blade," Kark struck in; he had indeed drawn a knife and sharpening-stone from his girdle. "It is not becoming for me to leave the chief's work for another task."

The argument was una.s.sailable. To the unlucky man-of-all-work the steersman's anger naturally reverted.

"Then you, idle dog that you are! What is it that keeps you? Would you have him attend on Leif and do your work as well? You may choose one of two conditions: go instantly or have your back cut into ribbons."

If he had not added that, it is possible that Alwin would have obeyed; but to yield in the face of a threat, that was too low for his stiff-necked pride to stoop. The earl-born answered haughtily, "Have your will,--and I will have mine."

If he had had any idea that they would not go so far, it was quickly dashed out of him. One moment of struggle and confusion, and he found himself stripped to the waist, his hands bound to the mast, a man standing over him with a knotted thong of walrus hide. All Sigurd's furious eloquence could not restrain the storm of sickening blows.

On the other hand, if they had had the notion that their victim's obstinacy would run from him with his blood, they also were mistaken.

The red drops came, but no sign of weakening. At last, with the subsiding of his anger, Valbrand ordered him to be set free.

"The same shall overtake you if you are disobedient to me again," was all he said.

Stripped and b.l.o.o.d.y, dizzy with pain and blind with rage, Alwin staggered forward, caught at Sigurd to save himself from falling, and looked unsteadily about him. When he found what he sought, his wits were cleared as a foggy night by lightning. With a hoa.r.s.e cry, he caught up a fragment of broken oar and struck Kark over the head so that he fell stunned upon the deck, blood reddening his colorless face.