Then came my mother and set her hand on his shoulder
and spoke softly to him with wise words.
“Husband, but a little while ago it would have
been wonderful if there were one of us left alive,
or one plank of the ship on another. And now
we are all safe and unhurt, and the loss of the ship
is the least of ills that might have been.”
“Nay, wife,” he said; “you cannot
understand.”
“Then it is woe for the—for the one
who is with us. But how had it been if you had
seen Hodulf and his men round our house, and all the
children slain that one might not escape, while on
the roof crowed the red cock, and naught was left
to us? We have lost less than if we had stayed
for that, and we have gained what we sought, even safety.
See, to the shore have come the ancient holy things
of our house, and that not by your guidance.
Surely here shall be the place for us that is best.”
“Ay, wife; you are right in all these things,
but it is not for them.”
Then she laughed a little, forcing herself to do so,
as it seemed.
“Why, then, it is for the ship that I was ever
jealous of, for she took you away from me. Now
I think that I should be glad that she can do so no
more. But I am not, for well I know what the trouble
must be, and I would have you think no more of it.
The good ship has saved us all, and so her work is
done, and well done. Never, if she sailed many
a long sea mile with you, would anything be worth
telling of her besides this. And the burden of
common things would surely be all unmeet for her after
what she has borne hither.”
“It is well said, Leva, my wife,” my father
answered.
From that time he was cheerful, and told us how it
was certain that we had been brought here for good,
seeing that the Norns[7] must have led the stones
to the haven, so that this must be the place that we
sought.
Easily we went ashore when the tide fell, across the
spits of sand that ran between the mud banks, and
we climbed the low sandhill range that hid the land
from us, and saw the place where we should bide.
And it might have been worse; for all the level country
between us and the hills was fat, green meadow and
marsh, on which were many cattle and sheep feeding.
Here and there were groves of great trees, hemmed in
with the quickset fences that are as good as stockades
for defence round the farmsteads of the English folk,
and on other patches of rising ground were the huts
of thralls or herdsmen, and across the wide meadows
glittered and flashed streams and meres, above which
the wildfowl that the storm had driven inland wheeled
in clouds. All the lower hills seemed to be wooded
thickly, and the alder copses that would shelter boar
and deer and maybe wolves stretched in some places
thence across the marsh. Pleasant and homely
seemed all this after long looking at the restless
sea.
