“I think I told you that you were but a few minutes before me in this matter,” he said.  “Well, when I heard that Asbiorn would take the boat, I knew my chance had come.  So I dropped six of your barley loaves into her as she lay alongside the wharf, and stowed them aft when I went to bale out the rain water that was in her.  The men were too much taken up with the plunder to mind what I was about.  I think your little water breaker is full also.  It is there, and I tried it.”

“Why, then, that will carry us far enough,” I said.  “You are a friend in need in all truth.”

“I wrought for myself.  I am glad that things have turned out thus in the end.  Now do you sleep, if you can.  You shall wake when need is.”

He came aft and took the oar from me, and I was glad to lie down on the floor boards amidships and rest.  And the first thing that I noted was that the Saxon sculled better than myself, and wonderfully easily.  Then I slept heavily for maybe three hours.

Bertric roused me about that time.  The wind had come, and the sky had clouded over, and the boat was slipping fast through the water, looking eastward indeed, but the wind headed us too closely for that to be of much use.  It was blowing from the worst quarter for us, the southeast, and freshening.  The boat was fit for little but running, and at this time I waxed anxious as to what was before us, for any Caithness man has heard tales of fishers who have been caught in the southeast winds, and never heard of more.

Now, it would make a long tale to tell of what came thereafter on the open sea.  Bertric would have me sleep now, and I did so, for I was fairly worn out, and then the weather grew wilder, until we were driving before a gale, and our hope of making even the Shetlands was gone.

So we drove for two whole days until we had lost all reckoning, and the gale blew itself out.  But for the skilful handling of the boat by Bertric, I know we might have been swamped at times in the following seas, but Dalfin knew naught of the peril.  He baled when it was his turn, cheerfully, and slept be times, so that I envied him his carelessness and trust in us.

The wind wore round to the northwest at its last and hardest, and then sank quickly.  On the third morning we were in bright sunshine, and the sea was going down fast, and again we were heading east, with a half hope of making some landfall in Norway, if anywhere.  At noon we shared the last loaf in just such a calm as had fallen on us at first; and at last Bertric and I might sleep again, leaving Dalfin to keep watch.  We might be in the track of vessels from Norway westward and southward, but we could not tell, and maybe we expected him to see nothing.  But it may tell how wearied we were that we left so untried a landsman to watch for us, though, indeed, either of us would wake with the least uneasiness of the boat in a rising wind.  So we slept a great sleep, and it was not until near sunset that Dalfin roused us.