Suddenly, there came a sharp whistle, and the roll of the oars ceased.  Gerda started away from the gunwale and looked at us, and Dalfin set his hand on his sword hilt.  It was just as if they had spied us, and I half expected to see the tall stemhead of the ship come towering through the thickness over our rail.  There was nothing to tell us how fast we were going through the water, and we seemed still.  I saw Bertric smiling.

“Shift of rowers,” he said in a whisper, and Gerda’s pale face brightened.  Then I heard Heidrek rating someone, and I heard, too, the tramp and rattle of the men who left and came to the oars; but by the time the steady pull began again we had passed the ship by a long way, and lost the sound almost as soon as it came.  Then there was silence once more, and the strain was past.  Our course would take us clear of the other ship by a mile or more.

So we held on for half an hour, and the fog grew no thinner.  Overhead, the sun tried to shine through it, but we could not see him, and still the wind drifted us and the fog together, and the decks grew wet and the air chill with the damp which clung round us.

Gerda sat very still for a long time after the last sounds were heard.  But at last she rose up and shivered.

“Let me go to my awning,” she said unsteadily.  “I have seen three brave men look death in the face, and they have not flinched—­I will never wear mail or sword again.”

Then she fled forward, and something held us back from so much as helping her to cross that barrier.  We knew that she was near to breaking down, and no wonder.

There fell an uneasy silence on us when she was within the shelter of the awning and its folds closed after her.  Dalfin broke it at last.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose that you two seamen know which way you are steering in the fog—­but it passes me to know how.”

Bertric and I laughed, and were glad of the excuse to do so.  We told him that we steered by the wind, which had not changed.  But now we had only one course before us.  We must needs head south and try to make the Shetlands.  Eastward we might not sail for fear of Heidrek, and westward lay the open ocean, Still, we held on for half an hour, and then, still shrouded in the white folds of the fog, headed south as nearly as we might judge.

In an hour the wind fell.  The fog darkened round us as the sun wore to the westward, and the sea went down until only the long ocean swell was left, lifting the ship easily and slowly without breaking round her.  There was naught to be done; but, at least Heidrek could not find us.

“There may be days to come like this,” Bertric said, with a sort of groan.  “What is to be planned for him who lies yonder?”

Now, I told them what Gerda had said to me, and I could see that Bertric was relieved to hear her thought of a sea burial.

“I had thought of the same,” he said at once.  “It is not fitting that here the old warrior should be drifted to and fro, well nigh at the mercy of the wind, with the chances of a lee shore or of folk who make prey of hapless seafarers presently.  A sea burial such as many a good man of our kin has found will be best.  I could ask no more for myself.”