“Then I am a madman,” replied Estein, and with that he turned away and walked forward to consult Ketill.

He was impelled by his creed of morbid fatalism to seek this test, whereby his fate might be sharply decided.  He longed, too, for action, and the idea, once held, fascinated him.  But to all others on board he seemed merely the victim of some insidious magic.  That he was under a spell Helgi had no manner of doubt.

“A fair fight,” he thought, “is always manlier than a secret slaying, but not Odin himself would fly away with the foe who had slain two shiploads of his followers, and afterwards challenge him to single combat.  It is as if he should catch a thief who had stolen half his goods, and then throw dice with him for the rest.  But all spells act most banefully at night, they say; doubtless in the morning Estein will rest content with giving him a fitting burial—­if he catches him.”

And at the thought he laughed aloud.

“May I die in bed like a woman,” he said to himself, “if this be not the strangest way of fishing for a Viking!”

Ketill was at first for stoutly refusing the adventure; but Helgi, whose convictions sat lightly on him compared with his attachment to Estein, persuaded him to consent.

“Are you afraid?” he asked, and that question left no room for the proud Viking to hesitate.

It was about two hours after midnight when the long ship, stealing under the shadow of the cliffs, turned into a small bay.  It lay open to the south, guarded on either side by a precipitous headland, and withdrawn from the tideway and the swell of the western ocean.  In the weird grey light of that June night the men could see a valley opening out of great inland hills on to a more level strip of moorland at the head of the bay.  On a spit of sandy beach lay three warships, and on the slope of the hill to the left stood a small township of low buildings, clustering round the higher drinking-hall of Liot Skulison.

In dead silence they hugged the shore as closely as their pilot dared.

“We are as close inshore as we can win,” he said at length in a low voice.

The boat was stealthily launched, and into it as many men as it would hold were crowded.

“Keep the rowers on their benches, we may have little time to get away,” said Ketill in a gruff whisper to his forecastle man, whom he left in command of the ship.

“We have little wish to be caught.”

“Push off, men, and remember he who speaks above a whisper I shall think is tired of life.”

The oars dipped and the boat crept slowly landwards.

“You know the landing, Grim?”

Grim, who sat at the tiller, merely nodded; and presently the bows grated on a strip of gravel beach.

“The trolls take you!” muttered Ketill.  “Could you not have told us to slacken speed?  The dead could hear a landing like this.”

“’Tis all right yet, Ketill,” whispered Estein.  “We are too far from the hall.”