“Let me go, chief,” I said; “it is of no use for you to keep me.”

“Why,” he answered, “I don’t know that it is.  But your folk would pay no ransom, and it would seem foolish if I had let you go offhand.  Not but what your folk have not proved their wisdom, for they have got rid of us pretty cheaply.  Odin! how they swarmed on us!”

“Ay,” growled Thrond.  “I did not dream that so many men could be gathered in so few hours; but they fought anyhow, and it was only a matter of numbers.  Well, the place is good enough, and it is but a question of more ships next time.”

“Why did not you try an escape when we were all busy in the fight?” asked Thorleif, turning to me.  “I have lost more than one captive in that way.”

I told him, and he looked kindly enough at me, and smiled in his grim way.

“You were right in saying that a Saxon’s word was good, Thrond,” he said.

“I am sorry we can in no way send you back now.  Your cousin did his best to win his folk to peace—­and fought well when he could not.  Nay, he is not hurt, so far as I know.”

“Let me swim ashore, if there is no other way,” I said, with a dull despair on me.

Thorleif looked at the sea and frowned.

“I could not do it myself,” he said.  “There is a swift current round yon headland.  See, it is setting us eastward even now.”

But I did not wait to hear any more; I shook my shoes off, and over I went.  The wake of the swift vessel closed over my head as the men shouted, and when I came to the surface I looked back once.  It seemed that Thorleif was preventing the men from sending a shower of arrows after me, but in those few moments a long space of water had widened between us; and I doubt whether they would have hit me, for I could have dived.

Then I headed for shore and freedom, and it was good to be in the water alone with silence round me.  As for the other two ships, they were half a mile away from Thorleif’s, and I did not heed them.  So I never looked back, but gave myself to the warm waves, and saved my strength for the long swim before me.  There was not much sea, and what there was set more or less shoreward, so that it did not hinder me.  Presently I shook myself out of my tunic, and was more free.

I suppose that I swam steadily for an hour before I began to think in earnest what a long way the land yet was from me.  In another half hour I had to try to make myself believe that it was growing nearer.  Certainly Portland was farther from me, but that was the set of the current; and presently I knew, with a terrible sinking of heart, that the land also was lessening in my sight.  The current was sweeping me away from it.

When I understood that, I turned on my back and rested.  Then I saw that the ships were not so far away as I had expected.  I seemed to have made little way from them also; which puzzled me.  They had not yet set sail, and it was almost as if the oars were idle.  I think they were not more than a mile off.  I could almost have wept with vexation, so utterly did all the toil seem to be thrown away.  However, a matter of two hours in the water when as pleasant as this was nothing to me, for I had stayed as long therein, many a time, for sport.  So I hoped to do better with the turn of the tide, and let myself go easily to wait for it.