“Whether aught of these plans may come to pass is a matter which the Norns {1} have in their hands,” she said.  “We shall see.  But now I am sure that I may not lightly part with the treasure as I had meant, though it is hard for me to forego what I had set my heart on.  It is true that all was hoarded for me—­at least since my father died.  It is well that Thorwald never knew the sore need there would be for what he could set by for me.”

Then I tried to tell her that all our wish was to lighten the trouble as much as we might, but she stayed me, laughing as if well content.

“Nay; but you shall mind that pact which we made at the first, neither more nor less.”

She signed to me to go to the others and set all in readiness for what must be done; but as I bowed and turned to go, she stayed me.

“For us Norse folk,” she said, “there is one word needed, perhaps.  I heard my men cry the last farewell to Thorwald as the ship left the shore.  The temple rites were long over.  All that was due to a son of Odin has been done.”

Now, it is needless for me to say that I could not tell all that had passed.  All I had to say was that Gerda was content with our plan, and all three of us were somewhat more easy in our minds.  It had been by no means so certain that she would be so.

Now we made no more delay, but quietly and reverently Bertric showed us how to make all ready for such a sea burial as he had many a time seen before.  So it was not long before the old king lay with his feet toward the sea on the fathom of planking which we had lowered from where it was made to unship for a gangway amidships for shore-going and the like.  We had set him so that it needed but to raise the inboard end of this planking when the time came that he should pass from his ship to his last resting in the quiet water; and he was still in all his arms, with his hands clasped on the hilt of his sword beneath the shield which covered his breast, but now shrouded in the new sail of one of his boats in the seaman’s way.

At this time the fog was thinning somewhat, and the low sun seemed likely to break through it now and then.  It was very still all round us, for there was no sound of ripple at the bows or wash of water alongside, and the swell which lifted us did not break.  Only there was the little creaking of the yard and the light beating of the idle sail against the mast as the ship rolled and swung to the swell.  Some little draught of wind, or the send of the waves, had set her bows to it, and she rode the water like a sea bird at rest.

Gerda came at a word when all was ready, and stood beside us with clasped hands.  And so for a little time we four stood with a space between us and the head of that rough sea bier, and over against us beyond it the open gangway and the heaving, gray water, which now and then rose slowly and evenly almost to the deck level and again sank away.  It was almost as if, when the end had come, that we waited for some signal which there was none to give.