What those two of the other faith had said to one another I do not know; but for a little time they stood with bare, bent heads as in one accord, and I saw them make their holy sign on their breasts before they moved.  Then Bertric signed to me that I should help him lift the inboard end of the planking, and we stepped forward together and bent to do so.  Even as my hands touched the wood there came a sudden rushing, and I felt a new lift of the ship, and into the open gangway poured the head of a great, still wave, flooding the deck around our feet, and hiding in its smother of white foam and green water that which lay before us, so that we must needs start back hastily.  The ship lurched and righted herself, and the wave was gone.  Gone, too, was the old king—­without help of ours.  The sea he loved had taken him, drawing him softly to itself with the ebb of the water from the deck, and covering the place alongside, where I had feared for Gerda to see the dull splash and eddy of the end, with a pall of snow-white foam.

For a long moment we stood motionless, half terrified.  Neither before this had any sea come on board since we lowered the gunwale nor did any come afterward.  Gerda clutched my arm, swaying with the ship, and then she cried in a strange voice: 

“It is Aegir!  Aegir himself who has taken him!”

That was in my mind also, and no wonder.  The happening seemed plainly beyond the natural.  I turned to Gerda, fearing lest she should be over terrified, and saw her staring with wide eyes into the mists across that sea grave, wondering; and then of a sudden she pointed, and cried once more: 

“Look! what is yonder?  Look!”

Then we all saw what she gazed at.  As it were about a ship’s length from us sailed another ship, tall and shadowy and gray, holding the same course as ourselves, and keeping place with us exactly, rising and falling over the hills of water as we rose and fell.  And we could see that she had the same high dragon stem and stern as our ship, and on her decks we could make out forms of men amidships, dim and misty as the ship herself.  Yet though we could see her thus, in no wise could we make out the sea on which she rode—­so thick was the curling fog everywhere, though the sun was trying to find a way through it, changing its hue from gray to pearly white.  Now, Bertric started from the stillness which held us, and hailed the ship loudly.

“Ahoy! what ship is that?”

The hail rang, and seemed to echo strangely in the fog, but there came no answer.  Nor was there any when he hailed again and for the third time.  I thought that the outline of the strange sail grew more dim at the first cry, and again that it was plainer, for the mist across the sun drifted, though we could feel no breeze.

“It is Aegir’s ship,” whispered Gerda, still clinging to me.  “Thorwald is therein,” and she raised her hand as if to wave a farewell, hardly knowing what she did.