“It will do so for a time,” I said.  “Wait till you lose the swing of the decks and find your shore legs again.”

“Look yonder,” Bertric said.  “There is the other ship.”

We had forgotten her for a time in our own perils.  She had followed our course, though for what reason we could not tell.  Now she had borne up and was heading away westward, some four miles from shore, and sailing well and swiftly, being a great longship.  Soon a gray wall of rain swept over her and hid her, and when it cleared in half an hour’s time she was beyond our sight.

It seemed pretty certain by this time that there could be no people on this side of the island at least, or they would have been here.  We climbed to the highest of the sand hills, and looked over what we could see of the place, but there was no sign of hut or man.  Beyond the sand hills there was a stretch of open moorland, which rose to the hill across by the strait between us and the mainland, and both hill and moor were alike green and fresh—­or seemed so to us after the long days at sea.  It was not a bad island, and Dalfin said that there should be fishers here, though he was in no way certain.  All round us the sea birds flitted, scolding us for our nearness to their nests among the hills and on the edge of the moor, and they were very tame, as if unused to the sight of man.  I thought we could make out some goats feeding on the hill side, but that was all.  So far as we could judge, the island may have been a mile long, or less, and a half mile across.

We went back to the lee of the sand hills after seeing that there was no better shelter at hand.  There it seemed warm after the long days on the open sea, but we were very wet.  So we found a sheltered hollow whence we could look across the beach to the ship, and there gathered a great pile of driftwood and lit a fire, starting it with dry grass and the tinder which Bertric kept, seamanlike, with his flint and steel in his leathern pouch, secure from even the sea.  Then we sat round it and dried ourselves more or less, while the tide reached its full, left the bare timbers of the ship’s stem standing stark and swept clean of the planking, and having done its worst, sank swiftly, leaving her dry at its lowest.

So soon as we could, Bertric and I climbed on board over the bows, and took what food we could find unspoiled by the water, ashore.

“Neither of the boats is harmed,” we told Gerda.  “And presently we can leave this island for the mainland.  And we can save all the goods we stowed amidships before the tide rises again.  But your good little ship will never sail the seas more.”

“It is as well,” she answered sadly.  “This should have been her last voyage in another way than this, and her time had come.  I do not think that it had been fitting for her to have carried any other passenger, after he who lies in the sea depths had done with her.”

Bertric shook his head as one who doubts, being sore at the loss of a vessel under his command, though there was no blame to him therein.  But I knew what Gerda felt, and thought with her.