Havelok the Dane

by Charles W. Whistler

anchor held, and the danger was over for the while,and as one might think altogether; but the tide was running against thegale, and what might happen when it turned was another matter.

  Now we got the sail on deck again, and unlaced it from the yard, settingthat in place with some sort of rigging, ready to be stepped as a mastif the wind shifted to any point that might help us off shore.

  It may be thought how we watched that one cable that held us from thewaves and the place where they broke, for therein lay our only chance,and we longed for the clear light that comes after rain, that we mightsee the worst, at least, if we were to feel it. But the anchor held, andpresently we lost the feeling of a coming terror that had been over us,the utmost peril being past. My father went to the after cabin now, andthough the poor children were bruised with the heavy rolling of the shipas she came into the wind, they were all well save Havelok, and he hadfallen asleep in my mother's arms at last.

  With the turn of the tide, which came about three hours after midday,the clouds broke, and slowly the land grew out of the mists until wecould see it plainly, though it was hardly higher than the sea thatbroke over it in whirling masses of spindrift. By-and-by we could seefar-off hills beyond wide-stretching marshlands that looked green andrich across yellow sandhills that fringed the shore. And from them wewere not a mile, and at their feet were such breakers as no ship mightwin through, though, if we might wait until they were at rest, the levelsand was good for beaching at the neap tides. For we were well intoHumber mouth, and to the northward of us, across the yellow water, wasthe long point of Spurn, and the ancient port of Ravenspur, with itsRoman jetties falling into decay under the careless hand of the Saxon,under its shelter. There was no port on this southern side of theHumber, though farther south was Tetney Haven and again Saltfleet, towhich my father had been, but neither in nor out of them might a vesselget in a northeast gale.

  I have said that this clearness came with the turn of the tide, and nowthat began to flow strongly, setting in with the wind with more than itswonted force, for the northwest shift of the gale had kept it fromfalling, as it always will on this coast. That, of course, I learnedlater, but it makes plain what happened next. Our anchor began to dragwith the weight of both tide and wind, and that was the uttermost of ourdread.

  Slowly it tore through its holding, and as it were step by step atfirst, and once we thought it stopped when we had paid out all thecable. But wind and sea were too strong, and presently again we saw theshore marks shifting, and we knew that there was no hope. The ship musttouch the ground sooner or later, and then the end would come with onelast struggle in the surf, and on shore was no man whose hand might bestretched to drag a spent man to the land, if he won through. It wouldhave seemed less lonely had one watched us, but I did not know then thatno pity for the wrecked need be looked for from the marshmen of theLindsey shore. There was not so much as a fisher's boat of wicker andskins in sight on the sandhills, where one might have looked to see somedrawn up.

  Now my father went to the cabin and told my mother that things were attheir worst, and she was very brave.

  "If you are to die at this time, husband," she said, "it is good that Ishall die with you. Better it is, as I think, than a sickness that comesto one and leaves the other. But after that you will go to the place ofOdin, to Valhalla; but I whither?"

  Then spoke little Withelm, ever thoughtful, and now not at all afraid.

  "If Freya wants not a sailor's wife who is willing to fight the waveswith Grim, my father, it will be strange."

  My mother was wont to say that this saying of the child's did much tocheer her at that time, but there is little place for a woman in the oldfaiths. So she smiled at him, and that made him bold to speak of what hehad surely been thinking since the storm began.

  "I suppose that Aegir is wroth because we made no sacrifice to himbefore we set sail. I think that I would cast the altar stones to him,that he may know that we meant to do so."

  This sounds a child's thought only, and so it was; but it set my fatherthinking, and in the end helped us out of trouble.

  "I have heard," my father said, "that men in our case have thrownoverboard the high-seat pillars, and have followed them to shore safely.We have none, but the stones are more sacred yet. Overboard they shallgo, and as the boat with them goes through the surf we may learn somewhat."

  With that he hastened on deck, and told the men what he would do; andthey thought it a good plan, as maybe they would have deemed anythingthat seemed to call for help from the strong ones of the sea. So theygot the boat ready to launch over the quarter, and the four stones,being uncovered since the Vikings took our cargo, were easily got ondeck, and they were placed in the bottom of the boat, and steadied therewith coils of fallen rigging, so that they could not shift. They werejust a fair load for the boat. Then my father cried for help to theAsir, bidding Aegir take the altar as full sacrifice; and when we haddone so we waited for a chance as a long wave foamed past us, andlaunched the boat fairly on its back, so that she seemed to fly from ourhands, and was far astern in a moment.

  Now we looked to see her make straight for the breakers, lift on thefirst of them, and then capsize. That first line was not a quarter of amile from us now.

  But she never reached them. She plunged away at first, heading right forthe surf, and then went steadily westward, and up the shore line outsideit, until she was lost to sight among the wild waves, for she was verylow in the water.

  "Cheer up, men," my father said, as he saw that; "we are not ashore yet,nor will be so long as the tide takes that current along shore. We shallstop dragging directly."

  And so it was, for when the ship slowly came to the place where the boathad changed her course, the anchor held once more for a while until thegathering strength of the tide forced it to drag again. Now, however, itwas not toward the shore that we drifted, but up the Humber, as the boathad gone; and as we went the sea became less heavy, for we were gettinginto the lee of the Spurn headland.

  Soon the clouds began to break, flying wildly overhead with patches ofblue sky and passing sunshine in between them that gladdened us. Thewind worked round to the eastward at the same time, and we knew that theend of the gale had come. But, blowing as it did right into the mouth ofthe river, the sea became more angry, and it would be worse yet when thetide set again outwards. Already we had shipped more water than wasgood, and we might not stand much more. It seemed best, therefore, to myfather that we should try to run as far up the Humber as we might whilewe had the chance, for the current that held us safe might change astide altered in force and depth.

  So we buoyed the cable, not being able to get the anchor in this sea,and then stepped the yard in the mast's place, and hoisted the peak ofthe sail corner-wise as best we might; and that was enough to heel usalmost gunwale under as the cable was slipped and the ship headed aboutup the river mouth. We shipped one or two more heavy seas as she paidoff before the wind, but we were on the watch for them, and no harm wasdone.

  After that the worst was past, for every mile we flew over brought usinto safer waters; and now we began to wonder where the boat with itsstrange cargo had gone, and we looked out for her along the shore as wesailed, and at last saw her, though it was a wonder that we did so.

  The tide had set her into a little creek that opened out suddenly, andthere Arngeir saw her first, aground on a sandbank, with the lift ofeach wave that crept into the haven she had found sending her higher onit. And my father cried to us that we had best follow her; and he putthe helm over, while we sheeted home and stood by for the shock ofgrounding.

  Then in a few minutes we were in a smother of foam across a little sandbar, and after that in quiet water, and the sorely-tried ship was safe.She took the ground gently enough in the little creek, not ten scorepaces from where the boat was lying, and we were but an arrow flightfrom the shore. As the tide rose the ship drifted inward toward it, sothat we had to wait only for the ebb that we might go dry shod to the land.

  Before that
time came there was rest for us all, and we needed itsorely. It was a wonder that none of the children had been hurt in thewild tossing of the ship, but children come safely through things thatwould be hard on a man. Bruised they were and very hungry, but somehowmy mother had managed to steady them on the cabin floor, and they werenone the worse, only Havelok slept even yet with a sleep that was tooheavy to be broken by the worst of the tossing as he lay in my mother'slap. She could not tell if this heavy sleep was good or not.

  Then we saw to the wounded men, and thereafter slept in the sun or inthe fore cabin as each chose, leaving Arngeir only on watch. It waspossible that the shore folk would be down to the strand soon, seekingfor what the waves might have sent them, and the tide must be watched also.

  Just before its turn he woke us, for it was needful that we should get aline ashore to prevent the ship from going out with the ebb, and withone I swam ashore. There was not so much as a