An Old Captivity

by Nevil Shute

  They lived there two years.

  All this formed the background for the pilot’s dream, his memory of what had happened to him. But at the beginning he thought that he had driven two young heifers from the meadow down to the byre at the farmhouse on the cove, and Tyrker had seen him, and had said that Leif wanted him in the house.

  This Tyrker was a German. He had been a slave of Leif’s father, Erik, and had brought up Leif as a boy. He was now an old man and had been freed by Erik a long time before. He worked as a sort of foreman on the farm. He was a very small old man, with a prominent forehead, small features, and restless eyes, but Leif thought the world of him. He was supposed to be very wise.

  Haki went into the house, following Tyrker. Inside, a sleeping-bench ran the whole length of the house dividing it in two, raised about two feet from the floor. Leif was sitting on a low stool, on the bench. Tyrker got up and stood behind him; the runner stood upon the floor beneath them, as was fitting. He had long lost his early fear of Leif; it had been succeeded by a dog-like devotion and respect.

  Leif said: “Haki. You have heard the story that Bjarni saw a country west from here, where there was timber?”

  Haki said: “Yes, Lord.” It had been common talk since Bjarni’s ship had arrived. Sailing from Iceland Bjarni had contrived to miss Greenland altogether and had sailed about for weeks, angry, bewildered, and suspecting sorcery. He had seen land several times but none of it was like Greenland; being a single-minded man he had forbidden his men to land, and had sailed back upon his course to look for Iceland again. He had thus reached his destination, south-west Greenland.

  Leif said explosively: “Well, Bjarni saw a new country with woods, with great tall trees. And if you please, he did not go on shore! He might have brought a cargo back with him, and he did not. I think he is a fool.”

  Haki could understand his master’s irritation. They were badly hampered by a shortage of timber. The only trees in Greenland were weak, stunted birches. They could build houses with stone walls of almost any height, but for the roof-beams they had to depend upon imported wood.

  The runner understood this very well. He ventured: “With big trees we could build a big cow-house.”

  Leif nodded. “That is right. We can build proper houses if we get the timber for the roofs. We can build small boats—ships, even. This summer I am going in a ship to find that timber in the lands that Bjarni saw, and bring a cargo of it back.”

  Haki said: “Lord, how will you ever find the lands that Bjarni saw? There are no landmarks on the sea.”

  Leif smiled. “I have bought Bjarni’s ship,” he said “The ship will show me where the lands are, for it has been there before.”

  The runner was amazed at this sagacity. These people thought of everything. Of course, the dragon on the ship would know.

  The Norseman said: “I want you to come in the ship with me, with Hekja. If there are new lands to be found I must send reports back to the King, and you can run across the land and tell me what it is like.”

  “Lord, we can do that.”

  Leif said: “Think well, and talk it over with Hekja. This voyage will be difficult and dangerous; I do not even know where we are going. We may meet with hard times. I will take no one with me upon such a voyage who is not a willing volunteer. No man shall say to me, when hard times come, that I have forced him into it.”

  The runner was silent. He did not fully understand this reasoning.

  “So, Haki,” said the Norseman, “I say this: You are one with Hekja; I will not take one of you alone. If you two want to stop here when the ship goes, you may do so. But if you wish to come with me, and if you do good work, then when we return here you shall be free people. I will set you free, and I will give you land to farm for yourselves, and beasts to start you off. I will do this for you if you decide to come with me, but you must talk to Hekja first.”

  The runner’s eyes gleamed. “Lord, I would have come with you anyway, but for these gifts I would follow you through hell.”

  The big man smiled. Behind him Tyrker stooped and whispered something in his ear. Presently Leif said: “There is another thing. I will have no unattached maid in my ship, for when men are far distant from their wives they will quarrel over her, and fight. Are you and Hekja lovers? Do you sleep with her?”

  The runner said: “Lord, she does not think about such things yet. Besides, she sleeps with the women.”

  The Norseman threw his head right back and roared with laughter, rocking with merriment upon his stool. Haki stood looking at him, utterly bewildered. He had grown to like and to admire these men, but he could never understand what made them laugh.

  Leif calmed himself, and said: “So. Before we sail Hekja must be betrothed to you, and I shall be the witness. If anyone wants to break that betrothal he must fight with me, and I shall slay him, under our law. In that way I can keep my crew in order.”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  “Go along now, and have a talk with Hekja. Come back to-night and tell me whether you want to go with me, or to to stay here as slaves.” He made a gesture of dismissal.

  Haki went to find Hekja. She was on the haystack pitching hay down to the ground before she carried it into the cow-house; he called to her and she slipped down from the stack and came towards him, very lovely in his eyes. He told her what Leif had said.

  “If we go with him and if we please him with our running, he will make us free, and he will give us our own land to farm, and cows of our own. We should be free people then, like everyone else.” He glanced at her, short-haired in the sunlight, in her single overall. “You would be able to let your hair grow long, and wear fine clothes and ornaments like other free women.”

  She said: “All this is very good, Haki.”

  He plunged awkwardly into the difficult part. “If we go, Leif says that you must be betrothed to me, in case other men, far from their wives, come after you and fight with each other.” He hesitated, and then said: “This is for order in the ship. We can break the betrothal when we get back, if you don’t want to marry.”

  Her eyes softened, and she said gently: “I don’t want to marry anyone yet, Haki. But we are the same people and we think the same way. I would rather marry you than any of these people.”

  She had never become accustomed to the Norsemen as he had done. She had never settled down to her new life.

  He knew how she felt. “Perhaps if we please him, Leif will give us land right away on the outskirts where we can live in our own way.”

  She said earnestly: “That would be very, very good.”

  Preparations for the voyage went ahead quickly. The shed over Bjarni’s ship was pulled down, and the ship was overhauled and recaulked. Then it was launched down to the still water of the cove on rollers. Stones for the ballast were gathered from the hill above the cove. Provisioning did not take long. Leif picked a crew of thirty-one good men from the settlement, great husky fellows chosen principally for their skill in battle. He also arranged that Tyrker should go with them.

  It was originally intended that the expedition should be led by Leif’s father, Erik, the grand old man of the settlement who lived in Brattalid. Everybody was in agreement that success must come to any expedition which he led; the least enthusiastic of them all was Erik. In his youth he had been a wild berserker with bright red hair, invincible in battle and a danger to all sober, honest men, particularly if they had attractive wives. He had been outlawed on Iceland and kicked out, and had sailed away to find and to establish his new colony, Greenland. Now he was old and tired, and not at all inclined to face another expedition.

  Fortune was kind to him. The day before the expedition was to start he rode over on a horse to see the ship; the horse threw him, and he sprained his ankle. It was good enough. He said to Leif: “This is an omen. I am not meant to discover any more lands. You go, and lead in my place.” With that he got upon his horse and went back home.

  They started one bright, sunny morning. The sh
ip was on the beach with the tide rising; men swarmed about her, putting on the perishable stores. In the crowd Leif saw Haki and Hekja carrying their sleeping-bags on board, and stopped them with a sudden cry.

  “You Scots, come over here.”

  They dropped their bedding in the bows of the ship and came to him on the sand. There was a pause in the work; the men looked at them with interest.

  Leif roared out: “Hear, everyone!” Work stopped completely; the men turned to him. “A betrothal!”

  They looked on curiously. Slaves were not normally betrothed at all but bred like cattle, but then it was not usual to take slaves on voyages like this one. Leif was doing them an honour; probably he meant to set them free some day.

  Leif said: “Take her hand, Haki. Do you know what to say?”

  He took her hand. “No, Lord.”

  “Well, say this after me, and shout it out so that everyone can hear you: ‘I name Leif as witness that you, Hekja, betroth yourself to me, Haki, in lawful betrothal, with handshaking, without fraud or tricks.’”

  He said the words aloud; Hekja said nothing. There was an interested murmur from the men.

  Leif cried: “Now listen to me, all of you. This woman belongs to this man, and I am witness to the lawful betrothal. If anyone thinks differently at any time, he can come and talk to me, and he knows what he will get. Now, get on with your work, all the lot of you.”

  There was a laugh, and the men turned to their work again. Presently the ship was rowed out from the cove, the sail was hoisted, and she crept down the fiord to the sea.

  They sailed northwards for a day or two along the coast; then they headed out to the west. They had no compass; they steered by the sun and stars when they could see them, by the colour of the water and the run of the waves, and by the feel of the wind. At midday each day, when it was calm and sunny, Leif and Tyrker made a curious ceremony, which Haki took to be a rite of their religion. They laid the ship carefully at right angles to the sun and measured the length of the shadow of the gunwale on the middle thwart. This thwart had marks carved upon it, made on Bjarni’s previous voyage with runic letters carved against the marks. Sometimes when the shadow of the gunwale fell exactly on a certain mark, Leif seemed very pleased. Only Leif and Tyrker seemed to understand this ceremony; it was a very high and holy matter. The men said that the dragon told them which way to sail when they were doing this.

  Presently they came to land. It was a bleak barren country with no trees and no grass, a land of flat rocks leading up to the ice mountains. They anchored off it and launched a small boat that they carried; Leif went on shore with Tyrker and a couple of men. They came back after an hour or two.

  “It is a bad land and no use to us,” said Leif. “We will not stay here any longer. But I think this is the place that Bjarni came to last of all. I shall call it Stoneland. At any rate, we’ve landed on it, which is more than Bjarni did.”

  With a northerly wind they sailed southwards down the land for two days and nights, keeping well off the shore but with the land in sight on their right hand. On the morning of the third day they saw that the character of the country had changed; it was now covered with forest, and there were no more ice mountains. It was a level wooded land, with broad stretches of white sand.

  The wind failed them, and they rowed in to the shore, stopping at noon for the midday ceremony of the shadow of the gunwale on the thwart. Leif and Tryker discussed this for a long time. Then they rowed on and dropped anchor in a little bay with a beach; again Leif and Tyrker went on shore together.

  They came back presently. “This is a better place,” Leif said, “and here is all the timber that we need. We will come back later and load up the cargo, and explore the country. But now, while this good weather lasts, we will go on and see what other new things we can find.”

  They called that country Woodland, and sailed on. Before long they came to a cape, and followed the land around. After that they sailed on west or south-west, before a northeast wind.

  For some days they were out of sight of land. There was little to be done except to steer the ship before the wind, which Leif did most of the time. The rest of them sat about busy with various crafts, or slept. One afternoon Tyrker produced a chisel and a mallet, and began chipping at one of the stones of the ballast.

  Haki watched him with interest. Then he asked: “What are you doing, Father?”

  The old German told him: “In Norway I learned how to put words upon a stone, so those that come afterwards may see what I have said.”

  Haki thought about this for a time. Then he said: “That is very wonderful, but not much good. To understand the words needs somebody as wise as you, and there is nobody like that upon the ship.”

  Tyrker said: “That is true. But Leif also knows this art, which I am practising to keep my hand in.”

  Haki might have guessed as much. Leif could do everything.

  The German chipped on industriously for a quarter of an hour. Then he laid his chisel down and blew the dust off the stone, rubbing his hand across the marks. “There,” he said to the runner. “Look at that. Those marks mean Haki. That is your name.”

  The Scot looked at them, and touched them with his finger gingerly. They were cut deep and well.

  He smiled. “This is a great wonder. A wise man coming afterwards would find my name.” He was very pleased.

  The men crowded around, admiring the work and fingering the marks. Leif noticed them from his position at the helm; a faint frown crossed his brow. The leader must excel in everything. He gave the steering oar to a man that he could trust, and came down to the body of the ship. He stooped and felt the inscription. “It is well cut, my foster father,” he said. “Give me the mallet and the chisel, and let me see if I can still recall the craft.”

  He squatted down beside the stone and hammered away industriously for a time. Then he rubbed the dust out of the grooves. “There,” he said, and they all crowded round to look.

  Someone asked: “Lord, what does it mean?”

  Tyrker said: “I understand the meaning, Lord. It is Hekja.”

  There was a murmur of applause; the stone was fingered and examined most minutely. Everyone could see that Leif’s carvings were bigger and deeper than Tyrker’s. Moreover, the word itself was longer. They had the right leader, no doubt about it.

  Presently the men dispersed a little; Haki drew Hekja over to the stone and showed her the carvings. He explained it to her. “These cuts mean my name, and those cuts mean yours. Leif has just done it.”

  She fingered the marks, trying to understand the wonder. Crouching down by the stone, she raised her eyes to Leif. “Lord, are these cuts our names?”

  He smiled down at her, towering over them. “So, Haki and Hekja. Your names are now together, for as long as this stone shall endure.”

  She stared up at him, and the pieces of the puzzle fell together in her mind. So that was what it meant! She turned to Haki. “Are we married now?”

  There was a great burst of laughter from the crew. She shrank down as the laughter roared and beat about her; her eyes filled with tears. “Why are they laughing, Haki? What is this all about?”

  He touched her hand, and spoke to her quietly in Gaelic. “Don’t let them see you crying—they’ll only laugh more. I don’t think they meant it as a marriage.”

  The Norsemen were still laughing; jokes as rich and rare as this one did not often come their way on board a ship. Hekja said, angry and half crying: “But that’s what he said! He said our names would be together as long as the stone lasted. That means for ever. Stones don’t rot away.”

  Haki said doubtfully: “I don’t think they meant it like that. I don’t believe that is the way they do a marriage.”

  “It’s as good a way as any other.” They were still speaking in Gaelic. “Haki—I hate these people. I can’t make out their customs, and they’re always laughing at us. Can’t we get away?”

  He touched her hand again. “Don’t
talk about that now—someone may understand. Besides, Leif is a good man, and he’s promised that we shall be free.”

  She said: “I hate them when they laugh.”

  For the rest of the day she was tearful and upset, but she would not leave the stone alone. She sat crouched down in the bottom of the ship with her eyes fixed on it; when it grew dark she crept over to it and laid out her sleeping-bag beside it, so that she could feel the indentation of the letters with her fingers in the night. It suddenly became her best thing, displacing all her few possessions in her preference. Her name and Haki’s were together on that stone, for as long as the stone should last. That meant for ever. It was mystical, and wonderful, and comforting to her.

  They sailed on for another day. Then in the morning they saw land quite close to them, a low-lying sandy point directly ahead. They sailed to the east of it and found that it stretched on ahead of them in the form of a continuous beach, uninterrupted for as far as they could see. At the head of the beach there was a sandy cliff a hundred feet or so in height that stretched along the shore indefinitely.

  All day they sailed along this beach, mile after mile, hour after hour, marvelling at its continuity.

  Leif said: “I will not go much further. Here is another land, and there may be another, and another, to the far end of the world, but we will not go further now. These beaches are a very great wonder. We will call them Wonderstrands.”

  In the evening they came to a little sandy bay at a point where the beach seemed to divide, and anchored there for the night. In the morning they drove the ship on shore at half-tide, and all got out upon the sand to stretch their legs. They soon discovered that they were on a small, low-lying island; the mainland seemed to be across half a mile of shallow water to the west. It was a still, hot, summer day. And here they found a curious phenomenon. The dew upon the grass, when they tasted it, was as sweet as honey, very wonderful to them. The warm climate, the quiet and the shade upon the island, and the sweetness of the dew, induced in them a sort of awe. They had heard tales about the Islands of the Blest that lay beyond the sunset; was it possible that they had come to them? And if so, what would they meet next? Would earthly weapons be of any use to them?