Thus, too busy to notice it, he found himself skipper. If he had any thoughts to spare before tumbling into what little sleep offered itself, they were of Eyjan. She readily smiled at him. A few times she gave him a quick hug or kiss, when something had gone well, and his spirit soared on gull wings to the sun. But there had been no further lovemaking-scant moments for it, and belike the merman’s children with no heart for it, so soon after their brother’s death.
Early on, Niels decided to work north. In the neighborhood of Iceland they should get a favoring current, and improve the chance of a wind fair for their goal. Indeed, erelong they were making good speed. Cheer lightened weariness.
Then the tempest smote.
Darkness raved. Ingeborg knew day must be aloft-in Heaven, if no place else, where the Lord sat in judgment on sinners—for she was not altogether blind. Nonetheless, vision barely reached the length of the hull.
She had no duties left on deck; any fire in the clay hearth upon ; it was doused at once and food became a swallow of salt flesh, , dry cheese, stockfish, sodden flatbread, wormy biscuit. At last, however, the gloom and stench of the hold grew unendurable, and she groped her way topside. Wind and hail harried her into what shelter was beneath the poop. There she waited alone, since the helm was lashed and Niels slumbered exhausted below.
When the weather first turned menacing, he had had a sea anchor built and cast out and the sail struck. To run before the blast could all too well mean piling into a reef or island of the many that ring northern Scotland... unless a following billow came over the stem and broke the vessel asunder. His device would keep her bow on, for the least possible damage, and he could ray for an end to the blow before she drifted to her doom. Meanwhile, he and his crew would not be idle. They must man the pumps for hours each day as seams opened, they must hasten to make repairs or make things fast afresh when the waters hammered and hauled, they must maintain what lookout they were able against the dread sight of breakers.
Time had gone on, measureless as a nightmare.
Ingeborg took hold of the tiller to steady herself against wild leaps and plunges. The gale struck inward, plastered the drenched garments to her skin, dragged at her like a river in spate. She was drowned in its clamor, in the earthquake rumble of waves and their roars when they burst, in cold that bit through her very numbness.
Straining ahead, she saw the mast reel across murk, amidst hail and scud. Its top whipped. Though the yard was down, secured on deck, how long could wood and rope take that strain? Combers boomed ahead, onrushing mountains, black and iron-gray under the jaggedness of their crests. Spray she’eted when they passed the bow; the hull shuddered. Brawling onward, they loomed above the rails. Often and often Berning did not respond soon enough to her tether, and fury cataracted across her main deck. Hatch coarnings sprung, the hold had become swamp-wet.
Through driving spindrift and ice, Ingeborg made out Tauno and Eyjan, shadowy at the forecastle. They seemed to be in converse. (How?) Abruptly Ingeborg choked on a scream. Tauno had vaulted overboard.
But he is the son of a merman! she swore to herself. He can live in that. Yes, he’s spoken of a nether, eternal peace. .. . Mary, ward him. . . . .
Eyjan came aft, which brought her into clearer view. Nude save for headband and knife belt, she seemed free of chill. Rather, her red locks, heavy with water, made the single touch of warmth inside a hidden horizon. The pitching of the craft did not trouble her panther gait.
She entered the aftercastle. “Ah, Ingeborg,” she greeted, now sufficiently close to be heard. “I spied you clambering out-for a breath of air, however bitter, no?” She reached the woman and stopped. Through hands cupped between mouth and ear, her tones were more distinct. “Let me keep you company. It’s my watch, but I can as well sense danger from here-maybe better, without that cursed hail stinging me.”
Ingeborg lifted a palm from the tiller to screen her own voice: “Tauno, where has he gone?”
The cleanly molded visage starkened. “To ask the dolphins if they can find help for us.”
Ingeborg gasped. “God have mercy! Do we need it that much?”
Eyjan nodded. “We’re nigh to land. He and I have felt how the sea is shoaling when we’ve ventured into it. Its pulse-aye, we’ve caught the first echoes of surf. And the weather shows no sign of letting up.”
Ingeborg stared into the gray eyes. “At least, if we’re wrecked, he can live—” She realized she had whispered.
Perhaps Eyjan guessed. “Oh, poor dear!” she cried. “Can I give you comfort?” Her tall form stepped between the woman and the wind. She held out her arms. Ingeborg released the helm and stumbled into that embrace. It upbore her against lunge and roll, heat flowed from softness of breasts and live play of muscles, she could cling as if to the mother she half remembered.
Talk went easier, too. “Fear not, beloved friend,” Eyjan murmured. “If we see shipwreck before us, Tauno and I will take you and Niels on our backs, well clear of breakers. We’ll bring you ashore at a safe place, and afterward fetch aid from your own kind.”
“But the gold will be lost.” Ingeborg felt the grasp around her tighten. “He couldn’t likely get another ship, could he? Everything he fared after and staked his life for; everything it means to himand he could still die. Could he not? Eyjan, I beg you, don’t. . . you two. . . risk yourselves for us—”
Agnete’s daughter held her close and crooned to her while she wept.
Tauno came back with word that the dolphins were in search. They knew of a creature that might be able to help, could they find him. Little more had they said, because they themselves understood little. They were unsure whether the being would understand them in his turn or be willing.
That was all Tauno related, for he had barely returned when the forestay parted. The end of it, lashing back, passed an inch from Eyjan’s neck. Appalled, he chased after it, caught and fought it as if it were a bad beast, got it hitched to the mast: where he saw that that was beginning to crack. Eyjan resisted when he would bend on a new stay. He could fall down onto the deck, to death or the slower death of crippling. Let him pump instead, if he could not take a moment’s ease.
Night fell, the short light night of Northern summer gone tombblack and age-long.
Morning brought dusk again. Spindrift hazed the world; a wrack flew low overhead. The seas were massive as before, but choppier, foam-white, turbulence waxing in them as they neared the shallows and the rocks beyond. Anchor or no, the cog reeled like a man who has taken a sledgehammer in his temple.
Tauno and Eyjan had spent the darkest hours topside and we still on watch, a-strain after signs of ground. The gale had drained strength from them at last; they huddled in each other’s arms against its cold and violence. Once be wondered aloud if power remained for him to keep a mortal’s face above water.
“Maybe we cannot,” Eyjan replied through shrieks and rumbles. “If things come to swimming, do you take Ingeborg and I Niels.”
“Why?” Tauno asked, dully surprised. “He weighs more than she does.”
“That makes small difference afloat, you know,” she told him, “and if they must die, they would liefest it were thus.”
He did not pursue the question; and presently they both forgot it.
A shape had appeared alongside. Glimpsed among waves, whenever the cog dipped her larboard rail, it was that of a large gray seal. They had wondered why such an animal would accompany them. Afterward they believed that already they had snuffed an odor of strangeness, though the storm confused every sense too much for them to mark this at the time.
Suddenly Herning stood well-nigh on her beam ends. A wave climbed aboard. Upon it, amidst it, rode the seal. The ship rolled back and forth toward a more even keel. Water torrented through her scuppers. The seal stayed behind. He raised himself on front flippers... change boiled through his flesh... a man” crouched there.