he cabin and told my mother that things were at
their worst, and she was very brave.

"If you are to die at this time, husband," she said, "it is good that I
shall die with you. Better it is, as I think, than a sickness that comes
to one and leaves the other. But after that you will go to the place of
Odin, 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 waves
with Grim, my father, it will be strange."

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

"I suppose that Aegir is wroth because we made no sacrifice to him
before 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 father
thinking, and in the end helped us out of trouble.

"I have heard," my father said, "that men in our case have thrown
overboard the high-seat pillars, and have followed them to shore safely.
We have none, but the stones are more sacred yet. Overboard they shall
go, 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; and
they thought it a good plan, as maybe they would have deemed anything
that seemed to call for help from the strong ones of the sea. So they
got the boat ready to launch over the quarter, and the four stones,
being uncovered since the Vikings took our cargo, were easily got on
deck, and they were placed in the bottom of the boat, and steadied there
with coils of fallen rigging, so that they could not shift. They were
just a fair load for the boat. Then my father cried for help to the
Asir, bidding Aegir take the altar as full sacrifice; and when we had
done so we waited for a chance as a long wave foamed past us, and
launched the boat fairly on its back, so that she seemed to fly from our
hands, and was far astern in a moment.

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

But she never reached them. She plunged away at first, heading right for
the surf, and then went steadi