footing as he did. I looked up sharply, and met the Saxon's
eye. A calm to come was the last thing we wished.

"Maybe there is a shift of wind coming," Bertric said. "No reason
why we may not make the most of what breeze is left now."

"It is the merest chance if any man spies us by this time," I said.
"We will risk it."

So we stepped the mast and set sail, heading eastward at once. We
trimmed the boat by putting Dalfin in the bows, while I steered,
and the Saxon sat on the floor aft and tended sheet. I asked him to
steer, but he said the boat was my own, and that I was likely to
get more out of her than a stranger. The sail filled, and the boat
heeled to the steady breeze; and it was good to hear the ripples
wake at the bows, and feel the life come back to her, as it were,
after the idle drifting of the last hour. But there was no doubt
that the wind was failing us little by little.

About sunrise it breezed up again, and cheered us mightily. That
lasted for half an hour, and then the sail flapped against the
mast, and the calm we feared fell. The long swell sank little by
little until we floated on a dead smooth sea, under brightest
sunshine, with the seabirds calling round us. Nor was there the
long line of the Orkney hills to be seen, however dimly, away to
the eastward as we had hoped.

"How will the tide serve us hereabout?" asked Bertric presently.

"The flood will set in to the eastward in two hours' time," I
answered. "It depends on how we lie on the Orkney coasts whether it
drifts us to the northward or to the southward. We have been set to
the westward all night with the ebb."

"Wind may come with the flood," said he.

And that was the best we could hope for. But I set the steering oar
in the sculling rowlock aft, and did what I could in that way. At
least, it saved some of the westward drift, if it was of very
little use else.

Dalfin curled up in the sun and slept. He had no care for the
possible troubles which were before us, knowing naught of the sea;
but this calm made the Saxon and myself anxious enough.

"After all," I said, "maybe it will only be a matter of hunger for
a day or two."

Bertric smiled, and pointed to the locker under the stern thwart,
on which I was sitting.

"I think I told you that you were but a few minutes before me in
this matter," he said. "Well, when I heard that Asbiorn would take
the boat, I knew my chance had come. So I dropped six of your
barley loaves into