Indian Tales | Page 8

the land! Hah!"
"Charlie," I pleaded, "if you'll only be sensible for a minute or two I'll
make our hero in our tale every inch as good as Othere."
"Umph! Longfellow wrote that poem. I don't care about writing things
any more. I want to read." He was thoroughly out of tune now, and
raging over my own ill-luck, I left him.
Conceive yourself at the door of the world's treasure-house guarded by
a child--an idle irresponsible child playing knuckle-bones--on whose
favor depends the gift of the key, and you will imagine one half my
torment. Till that evening Charlie had spoken nothing that might not lie
within the experiences of a Greek galley-slave. But now, or there was
no virtue in books, he had talked of some desperate adventure of the
Vikings, of Thorfin Karlsefne's sailing to Wineland, which is America,
in the ninth or tenth century. The battle in the harbor he had seen; and
his own death he had described. But this was a much more startling
plunge into the past. Was it possible that he had skipped half a dozen
lives and was then dimly remembering some episode of a thousand
years later? It was a maddening jumble, and the worst of it was that
Charlie Mears in his normal condition was the last person in the world
to clear it up. I could only wait and watch, but I went to bed that night
full of the wildest imaginings. There was nothing that was not possible
if Charlie's detestable memory only held good.
I might rewrite the Saga of Thorfin Karlsefne as it had never been
written before, might tell the story of the first discovery of America,
myself the discoverer. But I was entirely at Charlie's mercy, and so
long as there was a three-and-six-penny Bohn volume within his reach
Charlie would not tell. I dared not curse him openly; I hardly dared jog
his memory, for I was dealing with the experiences of a thousand years
ago, told through the mouth of a boy of to-day; and a boy of to-day is
affected by every change of tone and gust of opinion, so that he lies
even when he desires to speak the truth.
I saw no more of him for nearly a week. When next I met him it was in
Gracechurch Street with a billhook chained to his waist. Business took
him over London Bridge and I accompanied him. He was very full of
the importance of that book and magnified it. As we passed over the

Thames we paused to look at a steamer unloading great slabs of white
and brown marble. A barge drifted under the steamer's stern and a
lonely cow in that barge bellowed. Charlie's face changed from the face
of the bank-clerk to that of an unknown and--though he would not have
believed this--a much shrewder man. He flung out his arm across the
parapet of the bridge and laughing very loudly, said:
"When they heard our bulls bellow the Skroelings ran away!"
I waited only for an instant, but the barge and the cow had disappeared
under the bows of the steamer before I answered.
"Charlie, what do you suppose are Skroelings?"
"Never heard of 'em before. They sound like a new kind of seagull.
What a chap you are for asking questions!" he replied. "I have to go to
the cashier of the Omnibus Company yonder. Will you wait for me and
we can lunch somewhere together? I've a notion for a poem."
"No, thanks. I'm off. You're sure you know nothing about Skroelings?"
"Not unless he's been entered for the Liverpool Handicap." He nodded
and disappeared in the crowd.
Now it is written in the Saga of Eric the Red or that of Thorfin
Karlsefne, that nine hundred years ago when Karlsefne's galleys came
to Leif's booths, which Leif had erected in the unknown land called
Markland, which may or may not have been Rhode Island, the
Skroelings--and the Lord He knows who these may or may not have
been--came to trade with the Vikings, and ran away because they were
frightened at the bellowing of the cattle which Thorfin had brought
with him in the ships. But what in the world could a Greek slave know
of that affair? I wandered up and down among the streets trying to
unravel the mystery, and the more I considered it, the more baffling it
grew. One thing only seemed certain, and that certainty took away my
breath for the moment. If I came to full knowledge of anything at all it
would not be one life of the soul in Charlie Mears's body, but half a
dozen--half a dozen several and separate existences spent on blue water
in the morning of the world!
Then I