Vandrad the Viking | Page 8

rush, swung his
battle-axe round his head and aimed a terrific blow at Osmund
Hooknose. Quick as lightning Osmund raised his shield and thrust at

his foe with his sword. The point of the blade passed in at his breast
and out between his shoulders, and at the same instant the battle-axe
fell. The edge of the shield was cut through like paper, and the blade
coming fair on the nape of the Hooknose's neck, the bodies of the two
champions rolled together off the gangway.
Round the poop the last struggle raged. Spent and wounded as they
were, Estein's little band showed a bold front to their foes, and around
the red shield of their leader their lives were dearly sold.
Then for a few minutes came a lull in the fight, and men could breathe
for a space.
"The next onset will be the last," said Estein grimly.
"Their ships are sheering off!" exclaimed one.
"'Tis we who are leaving them," said another.
"Look ahead!" cried Helgi; "we shall cheat them yet."
The men looked round them with astonished faces, for a strange thing
had happened. They had drifted into one of the dreaded Orkney
tideways, and all the time the fight was raging they were being borne at
increasing speed past islands, holms, and skerries. The scene had
completely changed; they were in a narrower sound, swinging like
sea-fowl, helpless on the tide. Heather hills were close at hand, and
right ahead was a great frothing and bubbling, out of which rose the
black heads of sunken rocks.
The other vessels had been twisted off by the whirling eddies, and were
now rapidly scattering, each striving to clear the reef. Only the four
vessels bound together--Estein's, Thorkel's, Liot's, Osmund's--swept in
an unresisting cluster towards the rocks.
Liot too saw the danger, and raised his voice in a great shout:--
"Let not man of mine touch an oar till Estein Hakonson lie dead on

yonder deck. We have yet time to slay them. Forward, Liot's men!"
There was a wild and furious rush of men towards the poop. Down
went man after man of the battle-worn defenders. Liot and Estein met
sword to sword and face to face. The red shield was ripped from top to
bottom by a sweep of the bairn-slayer's blade, and at the same moment
Estein's descending sword was met by a Viking's battle-axe, and
snapped at the hilt.
"Now, Estein, I have thee!" shouted his foe; but ere the words were
well out of his mouth, Estein had hurled himself at his waist, dagger in
hand, and brought him headlong to the deck. As they fell, the ships
struck with a mighty crash that threw friend and foe alike on the bloody
planks. Two vessels stuck fast; the other two broke loose, and plunging
over the first line of reefs, settled down by the bows.
There was a rush to the bulwarks, a splashing of bodies in the water,
and then the doomed and deserted ships, the attacker and the attacked,
sank in the turmoil of the tide. Estein himself had been pitched clear of
his foe into the waist, where he had fallen head first and half-stunned.
He felt a friendly hand dragging him to the side, and heard Helgi's
voice saying,--
"Art thou able to swim for it?"
Then he had a confused recollection of being swept along by an
irresistible current, clinging the while to what he afterwards found to be
a friendly plank, and after that came oblivion.

CHAPTER III.
THE HOLY ISLE.
With the first glimmer of consciousness, Estein became aware of an
aching head and a bruised body. Next he felt that he was very wet and
cold; and then he discovered that he was not alone. His head rested on

something soft, and two hands chafed his temples.
"Helgi," he said.
A voice that was not Helgi's replied, "Thanks be to the saints! he is
alive."
Estein started up, and his gaze met a pair of dark blue eyes. They and
the hands belonged to a fair young girl, a maid of some seventeen
summers, on whose knees his aching head had just been resting.
They were sitting on a shelving rock that jutted into the tideway, and at
his feet his kindly plank bumped gently in an eddy of the current.
He looked at her so silently and intently that the blue eyes drooped and
a faint blush rose to the maiden's cheeks.
"Are you wounded?" she asked. She spoke in the Norse tongue, but
with a pretty, foreign accent, and she looked so fair and so kind that
thoughts of sirens and mermaids passed through the Viking's mind.
"Wounded? Well, methinks I ought to be," he answered; "and yet I feel
rather bruised than pierced. If