So when the man came to the part where all should join, I took up the song with him, and then many others of the men joined in--some five or six in each ship.
"That is good," said Olaf, laughing softly. "Here are men whose hearts are light."
The man who sang first came now and looked over the high bows of the ship, and his figure was black against the moonlight.
"Ho, master scald!" he cried in his great voice, "now shall you sing the rest. You have put me out of conceit with my own singing. Why are you not at the feast, where I would be if I were not tied here!"
"He is keeping the dragons awake," laughed the king. "Nor do I think that even a feast would take you from the ship just as the tide is on the turn."
"Maybe not, lord king," answered the man, lifting his hand in salute. "But the dragons will be wakeful enough--never fear for them."
So the king answered back cheerily, and other men came and listened, and so at last he turned away, leaving the men who loved him pleased and the happier for his coming thus.
Now I thought that we should have gone back to the hall; but Olaf walked away from the town, going along the shore. The tide was just out, and the flow would soon begin. Soon we lost sight of the last lights from the houses, and still he went on, and I followed him, not speaking, for I knew not what plans he was making.
At last we came to a place to which I had not been before, and it was lonely enough. The forest came down to the beach, and the land was low and sheltered between the hills. There the king stayed, sitting down on a fallen tree and resting his chin on his hand, as he looked out over the water with grave eyes that seemed to see far beyond the tossing waves.
I rested beside him, and there we bided silent for an hour or more. There was only the sound of the wind in the storm-twisted trees behind us, and of the waves as they broke along the edge of the bare sands, where a few waking sea birds ran and piped unseen by us. Almost had I slept with those well-known sounds in my ears.