At last my father, ever keen of sight, said to me:
"This thing is not at the mercy of wind and wave. Rather has it the rise and fall of a boat well handled. Yet whence should one come in this heavy sea, after three days' gale?"
Even as he spoke, old Kenulf growled, half to himself, that to his thinking this was a boat coming, and handled, moreover, by men who knew their trade. Thereat some of the men laughed; for it seemed a thing impossible, both by reason of the stretch of wild sea that so small a craft as this--if it were indeed a boat--must have crossed, and because the sea was surely too heavy to let one live.
Yet in the end we saw that it was a boat, and that in her, moreover, was but one man, whose skill in handling her was more than ours, and greater than we could deem possible.
Whereupon some of us were afraid, seeing how wondrously the tiny craft came through the swift seas, and a man called out, giving voice to our fears:
"Surely yon man is a Finn and the wizard who has raised this storm to drown us; now are we lost!"
And I--who had listened eagerly to all the wild stories of the seamen, since first I was old enough to wander curiously over the ships from overseas that put into our haven on their way up the great rivers to Norwich, or Beccles, or other towns--knew that the Finns have powers more than mortal (though how or whence I know not) over wind and sea, often using their power to the hurt of others, and so looked to see the lines of a great squall, drawn as it were astern of the wizard's boat, whitening as it rushed upon us to sink us in sight of home.
But old Kenulf cried out on the man, saying:
"Rather is it one of the holy saints, and maybe the blessed Peter the fisherman himself," and he bared his gray head, crossing himself, as he looked eagerly to catch sight of the glory of light round the seafarer; and that rebuked my fears a little.
But squall or crown of light was there none. Only the brown waves, foam crested, which we feared not, and the gray light of the clouded sun that was nigh to setting.