He allowed the serfs time to rest and recover after their severe experience. Then he ordered them to get ready again. This time he gave them horses and sent them westward along the coast. He enjoined them not to return till they had found Hjor-Leif. If they had not found the pillars before they met him they were to tell Hjor-Leif to come westward with his men and cattle as soon as summer was in the air and a sea-passage was safe.
But spring came this time earlier than it was expected. Already in the night before the serfs started, a warm and strong south-west wind began to melt the snows and melt the ice that covered the rivers. The serfs only succeeded in passing the nearest rivers on ice. By the second day they could neither get forward nor backward by reason of furious rivers which carried huge volumes of muddy water and great blocks of ice. But they had to push on, and did so with the horses' help, although they often wasted days in finding a ford, and sometimes had to let themselves be dragged through the water, hanging on to the horses' tails or manes. It was the worst journey that Vifel and Karle had ever been out on, and it was only due to Vifel's endurance and fidelity that they went forward and escaped with their lives. On the way they met men—Irish monks—who here far inland had built a temple with a brazen voice which shook the air. The monks questioned them, and seemed displeased with what they had to narrate.
They did not show them much friendliness. But Vifel and Karle were eternally thankful for merely escaping with life from these strange men who were in covenant with a god, the sound of whose voice alone cast them terror-struck to the earth.
At last the serfs reached Hjor-Leif's point. They had been fourteen days on the journey. They found the houses empty and the place forsaken. They went down to the shore and found the ship. The boats, on the other hand, were gone. Not the slightest sign of life was visible anywhere.
IX
Hjor-Leif saw the winter come to an end at last. He lay one night and heard the tone of the wind change. He knew the eager and implacable voice of the south-east wind. It did not surprise him then to hear a dripping indoors and out.
His heart began to beat a little as he lay there. But he lay still, did not jump from his bed, did not run to salute the spring and bid its warm wind take the bad weather from him, as in other circumstances he would have done. There was not much left of Hjor-Leif's strength now. He did not awake with the spring. Generally he was accustomed to avoid the house when spring had first come. But this time he remained within, sick in mind, and without power to shake off the burden of winter and his bereavement. He remained sitting indoors while the young year awoke the earth from winter's sleep, without paying attention to it. That was not like Hjor-Leif. Indeed, it was so unlike him, that his men avoided each other's looks and did not speak about him. He got out of his bed each morning with a sigh, clothed himself wearily, and went slowly and sluggishly out to see how far the spring was advanced, and if the weather held. If it was bright he went up on the point and looked eastward over the land and over the sea. Then he went home again, dragging his feet like an old man or an invalid, and wrapped himself in his solitude and waited. It was still too early in the year for Ingolf to be coming—Ingolf and Helga.
He hardly dared to think of her name. The very thought scorched and burnt his wounded soul that by this separation which he had insisted on he had caused Helga fresh grief. His own sufferings were indeed bitterly deserved—that he had to acknowledge—but that did not make them any easier. The thought made the wilderness of his soul even more desolate. Self-caused, self-deserved, every torturing day, every sleep-forsaken night, every suffering, every whip-lash of longing, altogether self-caused, without reason and to no use. That was bad enough to think about. But it was worse with Helga—Helga who might have reason to believe that he had left her behind in cold blood, and to think that perhaps he looked forward without longing to seeing her again. The thought was so intolerable that at times it seemed as if his head would split and his heart stop beating. These and similar thoughts tortured Hjor-Leif, but he sat and let the tedious hours pass.