It was on a breezy April morning that the mountains of Sogn came into view again. A strong slant of south-east wind had driven the two ships out to sea; and now, as they raced landwards before a favouring breeze, they saw low down on the horizon one glittering hill-top after another pierce the morning mist bank. Helgi for the time had charge of the tiller, while Estein leant against the weather bulwark, busy with his new resolves.
"A ship must cross the sea again," he repeated to himself. "The time for action is at hand, and we shall see what new freak fortune will play with me. Yet, after all," he reflected, "though she has pressed my head beneath the tide before, she has always suffered me to rise and gasp ere she drowned me quite. It all comes to this: the purposes of the gods are too deep for me to fathom, so I must e'en hold my peace and bide the passage of events."
Helgi had been watching him with a half-smile on his frank face, and at last he cried,—
"What counsel hold you with the seamews? Sometimes I see a smile, and sometimes I hear a sigh; and then, again, there is a look of the eye as if Liot Skulison were standing before you."
"I was filling twenty long ships with enough stout lads to man them, and sailing the western main again," replied Estein.
"And whither were you sailing?" asked Helgi.
"Westward first," said Estein.
"With perchance a point or so of south—such a direction as would bring us to the Hjaltland Isles, or, it may be, the Orkneys?"
"Aided by a wayward wind," replied Estein with a smile.
"Where, doubtless, it would be well to slay another sea-rover," Helgi went on, "since they cause much trouble to peaceable seafarers from Norway. Witches, too, and warlocks dwell in the isles, men say, and it were well to rid the land of such."