At night the gale increased, the fleet was scattered over the North Sea, and next morning from Estein's ship only two other black hulls could be seen running before the tempest. Another wild day passed, and it was not till the evening that the weather moderated. Little by little the great seas began to calm, and the drifts of stinging rain ceased. In their wake the stars struggled through the cloud wrack, and towards morning the wind sank altogether.
CHAPTER II.
THE BAIRN-SLAYERS.
At earliest dawn eyes were strained to catch a glimpse of something that might tell them where they were. None of the men on Estein's ship had been in those seas more than two or three times at most, and the vaguest conjectures were rife when, as the light was slowly gaining, Ulf raised a cry of land ahead.
"Land to the right!" cried Helgi, a moment later.
"Land to the left!" exclaimed Estein; "and we are close on it, methinks."
When the morning fully broke they found themselves lying off a wide-mouthed sound, that bent and narrowed among low, lonely-looking islands. Only on the more distant land to the right were heather hills of any height to be seen, and those, so far as they could judge, were uninhabited. A heavy swell was running in from the open sea, and a canopy of grey clouds hung over all.
"I like not this country," said Ulf. "What think you is it?"
"The Hjaltland islands, I should think, from what men tell of them," Estein suggested.
"The Orkneys more likely," said Thorolf, who had sailed in those seas before.