"Are you wounded?" she asked. She spoke in the Norse tongue, but with a pretty, foreign accent, and she looked so fair and so kind that thoughts of sirens and mermaids passed through the Viking's mind.
"Wounded? Well, methinks I ought to be," he answered; "and yet I feel rather bruised than pierced. If I can stand—" and as he spoke he rose to his feet, and slipping on the seaweed, slid quietly into the water.
The girl screamed; and then, as he scrambled out none the worse and only a little the wetter, an irresistible inclination to laugh overcame her. Forgetful of his head, he laughed with her.
"Forgive me," she said; "I could not help laughing, though, to be sure, you seem in no laughing plight. I thought at first that you were drowned."
"'Tis your doing, I think, that I am not. Did you find me in the water?"
"Half in and half out; and it took much pulling to get you wholly out."
Estein impulsively drew a massive gold ring off his finger, and in the gift-giving spirit of the times handed it to his preserver.
"I know not your name, fair maiden," he said, "but this I know, that you have saved my life. Will you accept this Viking's gift from me? It is all that the sea has left me."
"Nay, keep such gifts for those who deserve them. It would have been an unchristian act to let you drown."
"You use a word that is strange to me; but I would that you might take this ring."