“O Jumala, good and kind, help me in this my time of peril. Cast a robe of fire round me. Shield my head, my arms, my body, and let no [[357]]stroke of weapon harm me. Help us all with strength and wisdom.”
With a hasty effort he drew his enchanted sword, the sword, Faultless, the last piece of workmanship wrought in Ilmarinen’s smithy. He raised it to strike the mighty bird upon the sail-yard. But first he spoke to her, humbly, pleadingly, as an earnest peace-maker:
“Hail! hail! O Mistress of Pohyola! Will you not now divide the Sampo with me, each taking half of the precious treasure? Much better it will be for us to share it like friends than to fight for it and then lose it.”
Fearfully screamed the fierce gyrfalcon, the transformed Wise Woman, as she answered, “No, I will not divide the Sampo with you. The mill of plenty is mine, and no part of it will I share with strangers and robbers.”
Having said this she gaped horribly with her beak of copper, and again reached far out with her sharpened talons, trying to grasp the coveted Sampo. Failing in this, she screamed a second time, and from her wings the swordsmen leaped down. She screamed again and a host of spearsmen dropped upon the red ship’s deck. Dreadful was the confusion that followed, and [[358]]sad would have been the fate of the heroes had not Wainamoinen, with unheard-of swiftness, let fall his sword of magic. He struck with all his might the extended talons, the crooked fingers, the horrid feet of the relentless gyrfalcon. The sharp edge of the weapon fell squarely upon the scythe-like, grasping claws; it sheared them off close by the ankle joints; it shattered them every one, save only the smallest, the crookedest, the indescribable little finger of Dame Louhi.
Loudly, most horribly did she shriek, not more from pain than from intensest anger and despair. And now on the fated red ship of the heroes an awful struggle began—a struggle the bloodiest and the woefullest that sea or sky ever looked upon or minstrel’s song ever painted in words. Swords flashed, spears crashed, men shouted. The screams of frightened maidens, the moans of the wounded and the dying, the victorious cries of the warriors, and the despairing lamentations of the heroes—all these sounds were mingled in one awful chorus. But above every other sound the hoarse cries of the dauntless Mistress were heard, making the earth shudder and causing the deep sea to quake.
One by one the heroes fell; and by fives and [[359]]tens the low-browed warriors of Pohyola were thrust overboard to perish in the waves.
Towering above both friends and foes, mighty in strength and endurance, the master Smith moved to and fro performing many deeds of courage. But the weavers of his fate had decided against him; it was not for him to prevail. Covered with wounds, the blood flowing from his arms, his head, his heart, he felt his end approaching. “O thou who wert once the Maid of Beauty!” he cried, looking upward. “O thou matchless one among women! I see thee in the mist-filled air, I hear thy voice calling from the rainbow arch. I come! I come! I come to meet thee!”
Overwhelmed in the fight, his arms unnerved, his strength departed, he fell toppling into the sea. As a giant pine, when rent by the storm, falls crashing from the mountain top and is swallowed in the bottomless gorge below, so fell the hero. The pitying waves closed over him; he was with his loved ones in the halls of rest.
Bravely, too, did the ever-ready Ahti struggle to defend the Sampo, wielding his long arms valorously, until his strength failing he also was hurled into the hungry deep. And Wainamoinen, [[360]]immovable as the lofty headland of his own sweet country, stood steadfast at his post, directing and cheering his comrades and overwhelming with terror the foes who dared approach him.