But when the strangers had sailed away, Jarl Sigurd brought out that shirt of mail and tried it on, but found it all too small for him, and said,
"Thou crafty one! Tell me, didst make this small that thou mayst the younger hope to wear it?"
Then Ulf broke silence, and told the wondering Jarl the story of the Star, as far as he knew it, and how, as a family matter, it appeared to be better that Ulf alone should own the mail; to which the Jarl shudderingly agreed, for, brave though he was, he feared witchcraft. Then Ulf set the mail on a post and bade Thorolf the Strong send a spear through it if he could.
Scornfully the giant hurled a javelin at the mark, and gasped as it fell shivered like glass at the foot of the post. On the armour, not a scar!
"It is dwarf-worked; elves did it!" he cried. And for a like reason many a sword and suit of armour has been thought to be made by magic by men who did not know of nickel steel.
But not all of the Star was used in that suit of armour. Some of it Ulf kept for sword and battle-axe. Some of it went to gentler uses, and some of it in the shape of harpstrings in other days sang a song of liberty to a captive king. But no braver sight the vik ever saw than the one when out through the black wolf's-mouth of massive cliffs one morning a swift longship sped, with the early wind rounding the great sail and helping the rowers with their oars. A line of shields hung along each side, helmeted heads gleamed here and there, and high in the stern the rising sun made a form shine like a statue of silver flame as he waved farewell to those on shore, who cheerily waved and shouted farewells back again. Jarl Sigurd was now too old to take the seas; and Edith Fairhair—was still Edith Fairhair. Ulf the Silent had still his fame to win. But she knew that he would win it.
SPARK VI.
HOW FRAGMENTS OF THE STAR TRAVELLED TO A FAR COUNTRY.
Ulf still had a name to win; but what a glorious thing it was to stand there in the stern of that swift craft and feel it quiver with life beneath him in response to the rhythmic stroke of the oarsmen, as it surged through the heaving water. Brightly the sunlight leaped along the sea. Snow-white was the foam that flashed upward underneath the curving prow, and now and then jetted high enough to come hissing inboard on the wind when the fitful gusts shifted to the rightabout. The men laughed, and carelessly shook the drops from their broad backs when it splashed among them.
What a hardy set of men they were, those Northmen of old! They had no compass; they must steer by the sun, or by the stars, guess at their rate of sailing and tell by that how many more days distant was their destination. If the weather was fine, well. But if the sky clouded over, and sun nor star was seen for a week or more, while the wind veered at its own will, the chances were more than even that they would bring up on some coast where they had never been, with water and food to get, and perhaps every headland bristling with hostile spears. All this they knew, yet out to sea they went as happily as a fisherman seeks his nets. Trading, starving, fighting, plundering,—it was all one to them. On the whole, they seemed to like fighting the best of all, since that is what their sagas told most about.