Shouts from those around them recalled the lovers to themselves. The returning boat was almost upon them; and from among her burly crew the wan faces of several strangers looked up, while a swooning woman was seen to lie in the bow. Her face, though pinched and pallid, was also fair and lovable, and Helga momentarily forgot disappointment in pity.
"Bring her here and lay her upon my cushions," she said to the men who carried the woman on board. Wrapping the limp form in her own cloak, the shield-maiden pulled off such of the sodden garments as she could, poured wine down the stranger's throat, and strove energetically to chafe some returning warmth into the benumbed limbs.
While the boat hastened back to bring off the rest of the unfortunates, those of the first load whom wine and hope had sufficiently revived, explained the disaster.
The wrecked ship belonged to Thorir of Trondhjem; and that merchant and his wife Gudrid and fourteen sailors made up her company. On the voyage from Nidaros to Greenland with a cargo of timber, their vessel had gone to pieces on a submerged reef, and they had been just able to reach that most inhospitable of rocks and cling there like flies, frozen, wind-battered, and drenched. The waves, in a moment of repentance, had thrown a little of their timber back to them, and this had been their only shelter; and their only food some coarse lichens and a few sea-birds' eggs.
It was little wonder that when Leif had brought the last load on board, and drowned their past woes in present comforts, the starved creatures were almost ready to embrace his knees with thankfulness.
"It seems to me that we should be called 'the Lucky,' and you 'the Good,'" Thorir said, as the two chiefs stood on the forecastle, watching the anchor and the sail both rising with joyful alacrity. "Without your aid, we could not have lived a day longer."
And Gudrid, opening her eyes to see Helga's fair face bending over her to put a wine cup to her lips, murmured faintly, "A Valkyria could not look more beautiful to me than you do. Tell me what you are called, that I may know what name to love you by."
"I am called Helga, Gilli's daughter," the shield-maiden answered, with just an edge of bitterness on the last words.
Gudrid's gentle eyes opened wide with wonder and alarm.
"Not Helga the Fair of Trondhjem," she gasped, "who fled from Gilli to his kinsfolk in Greenland? Alas, my unfortunate child!"