"If you had only allowed me to have part in the fun, I should have remembered."
Although his shoulders remained square-set against the gray of the night, Alrek's silence was so full of skepticism that the other blushed and hastened to speak of something else:
"Why are you so bold as to tell of this? It seems to me sufficient to say only that you found the hatchet on the ground."
"The Weathercock must be warned," Alrek said briefly. "Do you not see that this Skraelling may bring back a host, as happened to Thorwald?"
Apparently Gard saw, for he did not speak again. The silence lasted unbroken until they glided under the ship's prow, and a chorus of suppressed greetings came down to them.
"Hail, explorers! What luck?" "It seems that your stay was short—" "Was Thorwald lacking in hospitality?" the voices laughed, while the hands reached down to pull them aboard and assist in raising the boat.
When at last the pair stood on deck, however, the tune changed. "Now there are tidings in their faces!" cried the boy who, from the quality of his temper, was known as the Bull. "News! Let us have it out of them!" Whereupon the group made a fence across the way, every picket in it crying, "Give up your news!"
Gard waved them off crossly. "I have none," he growled.
Alrek gazed back at them as though they really were boards in a fence. "Where is the Weathercock?" he inquired of the Amiable One. "Has he drunk the wits out of him yet?"
"Such as they are, I think he has them still about him," Erlend answered. "But will you not tell us——"