I had before found comfort in the thought that she was protected by the viking's stone. But, probably, I now needed its mystic help even more than she.
One afternoon--I think it must have been about the twentieth day of my loneliness--I had been asleep for some three hours, and in a kind of waking dream I saw a strange vague vision. A number of persons, whose faces I could not rightly discern, were in a large room. Amongst them was Thora, looking more beautiful than I had ever seen her in my life, and she stood pointing with an accusing finger at her brother Tom, at whose feet there crouched a lean dog, snarling at him.
I was awakened from my half sleep by the noise of a crackling and scraping of ice upon the schooner's sides. I had seen many floating pieces of ice during the past few days, but this, from the noise it made, seemed to be an unusually large piece. I feared it might even be an iceberg, and I hastened up on deck.
I shall never forget the sight that greeted me.
The whole sky was aglow with the light of the aurora borealis--or the Merry Dancers, as we call the phenomenon in Orkney. A beautiful crimson curtain, fringed with flickering streamers, spanned the northern sky. From east to west there passed a succession of trembling waves of light, many coloured, from faint rose to palest yellow and delicate green. A heavy cloud of inky blackness hung high above, and from its upper margin rays of fiery light flashed far across the sky, casting their reflections upon the sea.
Two ghostly icebergs, floating about a mile apart, reared their snowy peaks on high, and in the channel between them--most welcome sight of all--there sailed a ship.
The vessel's sails were hanging stiff about the spars and her timbers were coated with ice and snow. I steered the schooner towards her, and we slowly approached. When I was near enough I hailed her and waited, listening for an answer to my call. No answer came.
A feeling of awe crept over me. There was something strangely desolate about her. No hand seemed to be guiding her helm. Not a man was to be seen on her snow-covered decks. She sailed aimlessly along, as though all on board had ceased to care when or how she reached her destination.
I brought the schooner close in to the stranger's side until we touched, and then I got the large boat hook out and fixed it in her chains. None of the ship's crew appeared to have remarked my approach. What could they be doing? Perhaps, I thought, they were all below decks.
I climbed upon the Falcon's gunwale and looked through an open porthole into the vessel's after cabin. I saw there a man seated at a table, with his back towards me, apparently writing.