"'One prayer to Christ,' said Storm, 'and you save your soul!' Then the tide closed over Storm's mouth."
"So," asked the King of the Fairies, "you gave your life for the Christ you had slain?"
"No such luck," answered Storm gloomily. "Leif got me back to life, made me a freeman, gave me my woman. Christ had him. Afterwards I was with him, steersman of the Flying Dragon, when we found a new world."
There came a sudden vision of smoking seas, of lashing spray, a reeling, staggering ship, with one great lugsail lifting her as she drove, thirty-two oarsmen straining at their labor, Storm in a leather jerkin at the thwart-ship tiller, and beside him a youth gigantic in chain mail who pointed with drawn sword, conning the passage between drowned sand banks and terrific combers into the entry of a land-locked bay.
"A new-found world," said the King. "New-found America."
But Storm answered concerning the Viking hero, Leif the Fortunate.
"He called it Christ-realm. Yes. That was afterwards, when we'd crossed the Western Ocean, made Norway, and put in at Nidaros, the new capital. There was Leif baptized, with the Norse King standing godfather. He offered Christ-Realm to Olaf Tryggveson, the Christian King of Norway."
The King of the Fairies said then:
"There seems to be a purpose running from life to life. So in the voyage of a ship the days pass, and the nights pass, but from day to day the purpose of her master continues always towards one end, one seaport. Mortals, your lives are days. Tell me of the next incarnation."
"That time," said Storm, "I never found my woman, so it don't count."