I saw no more of him for nearly a week. When next I met him it was in Gracechurch Street with a billbook chained to his waist.
Business took him over London Bridge and I accompanied him. He was very full of the importance of that book and magnified it.
As we passed over the Thames we paused to look at a steamer unloading great slabs of white and brown marble. A barge drifted under the steamer's stern and a lonely cow in that barge bellowed.
Charlie's face changed from the face of the bank-clerk to that of an unknown and—though he would not have believed this—a much shrewder man. He flung out his arm across the parapet of the bridge, and laughing very loudly, said: “When they heard our bulls bellow the Skroelings ran away!”
I waited only for an instant, but the barge and the cow had disappeared under the bows of the steamer before I answered.
“Charlie, what do you suppose are Skroelings?”
“Never heard of 'em before. They sound like a new kind of seagull. What a chap you are for asking questions!” he replied. “I have to go to the cashier of the Omnibus Company yonder. Will you wait for me and we can lunch somewhere together? I've a notion for a poem.”
“No, thanks. I'm off. You're sure you know nothing about Skroelings?”
“Not unless he's been entered for the Liverpool Handicap.” He nodded and disappeared in the crowd.
Now it is written in the Saga of Eric the Red or that of Thorfin Karlsefne, that nine hundred years ago when Karlsefne's galleys came to Leif's booths, which Leif had erected in the unknown land called Markland, which may or may not have been Rhode Island, the Skroelings—and the Lord He knows who these may or may not have been—came to trade with the Vikings, and ran away because they were frightened at the bellowing of the cattle which Thorfin had brought with him in the ships. But what in the world could a Greek slave know of that affair? I wandered up and down among the streets trying to unravel the mystery, and the more I considered it, the more baffling it grew. One thing only seemed certain and that certainty took away my breath for the moment. If I came to full knowledge of anything at all, it would not be one life of the soul in Charlie Mears's body, but half a dozen—half a dozen several and separate existences spent on blue water in the morning of the world!