"Blame me not," answered Grettir gloomily. "It had been well had the stone fallen on her head. But I trow the working of her curse is begun, and what I have done has been because my understanding and wit are already clouded."
On the return of Thorbiorn to the mainland the crone was put to bed, and The Hook was less pleased than ever with his trip to the island. His foster-mother, however, consoled him.
"Do not be discouraged," she said. "Now is come the turning-point of Grettir's fortunes, and his luck will leave him more and more as the light dies away up to Yule. But the light dies and comes again. With Grettir it will not be so, it will die, and die, till it goes out in endless night."
"You are a confident woman, foster-mother," said Thorbiorn.
When a month had elapsed, the old woman was able to leave her bed, and to limp across the room.
One day she asked to be led down to the beach. Thorbiorn gave her his arm, and she had her crutch, and she hobbled down to where the water was lapping on the shingle. And there, just washed up on the beach, lay a log of drift-timber, just large enough for a man to carry upon his shoulder. Then she gave command that the log should be rolled over and over that she might examine each side. The log on one side seemed to have been charred, and she sent to the house for a plane, and had the burnt wood smoothed away.
When that was done she dismissed every one save her foster-son, and then with a long knife she cut runes on the wood where it had been planed—that is to say, words written in the peculiar characters made of strokes which Odin was supposed to have invented. Then she cut herself on the arm, and smeared the letters she had cut with her blood. After that she rose and began to leap and dance, screaming a wild spell round the log, making the most strange and uncouth contortions, and waving her crutch in the air, making with it mysterious signs over the log. Presently, when the incantation was over, she ordered the log to be rolled back into the sea. The tide was now ebbing, and with the tide the log went out to sea further and further from land till Thorbiorn saw it no more.
CHAPTER XL.
HOW THE LOG CAME TO DRANGEY.
Food for the Winter—Cast up by the Sea—The Log comes back again—The Worst is come—An ugly Wound—The Hag's Revenge—Grettir sings his Great Deeds—Presage of Evil