Her language was like my own, for only one speech was known along the coast, and I understood her readily, and understood, as well, that she was not afraid. I scarcely knew how to answer her. “I am a hunter,” I replied, “from a village two days to the south.”
“Sit down,” she said, “and tell me about it.”
So we sat down upon the grass, the pleasant sun shining upon us, and I told her all I thought best of our people and of our way of living. She made no comment for a little time and then said, thoughtfully: “I think it is better than ours.”
As I sat there looking at her it came to me that there was none like her in my own clan, none so stately and brave, as she had shown herself, and, assuredly, none so good to look upon. There were yellow-haired women there, but none with such deeply yellow masses of it; there were women of excellent form, but none so finely straight and slender, yet full-bosomed and rounded of leg and arm. I could not keep my eyes from her. I wanted her.
We sat there talking long. She had come into the forest seeking the berries which grew in the thickets and so had found me. I told her of my name, Scar, and she in turn told me that her name was Freya, that she was the daughter of the leader, Horsen, and that the encampment was to continue for five days, when the march southward would be taken up again. And more we said. It was wonderful, my great good fortune, but we became friends as those the Something which I do not understand may sometimes make us. She promised that she would not betray my nearness and that she would come to the little glade again at the same time on the morrow.
And the story of what followed in the next three days it seems to me must have been a very old one, for I had seen what was somewhat like it among the lovers of my own clan. We, Freya and I, came to know our hearts and what was within us very well. We knew that if we were apart it would not be as good as if we were together always. She was faithfully daring. On the fourth evening she came to me in her jacket and short skirt of wolf skin, with her necklace and armlets of bright beads, and carrying her cloak of fur and her bow and quiver of arrows. She could use the bow, she said. We fled together into the forest, and it was when we were perhaps a league from the camp that our first misfortune came. We saw at not a great distance from us one of the clan returning from the hunt, and he discovered us as well. He seemed to pay little attention, though, perhaps thinking me one of his own band, but we knew that when Freya was missed it would be known that her companion was a stranger, and that there would be swift and fierce pursuit. It could not be known yet where we were going, and the trackers must move slowly. All night we hurried at our utmost speed without the risk of exhaustion and then hid in the depths of a great swamp. We were safe enough for a time, and a full day, we judged, ahead of the certain pursuit. Old Horsen was not one likely to lose a daughter tamely. Yet there came no alarm and, travelling at our best all night and in the day as well, we reached my village in the afternoon. I had been more than doubtful of the manner of my reception when I told of all which had happened, for I had done what might possibly bring the clan into grave trouble did it venture to take up my cause, a most unlikely thing, for a man of the Kitchen-middens did not often fight for love when the love was not his own. We were yet too near the ways of brutes for that.
I need not have been troubled, for the time, at least. The whole village was in a turmoil as we issued from the forest; there was much running and shouting, many boats were on the water, and all excitement was centred upon a huge, dark object which lay among the reefs not a great way from shore and directly in front of the line of huts. I recognized what it was on the moment. It was a great whale stranded, a rare event and a glorious one for the people of the clan. I caught one of the men by the arm and made him tell me how it had come.
A little before noon the people on the beach and those fishing had noted a great commotion of the water quite a distance out at sea, and could not understand it until the foaming and splashing came nearer, for it was approaching the shore rapidly. Then they who had seen the happening often, though never so near the village, recognized what it all meant. A big whale was being attacked by the only enemies he feared in all the ocean, the giant swordfish and the sea fox, as we called it, the thresher, which, with its enormously lengthened body thrown in air, could deliver a blow to crush frightfully into the body of even such a monster as a whale. The attack—for it was no conflict—was a dreadful one, and the victim, in his agony and fear, was heading recklessly and unknowingly directly for the shore. The tide was high, there was a big sea on and, in his senseless and desperate rush, the leviathan came in, on and through the body of a high wave, topped the outer reefs and rocks and pitched floundering among the jagged uprearing mass of rock, a vast prisoner who could not possibly escape. His savage assailants swam up and down outside the reef for a time, as if unwilling to give up their prey, and then took to the deep again, while the whale, deeply wounded, lay gasping where he had been cast until the tide went down, and died there in the shallow water, scarce a hundred yards from land.
The clan had gone half mad with triumph and excitement. Every boat was seized upon, and those who did not possess one swam out, knife or stone axe in teeth, and the body of the whale was attacked by scores upon the side which lay nearest the village. It was a monstrous and welcome prize and there would be much immediate feasting, for whale meat was a fine thing, and there would be blubber for all. The candles of dried beech splinters stuck into the shell filled with oil would burn merrily in every hut. There would be bone for an hundred uses, and it was no wonder that all were boisterously happy. As for me, I hurried Freya to my own hut and left her there, for it was necessary that we, too, should have our share of the great booty at hand. Time and again I filled my boat with blubber and skin which I cut away from the tremendous carcass, so working until nightfall, when I had a towering mass of it heaped up beside the hut by my helpful Freya, to be better disposed of when the whale had been entirely stripped. We ate, and then the danger which threatened us came sharply to my mind again. I would see old Rolf, chief of the clan, so far as we recognized a chief, and to his hut I straightway went.
Not a man of great strength or courage above others was old Rolf, but he was friendly to me as I have told, and wise in his way and very crafty. I doubted, though, if he would be of much active aid to me in my strait on this occasion. He received my story as I thought he would.