"The Greek is right!" shouted Sigurd. "I had forgotten the sign of such a storm, but I call it to mind. It is a strong one."
Down came the sails, out went the oars, and the thick haze on the water southerly, which had been sunlit and fair to look upon, shot up toward the middle heaven, blackening as it went.
"O jarl," said Wulf the Skater, "thank the gods! We are to see a kind of storm that we do not have in our own seas."
"Fine storms come to us in midsummer," said Ulric, "and they roar well in the fiords. Will the anger of Thor be louder here? The Greek saith that his Jupiter can thunder, and the Jew told me that his Jehovah is also a thunderer. Are they of kin? They who speak the same tongue are of one house."
The Greek was now standing by the anvil and hammer on the fore deck.
"The sign of this ship was Minerva," he muttered, "but the Saxons have given it to Vulcan. If yonder cloud is indeed of the wind from the African desert we may yet wish that Neptune were our steersman. But what care I for the gods? They were never yet of any use to me. My father made many sacrifices, but the Romans slew him."
There now were sails in sight, but these were fast furling. Most of them were small, but one, at the greater distance, had seemed much wider than the rest.
"I have been watching her," said Sigurd to Ulric, speaking of this craft. "I am not young, but my eyes are the eyes of a falcon. Now that her sail is down her oars are out and she steereth toward us. The storm will give her oarsmen enough to do."
"But we must watch her," said Ulric. "Even a merchantman might seek our company, but she may be a warship."
"So may some of these lesser keels be of the pirates of these coasts," said Sigurd. "They are many, and we do well if we smite them, for often they are good captures."