No word had they spoken that day, and no name. They were of the Gael, though Ula’s hair was yellow and though his eyes were blue as the heart of a wave. They would ask nothing, for both were in love with death. The Maormor of Siol Tormaid looked at Urla, and his desire gnawed at his heart. But he knew what was in her mind, because he saw into it through her eyes, and he feared the sudden slaying in the dark.
Nevertheless he brooded night and day upon her beauty. Her skin was more white than the foam of the moon: her eyes were as a starlit dewy dusk. When she moved, he saw her like a doe in the fern: when she stooped, it was as the fall of wind-swayed water. In his eyes there was a shimmer as of the sunflood in a calm sea. In that dazzle he was led astray.
“Go,” he said to Ula, on a day of the days. “Go: the men of Siol Torquil will take you to the South Isles, and so you can hale to your own place, be it Eirèann or Manannan, or wherever the south wind puts its hand upon your home.”
It was on that day Ula spoke for the first time.
“I will go, Coll mac Torcall: but I go not alone. Urla that I love goes whither I go.”
“She is my spoil. But, man out of Eirèann—for so I know you to be, because of the manner of your speech—tell me this: of what clan and what place are you, and whence is Urla come: and by what shore was it that the men of Lochlin whom we slew took you and her out of the sea, as you swam against the sun, with waving swords upon the strand when the viking-boat carried you away?”
“How know you these things?” asked Ula, that had been Isla, son of the king of Islay.
“One of the sea-rovers spake before he died.”
“Then let the viking speak again. I have nought to say.”
With that the Maormor frowned, but said no more. That eve Ula was seized, as he walked in the dusk by the sea, singing low to himself an ancient song.