When the fleet was at last ready to sail, King Harald bade the Bishop bless all the ships; but he refused to take him with him, because of the bad weather-luck that all priests were known to bring. The Bishop wanted to go to Skania to visit his priests and his churches there and to count the number of conversions that had been made; but King Harald told him he would have to wait until another ship sailed to those parts. For he himself, he roundly swore, would never take any bishop to sea with him, nor even a common priest.
“For I am too old to tempt fortune,” he said, “and all sailors know that sea-robbers and water-trolls and all sea-powers hate nothing so much as a shaven man, and set traps to drown him as soon as he leaves the land. My nephew, Gold-Harald, once sailed homewards from Brittany with a large number of newly captured slaves at his oars and straightway encountered storms and blizzards and fearful seas, though it was yet but early in the autumn. When his ship was on the point of sinking, he bethought himself and discovered two shaven men among his rowers. He threw them overboard, and enjoyed excellent weather for the rest of the voyage. He could do this because he was a heathen, but it would ill become me to throw a bishop overboard to calm the weather. So he will have to remain here.”
On the morning that the fleet was due to sail, which was also the morning that Orm and Toke had fixed for their departure, King Harald came down to the jetties to board his ship. He wore a white cloak and a silver helmet, and had a great company of men with him; and his standards were borne before him. When he reached the place where Orm’s ship lay, he halted, bade his followers wait awhile, and climbed aboard unaccompanied to have a few words with Orm in private.
“I honor you thus publicly,” he said, “to show evidence of the friendship I bear you, that no man may suppose any enmity to exist between us because I have not yet granted you my daughter’s hand. She is now confined in the women’s house, where she is the cause of much disturbance; for she is a high-spirited wench and would otherwise be quite capable of running down to your ship the moment I turned my back, to try to tempt you to take her with you, which would be a bad thing for both of you. I and you must now part for a while, and unfortunately I have, at the moment, no adequate gift with which to repay you for the bell you brought me; but I am sure that things will be different when you return in the autumn.”
It was a fine spring morning, with a clear sky and a gentle breeze blowing, and King Harald was in a merry humor. He examined the ship closely, noting its foreign workmanship, for he was well versed in the ways of ships and knew as much about decks and rowlocks as any shipwright, so that he found a number of points worth commenting upon. While he was thus engaged, Toke climbed aboard, staggering beneath the weight of an ernormous chest. He seemed taken aback to see King Harald there, but lowered his chest carefully to the deck and came forward to greet him.
“That is a fair-sized package you have with you there,” said the King. “What does it contain?”
“Only a few oddments for the old woman, my mother, in case she is still living,” replied Toke. “It is a good thing to bring home a gift of some sort when a man has been away for as long as I have.”
King Harald nodded approvingly and observed that it was good to find young people who still retained respect and affection for their parents. He himself, he added, had noticed little evidence of either quality in his own family.
“And now,” he said, seating himself on the chest that Toke had brought aboard with him, “I am thirsty and should like to quaff a cup of ale before we say farewell.”
The chest creaked beneath his weight, and Toke, with an anxious look on his face, took a step toward him; but the chest remained in one piece. Orm drew some ale from a barrel and offered it to the King, who drank to their luck for the voyage. He wiped the froth from his beard and remarked that ale always tasted best at sea; he would therefore be obliged if Orm would refill his cup once more. Orm did so, and King Harald emptied it slowly; then he nodded farewell to them, climbed ashore, and departed toward his own great flagship, to the mast of which his standard had already been fixed, displaying two ravens with outstretched wings sewn in black upon a background of scarlet silk.
Orm glanced curiously at Toke. “Why are you so pale?” he asked.
“I have my worries, like other men,” replied Toke. “You yourself have not the most cheerful of countenances.”
“I know what I am leaving behind,” said Orm, “but the wisest of men could not tell me to what I am returning, or whether things will turn out as I fear they may.”
At last all the ships put out to sea and steered their separate courses. King Harald and his fleet headed eastwards through the archipelago, and Orm’s ship rowed northwards along the coast to the tip of Sjælland. The wind favored the King’s ships, and before long they had begun to disappear into the distance.
Toke stood staring after them until their sails had grown tiny; then he said:
“Dread the hour
When Denmark’s despot
Bulbous sat
On brittle box-lid.
Faintly yet I
Fear my freight be
Broken-boned
By Bluetooth’s burden.”
He strode to the chest, opened it, and lifted forth his freight, which consisted of the Moorish girl. She looked pale and wretched, for it had been cramped and suffocating in the chest, and she had been in it for a good while. When Toke released hold of her, her knees gave under her and she lay on the deck panting and shaking and looking half-dead until he helped her to her feet again. She began to sob, glancing fearfully around her.
“Have no fear,” said Toke. “He is far away by now.”
She sat pale and wild-eyed on the deck, gazing at the ship and the men without speaking; and the men at the oars gazed back at her with eyes as wide as her own, asking one another what this could mean. But none of them was as pale as Orm, or stared more fearfully, for he looked as though some huge stroke of ill luck had just smitten him.
Ake, the ship’s master, hummed and hawed and tugged his beard.
“You made no mention of this when we struck our bargain,” he said, “that a woman should be aboard. The least I ask is that you should tell me who she is and why she came aboard in a chest.”
“That does not concern you,” replied Orm blackly. “Take care of your ship, and we will take care of what concerns us.”
“He who refuses to reply may have dangerous things to hide,” said Ake. “I am a stranger in Jellinge and know little of what goes on there, but a man does not have to be wise to see that this is a crooked business and one that may easily bring evil in its wake. Whom have you stolen her from?”
Orm seated himself on a coil of rope, with his hands clasped round his knees and his back toward Ake. Without turning his head, he replied evenly: “I give you two choices. Either hold your tongue or be thrown into the sea, headforemost. Make your choice, and be speedy about it, for you yap like a mongrel puppy and disturb my head.”
Ake turned away mumbling and spat over the side, and they could see as he moved again to his steering-oar that he was brooding darkly and in an evil humor. But Orm sat still and silent, staring as he pondered.
After a while Toke’s girl recovered her spirits, and they gave her something to strengthen her; but this at once made her wretchedly seasick, and she hung groaning over the gunwale, refusing to be comforted by the soothing words that Toke proffered her. In the end he let her be, fastening her to the gunwale with a rope, and came and sat beside Orm.