The Iron Star - And What It Saw on Its Journey Through the Ages Part 3

The yarn slipped along them so smoothly, never catching and only now and then dropping st.i.tches! Altogether, it was a very happy winter, and a very busy one for Edith Fairhair; and if her mother helped her now and then over the hard places, what then? Is not that what mothers are for, and what they love to do? Still, the most of the great work Edith did herself. She only asked to be shown how, and very contentedly did the rest.

Then, winter was the time for weaving. This Edith could not do, as yet. She was not quite strong enough. One had to sit in a frame that had a row of threads stretched across it, with another row running the same way but so fastened that at one end they could be either raised up above the level of the first row or dropped beneath it. Sitting at the tied end her mother would throw a little wooden boat skimming between the two sets of threads, from one side to the other, the boat being laden with a spool of yarn and dragging a thread behind it. When the boat reached the other side, the thread would be drawn tight. Then with the foot in a strap the loose bar would be drawn down, taking one set of threads with it, and there would be the boat's thread caught as in a trap. Then the boat would come flas.h.i.+ng back on its return voyage, up would go the bar again, and that thread would be fast, too, just as the other was; and so the cloth would grow, by just the width of the boat-thread, with each trip.

It was slow work, to be sure; but then, one had plenty of time. Then, too, it was such pretty work! One could have several little boats, each laden with a differently coloured thread. By using two at a time, going opposite ways, the cloth would have a "pepper-and-salt" mixture of colour, as we call it now; or by using one for a time and then the other, it would make broad stripes of colour, which was thought very fine. Yet, after all, Edith Fairhair thought nothing could be prettier than pure white--if only it was kept white. But, white or coloured, she never tired watching the flying shuttles, as we call the little boats to-day.

Meanwhile, all through the winter, merrily rang the smithy with clink of hammer on heated steel. After that gift to Edith the Jarl told Ulf he might take all the time he needed for his freedom-work; and he took it. Pounds of steel needles had been made and stored away. He had tried to remember all he ever heard about how to temper them, and he already had learned to watch the glowing steel slowly change its colour from dazzling white as it cooled to rose red, and at just the right moment to plunge it into water. But he only tried it on one or two bits, as yet, just to make sure he was right; and these utterly astonished him by their hardness. No iron that he had ever seen was like it. Of course he laid it all to the magic of the Star, as many a warrior did in after years, not knowing that in that kind of iron there is often a small mixture of nickel, such as our five-cent piece is made of, and that steel made from such a mixture is harder and tougher than any other kind. Bicycle-makers have found this out for themselves, and know the reason of the toughness, but it was a great mystery to Ulf.

It made him very happy, however; and blithely clinked his small hammer as he worked away, weaving a strange kind of cloth that was not made of soft wool, nor was it woven in a loom with flas.h.i.+ng shuttle.

Instead, inch by inch of it, as it grew, was thrust into the glowing coals and heated; first in the shape of slender steel needles, which were cut off and twisted into tiny rings, dozens of them; then these were hooked into each other, ring into ring, and hammered while still hot till each was solid, and as though it had never been straight in its life or anything else but a ring, without beginning or end. Then came the great thing--the tempering. How anxiously he watched it! How carefully he blew the fire as the strip of iron cloth lay in the coals! Then what a hissing it made and what a shout of triumph Ulf gave when at last the perfect temper was reached and the strip was bubbling the water! Many such strips lay piled in a dry place before spring came, and with it the time for joining them all together.

It was a great day for the young folks of the vik when the contest was to be decided. Half-a-dozen longs.h.i.+ps of other jarls happened to be in port at the time and Jarl Sigurd was not sorry to let his visitors see what his young people could do. Wonderfully well made were many of the trials. One boy showed a bow of two great horns joined together, which only Thorolf the Strong could bend. Another showed an oxhorn, with the tip cut off and ornamented, and the whole horn carved in spiral grooves; and raising it to his lips he blew a blast that could be heard a mile! There seemed to be as many different things as there were boys and girls to make them; and Jarl Sigurd was pleased indeed when the other jarls with one voice said that among the works of the girls the finest and most useful of all was a snow-white garment like a knitted jersey, made from the sheep's wool by Edith Fairhair. How her cheeks glowed bright red, and how bright her eyes shone, when she had to wear it before them and say who made it! What was the value of the prize compared with the look her father gave her! yet, those bracelets were of pure gold, and came from far across the seas.

"But where is Ulf?" said Sigurd, suddenly. "The lad is proud, and I hope he has not failed."

"My thrall does not fail in what he tries to do!" said Edith, and the jarls all laughed, save Sigurd, who shook his head with smiling reproof, saying,

"The thrall waits till after the freeman, and that is well. Now, some one call him."

Then Ulf the Silent stepped forward from behind the throng, and laid before the jarls a package that was carefully wrapped in deerskin. It gave a soft, musical tinkle as he laid it down and vanished in the throng again. With laughter Jarl Sigurd stooped forward, saying,

"The lad was braver when he sent an arrow through my arm than he is to-day," and untied the package. "It is not light, jarls. What!--by Thor and Odin, and all the G.o.ds of Valhalla! when did man ever see the like?"

Oh, what a rare sight it was!--thousands of tiny rings of steel, cunningly woven together by the hand of one whose father and whose father's father had worked in metal, and who had taught him all they knew! The light rippled across the folds in flashes like molten silver; the loose links along the edges rang like fairy bells, and not one jarl in all his travels had ever seen a more beautiful s.h.i.+rt of mail. A king of kings might be proud to wear it. Yet it was made by Jarl Sigurd's thrall!

"No! by Tyr, thrall is he no longer! Stand forward, Ulf. Choose thou; wilt go back to the Forest? If so, I will send thee with a guard of honour. Wilt stay in my household? Then thou art as my son, and in days to come a longs.h.i.+p will I give thee to command."

Then Ulf the Silent, with a sidelong look at Edith Fairhair, said, "I thank thee, Jarl; at the vik I choose to stay." And great was the laughter and applause.

But when the strangers had sailed away, Jarl Sigurd brought out that s.h.i.+rt of mail and tried it on, but found it all too small for him, and said,

"Thou crafty one! Tell me, didst make this small that thou mayst the younger hope to wear it?"

Then Ulf broke silence, and told the wondering Jarl the story of the Star, as far as he knew it, and how, as a family matter, it appeared to be better that Ulf alone should own the mail; to which the Jarl shudderingly agreed, for, brave though he was, he feared witchcraft.

Then Ulf set the mail on a post and bade Thorolf the Strong send a spear through it if he could.

Scornfully the giant hurled a javelin at the mark, and gasped as it fell s.h.i.+vered like gla.s.s at the foot of the post. On the armour, not a scar!

"It is dwarf-worked; elves did it!" he cried. And for a like reason many a sword and suit of armour has been thought to be made by magic by men who did not know of nickel steel.

But not all of the Star was used in that suit of armour. Some of it Ulf kept for sword and battle-axe. Some of it went to gentler uses, and some of it in the shape of harpstrings in other days sang a song of liberty to a captive king. But no braver sight the vik ever saw than the one when out through the black wolf's-mouth of ma.s.sive cliffs one morning a swift longs.h.i.+p sped, with the early wind rounding the great sail and helping the rowers with their oars. A line of s.h.i.+elds hung along each side, helmeted heads gleamed here and there, and high in the stern the rising sun made a form s.h.i.+ne like a statue of silver flame as he waved farewell to those on sh.o.r.e, who cheerily waved and shouted farewells back again. Jarl Sigurd was now too old to take the seas; and Edith Fairhair--was still Edith Fairhair. Ulf the Silent had still his fame to win. But she knew that he would win it.

SPARK VI.

HOW FRAGMENTS OF THE STAR TRAVELLED TO A FAR COUNTRY.

Ulf still had a name to win; but what a glorious thing it was to stand there in the stern of that swift craft and feel it quiver with life beneath him in response to the rhythmic stroke of the oarsmen, as it surged through the heaving water. Brightly the sunlight leaped along the sea. Snow-white was the foam that flashed upward underneath the curving prow, and now and then jetted high enough to come hissing inboard on the wind when the fitful gusts s.h.i.+fted to the rightabout.

The men laughed, and carelessly shook the drops from their broad backs when it splashed among them.

What a hardy set of men they were, those Northmen of old! They had no compa.s.s; they must steer by the sun, or by the stars, guess at their rate of sailing and tell by that how many more days distant was their destination. If the weather was fine, well. But if the sky clouded over, and sun nor star was seen for a week or more, while the wind veered at its own will, the chances were more than even that they would bring up on some coast where they had never been, with water and food to get, and perhaps every headland bristling with hostile spears.

All this they knew, yet out to sea they went as happily as a fisherman seeks his nets. Trading, starving, fighting, plundering,--it was all one to them. On the whole, they seemed to like fighting the best of all, since that is what their sagas told most about.

But Ulf was not by birth a Northman. Yet a rover by nature was he, and chief of all things that he most desired was to explore strange lands, and especially what lay beyond where the sky dipped downward and seemed to meet the sea. s.h.i.+ps came from thence, now and then; s.h.i.+ps had gone thence, as he knew, and some had never come back, but perhaps were sailing still from land to land, through the great unknown.

For weeks his s.h.i.+p sailed onward, over a lonely ocean. Now and then the misty fountain sprung upward from the waves where a whale was "blowing," with gulls hovering in the air above his glistening black back. There were more gulls then than now, and more whales also, and often the men would finger their lances wistfully and look with inquiring eyes at their youthful captain. At another time they would not have looked in vain; indeed, in after days Ulf became somewhat famous even among the men of the fjords for the number of whales he brought in. But now his soul was elsewhere. Even the problem of getting back did not trouble him in the least.

Yet it was one thing to start out a-voyaging, sure of bringing up somewhere if you only went far enough. It is quite another thing to be equally sure of finding the way homeward over the trackless sea, without a landmark from horizon to horizon to steer by for weeks and weeks. What seems a sixth sense is given to some of us--the sense of "direction," which the pa.s.senger pigeon has and which enables it to fly straight back to its nest, though set free hundreds of miles from home. When of old a young man had that faculty, the chances were that he would become a famous pilot; and sometimes he might be charged with witchcraft as a penalty for knowing too much! Ulf, a son of the trackless Forest, had that sixth sense.

One morning the dawn-light revealed a black spot on the low horizon. A speck that grew larger, with twinkling, fin-like flashes along each side, and in due time it proved to be a galley like their own bearing down straight for them. n.o.body stopped to ask any questions. That was not sea-style then. But just as naturally as two men now in a lonely journey would shake hands on meeting, these two captains slipped their arms through their s.h.i.+eld-handles, sheered alongside just beyond oar- tip, and exchanged cards in the shape of a couple of whistling javelins.

Up from their benches sprang the rowers. Tw.a.n.g! sung their war-bows the song of the cord, and the air was full of hissing whispers of Death as their shafts hurtled past. Round and round the two galleys circled in a strange dance, each steersman striving to bring his craft bows on, so as to ram and crush the other, while they lurched in the cross-seas, and rolled till they dipped in tons of water over the rail.

Up sprang the stranger on his prow; tall and broad-shouldered was he, with a torrent of ruddy hair floating in the wind. As Ulf turned to give an order to bale out the inrus.h.i.+ng water, up rose a brawny arm, and a great spear flashed down from the high bow of the enemy and struck fairly between his shoulders. So sharp was the blow, so sudden, that Ulf pitched forward on one knee for just half a breath. But the spear fell clanging to the deck. The ruddy warrior stood looking at it with eyes of amazement. His own spear, that never before had failed! A flash of light leaped back like a lightning stroke; back to its master whistled the brand, for, ere he rose, Ulf s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and as he rose he hurled it--straight through the unguarded arm of the stranger.

"Hold!"

The shout rang sternly across the water and echoed back and forth from sail to sail. The shouting hushed. Only the creak of the swaying yard, the hoa.r.s.e swash of the water, the panting of deep breathing broke the silence, then once more from the lofty prow came the commanding voice.

"Who and whence art thou?"

"A son of the Forest am I," answered the other. "Ulf is my name, Ulf the Silent my t.i.tle, Jarl Sigurd my father by adoption. The sea is my home; from over sea I came, and over sea am I going."

"What dwarfs made that armour?" demanded the other, holding a cloth to his wounded limb.

"Ten dwarfs welded it, ten dwarfs tempered it, and the same ten guard the wearer. Thou best shouldst know what five of them can do," and Ulf smiled grimly as he held up his hand with outspread fingers.

"Now it is thy turn. Who art thou?"

"Leif is my name," said the other, "and Eric the Red is my father. To the West have I been sailing, searching for a land with lumber for s.h.i.+p-building. Now am I homebound. Come thou with me and thou shalt be as my brother; for a good spearman art thou as ever sailed the seas; and afterward we will sail together."

"I like it well," said Ulf, frankly, "and homeward will I go with thee"--for that was sea-politeness then. So they set a new course by the stars that night and before Leif's arm had ceased to tingle they saw the black walls of rock that guarded the entrance to his haven.

Many a night in after years Ulf lay awake and watched the stars, thinking the while of his visit to Greenland and of all that came of it. A mighty man of his hands was Leif. In sheer strength no two in both s.h.i.+ps were his match in a close wrestle. None could strike a keener blow. Yet was he hugely delighted when, one afternoon in friendly fray, Ulf again and again slipped within his guard and with a lithe writhe of his slender form twined a bear's hug around his bulky friend and dashed him earthward. And to give Ulf one spear's length advantage in a hot scurry across country was never to come up with him again.

"Thou art the man of men I long have hunted for!" Leif cried. "Let your s.h.i.+p rest for a season;--or, better, let your longest-headed seaman captain it for a voyage, trading, and come thou with me. Far to the southward and westward lie rich timber lands. Where, we know not, yet storm-driven s.h.i.+ps have seen them. These I mean to find, and for such a distant quest one s.h.i.+p is better than two."

So sunnily looked down the great man at the slighter one, so joyous at the thought of that voyage into the mists of the southern seas that Ulf--rover to the marrow--held out his hand in silence, and the compact was made.

It did not take long to provision the craft, or to arrange other matters. Soon they were surging once more across apparently boundless seas. Three times they came to lands unknown to them, yet not the country of great trees talked of by old sailors around the winter fires. At last it loomed up in reality above the horizon, covered with timber enough to build a great city,--more than ever was seen close at hand by Northmen before. And right l.u.s.tily swung the axes among them for days and weeks, until even the keenest trader among them all was contented with his share of wealth that was to come to him when once back in Greenland. There were not lacking signs, either, that savage neighbours might be unpleasant neighbours, as more than one stone- headed arrow had whistled past, heralded by the first war-whoop that ever was heard by ears of white men.

So, like a careful captain, Leif got his dried fish, his smoked deer- meat, his water casks, and his lumber by degrees all on board; he lit the watch fires as usual at sundown; but by moonrise, with the early tide he and his men slipped quietly out of their stockaded camp and into their vessel, and silently drifted out to sea before the warm land-wind that still was faintly blowing. And late that night a savage war party called at the camp with spear and torch, to find it only an empty sh.e.l.l, to their huge disappointment.

Other captains, less wise, came after Leif in their timber-hunting, and not all came safely home again. Perhaps the good fortune that still followed the guardian of the Iron Star had something to do with Leif and Ulf's fair voyaging in this, the first time that a part of the Star ever came to the sh.o.r.es of America. If so, then indeed its power must have lived long after Ulf had said farewell and swept onward in his own s.h.i.+p toward Norway once again; for by all his friends the tall captain was called "Leif the Lucky."

And even now, in the entrance to a beautiful park in a great city of that land where he went timber-cutting a thousand years before that city--Boston--was ever heard of, there, high in air, as though still standing on the prow of his s.h.i.+p, looms up a brave figure in bronze. A closeknit, flexible s.h.i.+rt of mail guards his form. One hand rests upon his hip, holding his curved war-horn. The other shades the eyes;--for, even in this statue of him, Leif Ericsson is still the crosser of far seas, the finder of strange lands, the sleepless watcher forever gazing from beneath his shadowed brows into the golden west.