The Snow Driver

 Extracted from Adventure magazine, March 20 1925, pp. 1–61.

Lapland—the “Fox” and a forged map.

The   Snow Driver

A Complete Novel ⁠ by Harold Lamb
Author of “The Sword of Honor,” “Forward,” etc.

CHAPTER I

THE MAN-AT-ARMS

UPON a fair day in May, in token of the honor due them for long and valorous service in Flanders, a small group of men were chosen to mount guard at the pavilion of his Majesty King Edward the Sixth of England. They were armigers or esquires-at-arms, and the youngest of their company was placed at the entrance of the pavilion nearest the person of the king.

The name of this armiger was Ralph Thorne. He was selected for this post because, of these survivors of a gallant company, he had done the most in battle.

“Because, sire,” explained the politic Dudley, Duke of Stratford, “he has never failed in the execution of a command. Because, being distant from the court and the eye of his sovereign, he has yet performed deeds of hardihood, suffering thereby sore scathe and wounds.”

This tribute, lightly rendered by my lord duke, was remembered by him in latter years. Verily he had good reason to regret his words and his selection of a sentinel.

For there befell in that hour and in that day of the year 1553 a strange event. And here is the tale of it, justly set down, giving every man his due, and no man more; for it is not the task of the chronicler to praise and dispraise, but to make manifest the truth.

MASTER THORNE walked his post, after receiving signs and orders from my lord, the aforesaid Duke of Stratford. The armiger was not by much the elder of the boy king who lay within the pavilion on a couch covered with a deerskin. He wore the armor of the guards—cuirass and morion—and carried a harquebus on one shoulder.

A slow match in his other hand was kept alight by swinging gently back and forth. Walking slowly from one pole of the entrance to the other, he did not look within. And the grievously sick Edward took no more notice of the sentinel than of the ancient hag who crouched at the head of his divan, shredding herbs in her boney fingers.

Thorne's first hour of duty had not passed before a cannon roared from the river be low the marquee. He had seen the flash before he heard it, and glanced keenly at four ships that were abreast the royal standard.

The court had removed that day from London town to the meadows of Greenwich on the lower Thames. Edward's pavilion was pitched nearest the shore. Across the stream was anchored a galleon that flew from its poop an ensign bearing the triangular cross of Spain.

This ship had entered the river some time since and the nobles in attendance on Edward remarked that it fired no salute when the king's standard was raised. This omission was set down to the absence of the captain or neglect or more probably to the intolerant pride of the Spaniards.

But the cannon had been fired from one of three vessels coming down the Thames. Ignorant as he was at that time of ships, Thorne saw only that they were merchant craft, stoutly built, no more than half the tonnage of the Spaniard. As they passed between him and the galleon he noticed that the mainmast of the leader came no higher than the Spaniard's

The ship that had fired the salute bore an admiral's colors and devices painted on the after-castle, also on the wooden shields that lined the rail. From the green and white coloring, and the Cross of St. George on the banner, he knew that they were English.

“Are they come at last?” cried Edward from within. Raising himself on an elbow, he added eagerly. “I pray you of your courtesy Sir Squire, tell me what ships go out with the tide.”

Turning about, Thorne lowered the muzzle of his harquebus to the earth and knelt.

“Three tall and goodly vessels, may it please your majesty, having the Tudor colors.”

“'Tis Sir Hugh's admiral ship,” amended the duke who had come to the entrance to look out, “and the two consorts.”

The boy on the couch tried in vain to catch a glimpse of the river, and sank back with a sigh. Under his transparent skin blue veins showed. Then a sudden attack of coughing sent a flush even to his forehead. The duke who was the only noble in attendance, hastened to the old woman and took a cup from hat hand, pressing it upon his royal patient.

“Nay, Dudley, nay—” Edward coughed—“I am better without these drafts. So, doth Sir Hugh truly fare forth into the sea?”

“Sir Hugh Willoughby—” the chamberlain bowed—“and Master Richard Chancellor have weighed anchor. You will remember, sire—” he ran on officiously—“that they are resolved to seek a passage to Cathay and the new world, America. They will lay their course to the northeast, endeavoring to sail beyond the Christian shores, through the Ice Sea and so south to Cathay.”

“Faith, my lord duke,” smiled the king “the Spaniards and Portugals have left us nowhither else to sail. The Pope at Rome hath divided the known world between them.”^[1]

A fanfare of trumpets at the shore acknowledged the salute, and Edward lifted his head impatiently.

“Am I not to see them? I warrant you, 'tis a brave sight. Sir Squire, thou'rt stout and stalwart; can'st bear our poor body from this tent?”

“That can I,” cried the armiger quickly, and would have laid aside his harquebus, but hesitated.

Edward was ever quick to read the thoughts of those who were near him. He studied the sentinel attentively, taking notice of the wide shoulders, the thews of neck and wrists, dwelling a second on the freckled, sunburned cheeks, still lean from convalescence.

Thorne was no more than eighteen, the king sixteen. Yet in the poise of the head, in the quick gray eyes of the squire-at-arms was manifest the surge of life and health.

“Your thoughts run to grave matters, good youth,” Edward said at once. “You are charged to keep your post and weapon. Nay, lay it aside, at my bidding.”

Thorne bowed and placed his firelock against the pavilion wall. Then, advancing to the couch, he put an arm under Edward's knees and shoulders and lifted him easily. The slight form of the sick boy in its black velvet cassock seemed no weightier than straw.

At the entrance the king urged him to go forward a few paces so that he could look up and down the river.

“Look, Dudley,” Edward cried, “the Spaniard overtops Sir Hugh's ship.”

“But yonder craft from Seville,” the noble pointed out, “is a galleon fashioned for war. The ships that bear the colors of your majesty were built for the merchant adventures.”

“Then, Dudley,” cried the boy, “they were stanchly built of seasoned and honest oak.”

“True. In the time of your majesty's illustrious grandsire and good King Harry, your father—whom may God save and assoil—no three ships could be got together, but one would be Venetian and one Dutch.”

He turned to wave back angrily the throng of soldiery and attendants that had presumed to draw near the pavilion, hoping for a word or a look from the sick boy who was beloved by kitchen knave and noble of the realm alike. Strict orders had been issued by Stratford and those who had the care of the king's person that no one should approach within arrow flight. For this reason the picked guards had been stationed.

BUT Edward's eyes were on the passing ships wistfully. Here were men faring from the known seas into the unknown. Here were ships built and furnished and manned in England, going forth to discover a new route to the Indies, to bring to England some part of the trade with Cathay and the new world that had swelled the power of Spain and Portugal.^[2]

He watched the burly shipmen in their blue tabards, laboring at the oars of the boats that were towing the vessels. When they became aware of the king they roared out a cheer and pulled the harder. Others climbed up the shrouds to stare and wave a greeting, and a tall man on the poop of the last ship doffed his cap and bowed low.

“Now, by St. Martin,” exclaimed Edward, “I should know that graybeard.”

“Sire, your eyes are as keen as your memory is unfailing,” responded Stratford after a moment's hesitation. “That venerable ship's captain is the notable navigant and cosmographer——”

“Sebastian Cabot, the Venetian. I know him well, Dudley. And my memory of which you prate tells me his age is fourfold my own. Yet is he strong and hale enough to——”

The boy's lips quivered and were silent. Thorne the armiger turned his head to gaze at a falcon hovering over the rushes on the far bank of the river, so that he might not behold his sovereign's distress.

“Sire?”

The duke bent closer, and pursed his thin lips.

“Master Cabot or Cabota,” he added, “is indeed past his prime. 'Tis a mere courtesy that he stands on yonder deck. For-by he is governor of the Mystery and Company of Merchants-Adventurers, for the discovery of places and dominions unknown, he sails with the ships as far as the haven of Orfordnesse on the Suffolk coast. There Cabot leaves them. He is too aged to attempt the voyage into the Ice Sea. Ha, Sirrah Squire, bear your royal burden into the pavilion from which you should never have advanced. He is ailing!”

Edward was coughing, flecks of blood showing on his pallid lips. His eyes closed and he lay voiceless a moment on the couch. When he spoke it was in so low a whisper that nobleman and armiger both bent lower to catch the words—Thorne expecting that the king might have some command for him.

“Nay, Dudley. Of what avail to guard the body when life—itself is leaving me?” With an effort he opened his eyes and made shift to smile. “My lungs are in consumption, the priests say. Good youth, we trust we have not wearied you. Edward will never again rise from his bed.”

Both the listeners started. Thorne had heard frequently of the feebleness of the boy, although he had not looked to find him so wasted away. To hear that Edward expected to die was a shock. Few men were victors in the long battle with the white plague. Stratford took no pains to conceal his anger that the sentinel should have heard the words of the king.

"To your post!” he whispered, drawing the youth back from the couch, where Edward was wracked by another fit of coughing. “Keep your ears to yourself, or the provost's knife will e'en trim them to a proper size. Ha—your weapon has been taken.”

The harquebus was not where Thorne had placed it, nor was it to be seen in the pavilion. He searched the tent with his eyes, and flushed hotly, realizing that he had allowed some one to steal his firelock while on duty.

He was more than a little puzzled as to how it had been done. The officers of the household and some soldiers had pressed to the entrance of the marquee when he carried Edward forth, but he had noticed no one step within. Perforce, he had not been able to watch the weapon while he stood outside.

Stratford, he knew, had not taken the harquebus. The hag by the bedside sat as before, fumbling with her herbs. Her wrinkled face, brown and dry as a withered apple, was empty of all expression. Certainly the firelock was not concealed under her kirtle.

“So you would make the gipsy the butt of your carelessness?” granted the duke. “Have you aught to say, before I make a charge to your officers that you have suffered your arms to be taken from you while on duty?”

“I say this."

Thorne drew the sword that hung from its sling at his hip and took his station at the entrance.

“My lord, if any man seeks to cross my post unbidden he shall taste steel instead of lead.”

“Humph! The young cock can crow. What more?”

The gray eyes of the youngster narrowed and he kept silence. Although the fault had not been his, he could make no explanation. Stratford, an experienced soldier and a martinet, had no reason to make a charge against him. The duke, however, was irritated by the appointment of the Flanders veterans over his own yeomen and the officers of the household.

“What more?” he repeated sharply.

The second question required an answer, and a bleak look overspread the countenance of the armiger, drawing sharp lines about eyes and chin.

“My lord of Stratford, the command of his Majesty was heard by your lordship. He bade me put down my weapon and carry him forth.”

“Ha! Master Thorne you have yet to serve your apprenticeship as a bearer-of-arms at court. To gratify the whim of a boy you made naught of your orders. You were placed here not to act a playmate or to seek royal favor, but to guard the life of your prince. What if you had been attacked by yonder canaille? Body of me!”

This time Thorne kept silent. The nobleman's blame was unjust, but there was enough truth in it to make the armiger realise that his offense would be held unpardonable if Stratford chose to press a charge against him. True, he might appeal to the king who was honorary captain of the guards.

But Edward lay passive on his couch, forgetful of sentinel or nobleman.

Stratford paced the pavilion, hands thrust into his sword-belt, and came to a stop by Thorne. Seeing that Edward was asleep, he said in a whisper:

“When you are relieved, go to your quarters. Abide there without speaking to anybody of what you have seen or heard in this place. A soldier on duty,” he added bruskly, “may not give out what has come under his eye on his post. Can you do that?”

T WAS long after the armiger had left with his companions of the guard but without bis firelock, that the Gipsy drew from beneath the couch where it had been hidden by the deerskin, the harquebus that she had stolen.

Unseen by Stratford and unnoticed by the new sentinel, she slipped the short weapon under her ragged mantle and slouched from the pavilion. She had stolen as naturally as a crow picks up something that catches its eye.

The superstition of high noblemen had invoked her to try to save the life of a dying ruler with her simples, and shrewder than they who had called her forth, she fled with what she could snatch before Edward should die.

Meanwhile the three ships had passed out of sight down the Thames, and out of the minds of the courtiers who talked of changes that were to come, and fortunes to be made and lost. But Edward still dwelt upon the glimpse he had had of the voyagers.

CHAPTER II

THE SIGNIOR D'ALABER

MY LORD of Stratford sat late at table the evening he summoned Ralph Thorne to his quarters and looked long upon the flagon, both Rhenish and Burgundy. He had a hard, gray head for drink. It helped him make decisions, a vexatious necessity of late.

In a long chamber gown he sat at his ease, a pair of barnacles on his nose and a book printed in the new manner from black letters on his knees. My lord had excellent eyesight and did not need the spectacles; and, although he was not scholar enough to read the book, he firmly believed that it was a mistake to be found doing nothing.

“Master Thorne,” he greeted the armiger, “there is a saying—Quis custodiat ipsos custodies? Who shall watch the watchmen themselves?”

He put aside the volume and cleared his throat.

“I have been at some pains to learn who you are.”

Thorne bowed acknowledgement in silence. He had no patron at court, and the duke was powerful. He had entered upon his duties in the guards with high hopes. In the camps over the sea the name and character of the boy king had aroused the loyalty of the lads who were beginning their military service in the petty wars of the lowlands and they had waited anxiously for the time when they could appear at their own court.

Now, lacking any one to take his part, and with Edward unapproachable, a word from Stratford could disgrace him or restore him to honest service.

“Your father, sirrah, is Master Robert Thorne who once rendered yeoman aid to his country by bringing out of Spain a mappamundi^[1] faithfully drawn. He is known as the Cosmographer, and he dwells on the coast at Orfordnesse.”

Again the squire bowed assent.

“You have a reputation. 'Tis said you use a sword like a fiend out of ——, which is to say with skill but little forethought. You have been in more broils than any dozen of your fellows. Once, I hear, you presumed to go forth alone in the guise of a wherryman. So habited you ventured rashly to row armed men across a river within the hostile camp.”

“My lord, we had need of information.”

“So it was said. But you forgot your part of a spy and fought a knight of the Burgundian party in the skiff. The matter ended with your placing the Burgundian adrift, fully armed as he was, a nosegay in his hands and candles lighted at his head. In this guise he was discovered by his friends who buried the body.”

“'Twas fairly fought between us, my lord, in the boat. He had the worst. It would have been foul shame to throw an honorable foeman into the water.”

The man at the table paused to snuff the candles that stood on either hand and to glance curiously at the youth, his visitor. To draw steel on an adversary in full armor in a small skiff was a thing seldom done, and Thorne had not despoiled the body.

“Stap my vitals!” he laughed. “You have a queer head on you. Now thank Sts. Matthew and Mark and your patron of that fellowship that it has pleased Edward to stand your friend.”

Thorne flushed with pleasure and strode forward to the table.

“Grant me but the chance to serve the king's majesty!”

“Humph! As a spy you are not worth your salt. But the king is minded to send you upon a mission.”

He glanced upward fleetingly and saw only eagerness in the boy's clear eyes.

“You have learned to handle your sword, but not to handle men. You will want seasoning. The king is pleased to lay command upon you to journey to Orfordnesse and there await the setting out of Sir Hugh's fleet. Do aught that within you lies to aid Sir Hugh in his venture. Your prince hath the matter much at heart.

“Take a horse from my stables, and here—” Stratford signed to one of his servitors who stood by the buffet—“is a small purse for your needs.”

Thorne, who had not one silver piece to jingle against another, accepted the gift with a bow.

Stratford hesitated, then rose and came around the table.

“Hark in your ear, young sir. The Spaniards who hold the sea would be well pleased to spoil this venture of Sir Hugh's. Watch your fellow travelers well upon the road and keep your sword loosened in scabbard. Be silent as to this mission, and hasten not back, but return at leisure with Master Cabot. Greet your father well for me.”

“A good night to you, my lord. And accept the thanks of the Thornes.”

Stratford smiled.

“Body o' me! 'Tis said the Thornes are more generous with blows than thanks. A good night, young sir.”

He waited until the armiger had left the room, then went to the door and, closing it, shot home the bolt himself. Idly he turned the hour glass in which the sands had run out.

“Another hour brings other guests. Well, 'tis an easy road to a boy's heart to promise him danger i' the wind. Paul—” he nodded at the servant—“have in D'Alaber and his cozening friend. And,” he added under his breath, “may your sainted name sake grant that young Thorne's wit be dull as his sword point is sharp.”

THE two men who entered the cabinet of my lord Duke of Stratford were dressed in the height of fashion, and one, who wore a doublet of green silk, who bore in his left hand a high crowned and plumed hat, bowed with all the grace of an accomplished courtier, his cloak draped over the end of a long Spanish rapier. He had the small features of a woman, utterly devoid of color.

“Ah, signior,” exclaimed Stratford as soon as the door closed upon Paul, “you are behind your time. I have been awaiting your ship this se'nnight.”

“From the secrecy with which I am received,” responded the young D'Alaber in excellent English, “it would seem that I am before my time.”

And, turning his back rudely on his host he walked up to a long Venetian mirror, fingering the ruff at his throat.

“Is the Fox in London, my lord?” he demanded, turning sharply on Stratford, his sleepy eyes downcast yet missing no shade of expression in the nobleman.

“Renard has taken coach to Orfordnesse.”

“And why?”

“Signior,” said Stratford slowly, and more respectfully than the younger man of lesser rank had addressed him, “who knows? Perhaps the Fox prefers not to be in London when—if——”

“Edward dies,” amended the Spaniard coolly.

The duke started and glanced uneasily at the closed door. Then he poured out with his own hand a measure of Burgundy into a gold goblet on the table. This he offered to D'Alaber who glanced at it quizzically and waited until he was certain that his host would drink from the same flagon.

“To the happy alliance between our two peoples!” cried Stratford, gulping down his wine. “Nay, do you fancy the goblet, D'Alaber? Then, I pray you, keep the thing.”

The Spaniard turned it in his fingers indifferently and handed it to the other man, who made less ado about thrusting it into the breast of his robe, first weighing it in his great fist covetously.

He wore the dull damask of a merchant, yet his sword with its inlaid hilt was costly. He stood utterly still—and few men can do that—looking down from his looming height on the two noblemen as if he were the solitary spectator of a rare play.

And, in reality, he was attending upon a discussion only too common in these eventful days, wherein the fate of England rested in the balance. While Cornelius Durforth and D'Alaber sat on either hand, Stratford talked feverishly, giving the Spaniard the tidings of what was passing in the court, and at the same time justifying himself.

Edward was dying. Stratford and certain other officers of the royal household had contrived to keep this secret until now. And secrecy they must have to gain time to raise their liegemen on land and sea and discover who was of their party.

Stratford and the Papists of the kingdom supported Lady Mary, the elder sister of the king. She was daughter of Catharine of Aragon, the first wife of the late king, Henry the Eighth.

Others of the Protestant nobles favored the Lady Jane Grey, or the young Princess Elizabeth. But Elizabeth had inherited her father's love of hawking and the chase and carelessness of affairs of state. Meanwhile Parliament, ignorant of the true condition of the king, did nothing. A few weeks, and the Papist nobles near London would have enough swords to cut down all opposition to Lady Mary.

“And the king?” D'Alaber asked thoughtfully. “No one suspects his evil case?”

“No one,” nodded the duke, “save——”

“Ah. It was your part, my lord duke, to draw a veil around his sinking.”

The Spaniard spoke courteously, but his words were like dagger pricks.

“A chuckle-headed squire—a niddering—a nobody overheard Edward make lament that his time was drawing to an end.”

“And you?”

“I sent the youth on a bootless errand to Orfordnesse, saying that it was Edward's will. Nay, he will not set foot in London again till all is over.”

“And there you blundered, my lord. Only one physic will keep a tongue from wagging. His name and time of setting forth?”

“The lad is Master Thorne of Orfordnesse. On the morrow at dawn he hies him hence.”

“Then—” D'Alaber tapped a lean finger on the hilt of his poinard and glanced at Durforth, whose eyes, so dark that they appeared to be without expression, were fixed on him reflectively—“we must try phlebotemy, a trifle of blood letting. And now, messers, I deliver me of my charge.”

Unfastening one of the laces of his doublet, he drew out two papers folded and sealed with the royal signet of Spain. These he handed to Durforth who looked at the seal and thrust them into his wallet. Stratford seemed afire with curiosity as to the nature of these papers, but D'Alaber vouchsafed him no satisfaction. Durforth, however, spoke up, twisting powerful fingers in his black beard!

“My lord Duke, you are now one of us; you must run with the hounds now, not with the hare. In your presence I have received from his august majesty, Charles, Emperor of Spain, a letter of commission. The other missive I understand to be a matter of state to be delivered when the voyage hath achieved its end.”

The duke filled his goblet moodily, chafing inwardly at the insolence of the Spaniard. He could not do without their aid, but he found that their countryman Renard, advisor to Princess Mary, was taking the leadership from him. Stratford knew there was in England at that time a man who was called the Fox by those who had dealings with him; who had caused to be slain secretly some of the nobles who opposed Mary. And he suspected that this Fox was Renard the philosopher.

Stratford knew that another conspiracy was in the wind. Durforth, who had in past years been a merchant of Flanders and the North Sea, had been seen in company with Renard. Durforth, alone of the navigators, knew the coast of Norway. So he had been chosen by the council of Cabot's merchant-adventurers to go with Sir Hugh Willoughby as master of one of the three ships.

Of traffic and discoveries my lord of Stratford recked little. He wondered fleetingly why D'Alaber and Renard set such importance on the voyage of Sir Hugh. He had spoken truly to Ralph Thorne when he declared that the Spaniards would like to make an end of Sir Hugh and his ships. And why were they giving letters to Durforth to bear upon this voyage?

Aloud he said to the merchant—

“Your dallying here hath aroused no suspicion?”

“Not a jot,” responded Durforth with his usual bluntness, “thanks to gaffer Cabot. The old cockatrice was afire to sail with Sir Hugh as far as Orfordnesse. So I yielded my place to him and will strike across the country to that haven with D'Alaber.”

“Who will return to London,” put in Stratford meaningly, “in the train of Princess—shall we say, Queen Mary?”

D'Alaber's dark eyes lighted with some amusement.

“Señores, porque se tardo tanto—why this beating about the bush? Nay, it shall be Mary future wife of Philip of Spain, King of England.”

“What?” cried the nobleman, the blood rushing to his brow. “Now by my soul and honor, that will never be. Your emperor's dark-faced brat will not be King of England!”

“Mary,” made answer D'Alaber, heedless of the other's surprize and wrath, “is ill favored and shrewish. She hath overpassed thirty years and dotes on Philip, who is yet willing to have her for his bride. I see no hindrance to the match.”

“But the men of England—Parliament——”

“Will not take kindly at first to a nobler monarch than the Tudor lineage can show. But Mary will have her way, and you of the court have gone too far to draw back, unless you would care to make your excuses to the Fox.”

“'Tis the fable of Master Æsop come true,” grunted Durforth, who cared little about matters of state, so he was permitted to trade as he listed. “The gentry who were weary of King Log called for King Stork and had sorrow thereby.”

“Por estas honradas barbas!” cried D'Alaber, drawing himself up in his first flash of temper. “You rovers^[2] and cloth pedlers have no wit to see where power lies. Philip will be monarch of Spain before many years.”

He swept his hand about the bare rush-floored chamber of his host.

“Instead of on this filth, you will walk on the carpets of Araby and these foul walls will be covered with the silks of Cathay. Your table will bear its spices, which now it lacks. For—” his eloquent voice rang with the arrogance of one schooled in a militant and conquering court—“you will be allied to the master of Christiandom, to Charles, Emperor of the Romans, King of Spain, Germany and the Two Sicilies. Lord of Jerusalem and Hungary, Archduke of Austria, and Duke of Burgundy and Brabant, Earl of Flanders, and——”

One finger, bearing rings set with flawless, blue diamonds, tapped the table before the stricken nobleman.

“—and sole monarch of the New World, with all its riches.”

His words, sinking into the spirit of my lord of Stratford, left the man silent, sucking in his thin lips. D'Alaber, who had dealt with defeated noblemen before now, glanced at him as a physician might study a patient in convalescence and took Durforth's arm.

“Sir, I leave you to the meditations of prudence and I count upon your pledged aid. Send post to Orfordnesse if Edward nears the end, and so—fare you well.”

But Stratford was voiceless, beholding in the eyes of his imagination the chains that were to be put upon him, no less binding for that they were of gold.

D'Alaber shrugged and whispered Durforth.

“Our islander hath served his turn, but for you señor we have a worthy commission.”

“And a mort of danger.”

“Ah, true. Have you put upon your ship the globe prepared by us.”

“That I have, and a fine piece it is, bearing a mappamundi of all the known world.”

“Use it. You know the course you are to sail, and what is to befall in the Ice Sea?”

Durforth nodded and smiled.

“'Twill be a merry company gathered at our setting forth. Nay, how will you keep this lad of Edward's from spying upon us? Had you forgotten him?”

Passing by the long mirror D'Alaber paused to adjust the clasp of his cloak.

“Memory is a good servant but a poor mistress. 'Tis my part to remember this unfortunate youth, yours to forget him. Study your part, Durforth, and remember that many an actor hath fallen foul of the pit by mistaking his cue.”

CHAPTER III

A HAWK IS SLAIN

RALPH THORNE had been born, his comrades said, with a lucky hood on his head. Which was indeed only another way of saying that the boy managed to accomplish what he set out to do. His father, a merchant, was too wrapped up in the mystery of cosmography to thrive at barter and trade. The goods of the Thornes and then the ships and finally the manor in Suffolk had gone into the hands of those who had sharper wits.

Left to his own devices by a father who pored over globe and chart, for years young Thorne kept apart from other boys, who, after the fashion of children, made mock of him for his father's oddities, calling him the brat of the “Mad Cosmographer.” He trained hawks, built bird houses in the oaks behind the Orfordnesse cottage, and ran with his dogs when the nights were clear.

Something of woodcraft he learned; he could keep still by a stream for half a day to watch the deer that came down to drink; he could bring down a charging boar with a spear; he could follow the trace of a stag and read, when the snow was on the ground, the stories told by the tracks.

Robert Thorne, after the way of parents, bade him follow the new pursuit of gentlemen, that of mariner adventurer. It irked the cosmographer that his son cared little for his maps and naught for his talk of ships and unknown seas, and bitter words passed between them.

But when a kinsman of his mother, wounded in a northern feud, abode at the cottage until his hurt mended and taught Ralph how to use a sword, the boy went to court with his relative and became an armiger, a squire-at-arms.

There he became devoted to sword-play, but remained what his early years had made him—a boy silent and grave beyond his years, with few friends and his full share of quarrels, because of a passionate temper, the heritage of the northern Thornes.

Having lacked parents and comrades and patrons, he liked best to be left to himself, but there was in him a burning loyalty to those who won his esteem.

AND now, on a misty morning, he rode from the stables of the Stratfords in high spirits, though his eyes and lips were somber. He had been given a charge by his king.

“To do what lies in me to aid Sir Hugh,” he repeated under his breath, “to win to Cathay. For his majesty hath this venture much at heart.”

That this was a large command did not trouble him; a youth of eighteen is nothing loath to tilt against windmills or seek, in his thoughts, the stronghold of legendary Prester John. And it often happens that good comes of high thoughts.

At the gate opening upon the northern highway he trotted into a group of men-at-arms who carried halberds though they did not seem to be on duty. They were lean and dark skinned; they wore finely wrought and polished armor, with thigh pieces and crested morions, inlaid with silver and gold. Thorne knew them for Spaniards.

One of them rose and took his rein as he would have passed.

“Holà, young sir. Thy name?”

Except for the light sword at his hip and the old-style leathern buckler strapped over his back, the squire was unarmed. On one wrist was a hawking gantlet; his favorite gerfalcon perched on it, and a velvet wallet bearing food for the bird was slung over the other shoulder.

“Stand back, knave,” he made prompt answer in Spanish. “Loose my rein and curb your tongue to respect. Whose men are you?”

The one who had spoken did as he was bidden, though sullenly. Thorne wondered how Spaniards came to be posted as a guard.

“Signior, I kiss your hands,” grinned the leader, “and would have of you your name. We are ordered to deliver a letter to a certain caballero who will pass through here.”

“I am Ralph Thorne. Is your missive for me?”

The halberdier looked at his mates and then at the pavilions. “Ride on, signior,” he responded. “Nay, go free, for all of us.”

Thorne, without a backward glance, struck into the highway and left the last of the hedge taverns of Greenwich behind. The mist pressed about the fields on either hand, shrouding the oaks that lined the road, and to rid himself of the morning chill, he put his horse into a brisk trot. After a little he looked up from adjusting the hood tighter about the hawk, and listened.

Then he reined to one side and half turned his beast so that he could see the road behind him, winding at the same time his cloak over his left arm. Another horse was coming up swiftly through the mist, and he had no wish to be stripped and perhaps knocked on the head by thieves.

Seeing that the newcomer was a Spanish gentleman, mounted on a fine Arab, he was about to take up his reins again, when the stranger spurred his beast so close that Thorne's horse tossed its head and edged back, while the other shied.

“Now out upon thee for a mannerless lout!” D'Alaber exclaimed. “To block the road against thy betters!”

Thorne glanced at him swiftly, seeing under a plumed velvet hat a face small and white with intent eyes.

“Nay, Sir Stranger,” he laughed, “the shoe is upon the other foot. For a man who can not manage such a mettled beast as that of yours is mannerless, indeed.”

The other smiled indifferently.

“A pox on thy clownish merriment. Here's to requite thee for thy wit, my witless jester!”

So saying he drew the long rapier at his hip and, bending forward suddenly, ran the blade through the falcon that, blinded by its hood, perched on the young squire's wrist. The hawk screamed and fell the length of its chain, its wings threshing. Thorne stared down at his stricken pet, and the blood drained from his face.

“If you were Renard himself,” he cried, “you should suffer for this.”

Whipping out his rapier, he shortened his rein and kneed his horse toward the other, who awaited his coming with the same indifferent smile.

This smile stirred Thorne to recklessness; sheer anger made the tears come into his eyes and he attacked incautiously. A thrust of the long rapier through the cloak on his left arm brought him to his senses in time to parry the point that might otherwise have passed into his side.

D'ALABER was a man of moods. His retainers at the highway gate could have disposed of the troublesome armiger without risk to himself, but he wished it otherwise. He might have shot Thorne with one of the pistols at his belt, yet he chose to rouse the boy and then to spit him with a certain trick of the sword that he fancied.

The mist hid them from observers, and he could not dally because other riders might come up.

So he engaged Thorne's blade, parried a lunge at his throat and whirled his point. But when his arm went out, the armiger had caught his blade and turned it aside.

“A pretty conceit,” muttered the squire, “clumsily executed.”

He warded a second ripost, and reined his horse nearer. “You should—blindfold me, as well as the hawk.”

Now D'Alber prided himself on his swordsmanship which was more than good and the gibe rankled. It was Thorne's trick to talk when steel was out or lead was flying and the Spaniard's pride was touched. He had the better horse and determined to end matters at once.

He saw his chance when Thorne's beast shied. The dying hawk had fluttered into the road and startled the horses, but D'Alaber's was under control at once. He plunged in his spurs and leaned forward. The two rapiers flashed and sang together, and the Arab swerved away. D'Alaber dropped his weapon and clutched the mane of his horse.

“Por Dios!” he cried faintly.

Thorne dismounted swiftly and came to his side, helping him to the ground, where the Spaniard lay moaning, one fist pressed under his heart. His breath came jerkily and his eyes stared up into Thorne's. By an effort of will he opened his lips.

“Tell Master Durforth,” he whispered, “on the road a league toward Harwich—tell him D'Alaber is down. The Fox must know. Will you do this?”

Thorne was silent a moment.

“Aye, that I will.”

The Spaniard continued to stare at him, and even after the dark eyes held no life in them they seemed to smolder with vindictive rage. Thorne drew the body to one side of the road and tied the Arab's reins to a branch. This done he mounted again and rode on with furrowed forehead.

“It likes me not,” he mused. “The don was a fellow of Renard's and 'tis ill meddling with such. He set upon me with full intent, and there were none to see it. If I am charged with his taking off——”

He was riding on the king's business and did not mean to be delayed. But a pledge to a dying man must be kept, and he wanted a glance at this Master Durforth.

“My lord of Stratford did say that the Spaniards wished us evil, and here is one full of it already, and requited therefor, poor knave. He meant to ride, it would appear, with Durforth, and I must keep his rendezvous for him."

Some moments later he spurred out of the mist at a crossroads where several men had dismounted, evidently to wait for some one.

“Is Master Durforth in this company?” he called out, reining in.

“Aye, so.”

A tall man in a fur-trimmed mantle looked up from his seat under a sign post.

“A Spaniard did put it upon me to tell you his sorry case. He lies by the hedge, a league toward Greenwich, and his horse is tethered there. It was his wish that a certain Renard should know of it. And so—keep you better company, my master.”

Without waiting, Thorne spurred on and, when the mist closed around the forms of the astonished watchers, bent low in the saddle. A second later a pistol roared behind him and a ball whipped close to his hat. For a while he heard hoof beats coming after him, then they dwindled as the unseen riders perceived the folly of pursuit in the heavy fog.

Not until the sun broke through the mist and he could see the road ahead and behind did he allow his horse a breathing spell. Then he jogged on toward Orfordnesse, sorely puzzled.

CHAPTER IV

THE MAD COSMOGRAPHER

IT IS ever the way of crowds to mock what they can not understand. And the good folk of Orfordnesse were in no wise different from other crowds; children thumbed their noses at old Master Thorne; young men sharpened their tongues with witticisms at his expense at the White Hart tavern; the elders shook their heads, saying that no good could come of such doings as his, and there was talk of putting him in the pillory. The very dogs of the haven barked at his threadbare heels when he limped to the ale house.

So that now old Master Thorne rarely showed himself in the village, subsisting no one knew just how, but laboring of nights, as the gleam of a candle in the casement showed. Honest men, it was well known, did not work in the hours of darkness.

So they called him the Mad Cosmographer.

He had gathered in the cottage the fruits of years of wandering, of talks with outland shipmen, of studying mariners' journals and the manuscripts of Oxford. He had brought charts from Paris, and once he had been forced to flee from Spain when he managed to copy fairly the world-map of Ptolemy the Astrologer.

For in Venice and Genoa and Seville the secrets of navigation were jealously guarded; the charts of hidalgos errant were the property of the state, and knowledge of the deviation of the compass, and the use of the cross-staff for observation of the sun were kept from other nations.

But Master Thorne labored of nights comparing charts and drawing the coasts of the Western Ocean and the vague Pacific that was supposed to be no more than a wide strait lying between New Spain and Cathay.

“For, my masters,” he said in the White Hart tavern, “how may our shipmen and navigants set forth an they have not true charts of the outer seas? I have seen the wealth of the new worlds swell the coffers of the dons, and great fleets of caravellas come in from the gold coasts and spiceries. What share have we in this trade?

“The notable navigant, Messer John Cabot, did draw a true and fair mappamundi; where is it to be seen now? Where is the good Cabot? Both have met foul play.”^[1]

To this the folk of the village made response with many a wink and covert nudge.

“Take care, Master Thorne. Thou be'st grown so great in opinion, the hidalgos may prick 'ee. Thou may'st drink a bitter browst of thine own brewing.”

Master Thorne always faced his tormentors defiantly, stick in hand, his high quavering voice cutting through all other talk as a boatswain's whistle pierces the rattle of gear.

“Our fortune lies beyond the known seas and we men of England have no heart to seek it.”

“What boots it,” they made answer, “if cargoes of silk and oil and balm come to us from Cathay, out of the Levant in Venetian bottoms? We have enough of our own, God be praised.”

They fared well enough to their thinking with the coast fisheries and the occasional run into Antwerp or Venice. Only the Hollanders and the Spaniards built the tall vessels that could venture beyond the edge of the known world. And they were soon weary of Thorne's warnings and urgings that some one must set out on the longer voyages.

“We hold no traffic wi' the seas of darkness, nor the pagan folk,” they said.

“Aye,” one added, “'tis true beyond peradventure that mariners who sail over the edge of the known seas enter into the realm and dominion of the Evil One.”

“Art mad, Gaffer Thorne,” gibed a tippler. “Art plaguish wi' thy tongue as thy wildling boy Ralph wi' his sword—he that swashes bucklers and ruffles it among the squires of dames in London town.”

“A foul lie,” cried the old man, drawing his weather stained cloak about him and grasping his stick as if it were the hilt of a sword.

It irked his pride that Ralph had never sought for service on the king's ships, and the wits of Orfordnesse knew it.

“Ralph at least is oversea.”

“Nay, Gaffer Thorne, he's opzee—seas over. He's drunk as a lord.”

“I warrant—” another gibe cut through the shout of laughter that went up at this sally—“the Mad Cosmographer hath come to learn if his lad be master of one of the three tall ships that be standing in past the sand spits.”

IN THIS moment, when Sir Hugh Willoughby's three ships had been sighted and many of the folk of Orfordnesse had gathered at the White Hart, Ralph Thorne dismounted from a sweat-darkened horse in the courtyard and entered the taproom, pausing for a moment on the threshold when he heard the words of the last speakers.

He was recognized, although not at once, because he had been a gawky boy in tatters when he left the village some years before. Now his wide gray eyes swept the room tranquilly. The Orfordnesse folk stared at his Spanish boots of good leather, his embroidered baldric and slender rapier, shaped after the new fashion.

They saw a man who could keep his temper at need and his own counsel at will, who walked with a purpose and evidently rode hither with one, since his horse was winded and bore no saddle bags.

“My masters,” he said, “I greet you well. My service, sir, to you.”

He bowed to his father who had been peering at him uncertainly.

“Fulke,” he added to the innkeeper who came up rubbing his hands, aglow with curiosity, “a stable knave to tend my horse and do you draw me a mug of the opzee^[2] beer that, by reason of being strong and heady, sits but ill upon a loose tongue.”

And he smiled gravely on the assembled company.

“Why lad—Ralph!”

The wrinkled eyes of the old merchant-adventurer gleamed joyfully; then he drew into himself with a kind of cautious dignity. Making room beside him on the bench, he stole a glance ever and anon at his son's dusty hip boots and excellent weapons.

“Ha, Spanish leather! And one of those Roman toys. Give me a good, broad tuck now, and I would break you that steel spit you call a sword.”

“Fulke,” commanded Thorne when that worthy came up with the beer, “do you fetch this company somewhat to drink. Meseems they are but dull and silent.”

So indeed the men of Orfordnesse had fallen, and all their eyes were for the young squire and their ears for his words.

“Ah,” quoth the landlord glumly, “and who's to pay the reckoning?”

From the purse Stratford had given him Thorne pulled a gold piece and spun it on the table top.

“So you may know it sound and full weight,” he assured Fulke.

“Ralph,” whispered the cosmographer, “you've been serving the king's majesty. Perhaps you've been on a tall ship of war, eh?”

“Not I.”

“Then it may have happened, you've surely an appointment as ship's captain.”

Thorne shook his head.

“Not even for a row-galley?”

“Faith, nor a cockboat.” He glanced down at his father quizzically. “Nay, you can not make me out a personage; no more than an armiger.”

“An arms-bearer. An esquire-at-arms. Pfaugh, it hath an outlandish ring. And I——”

He broke off as he was about to tell Ralph of the persecution he had endured. Grimly he closed his lips, reflecting that it was ever the way of the Thornes to choose their own path in the world, to keep their own counsel and ask favors of no one.

“I did think that you were a follower of the worshipful Master Cornelius Durforth who is a ship's captain upon Sir Hugh Willoughby's fleet. Aye, he was pleased to make mention of your name, asking if you had come to Orfordnesse.”

“Where abides Durforth?”

“In the manor house, with my lord Renard who is new come from London.”

Thorne emptied his mug and looked in to it thoughtfully. Durforth must have changed horses several times during the three days ride from London to reach Orfordnesse ahead of him. He had not known until then that D'Alaber's companion was one of Sir Hugh's gentlemen, and captain of a ship.

“Where did you speak Durforth?” he asked.

“At the cottage.” The old cosmographer lifted his head and nodded proudly. “Aye, he had heard of my poor work. Master Durforth is a skilled navigant. He spared some praise for my charts of the northern seas, and did ask my aid in a vexatious problem.”

“In what?”

Master Thorne blinked shrewdly and lifted a warning finger.

“Nay, Ralph you were loutish indeed to think the secrets of cosmography are to be blabbed in a pothouse.”

Ralph had some knowledge of his father's stubbornness.

“Then must I talk with you this night.”

“Nay, the reverend Master Cabot hath sent word that he will visit me, upon the evening Sir Hugh makes bis landfall, or perhaps it was the next morning. My memory—ah!”

A boy had run in crying that the ships had come to anchor and boats were putting off. Straightway the throng in the tavern dwindled as the Orfordnesse folk went out to stare at the vessels and their crews.

“Enough!” cried Master Thorne, hobbling to his feet and seizing his stick. "We have tarried too long. Come, Ralph, we must greet these worshipful gentlemen; aye, and talk with them concerning the course they will sail and the charts. Now I wonder what charts they would have? What, will you not come?”

He stamped off, forgetting everything else in his eagerness, leaving Ralph smiling at his father's familiar eccentricity.

But, once he had the tap room to himself, the smile vanished and he stared into space with a furrowed brow.

Durforth was in Orfordnesse. Surely the man had been bound hither when he left London with D'Alaber. And the Fox himself was lying at the manor house near by. Durforth had spoken with Renard.

“Fulke,” he called to the landlord, who was leaving the room, “how many followers hath lord Renard in his train?”

“A round score of lusty fellows, who have turned out the stables to make place for their nags,” responded the innkeeper sullenly.

Stables! Thorne recalled the guard posted at Stratford's gate, and the attack upon himself that followed. He had spoken to no one of his mission, yet Durforth had known that he was riding to Orfordnesse. Stratford must have told the ship's captain, or possibly D'Alaber. But why?

“Fulke,” he called the landlord back again, “here is a fair purse of gold crowns. I fear me 'tis attained with Spanish treachery and so will have none of it. Will you take it?”

He tossed the embroidered sack on the sand that lay underfoot and the tavern keeper caught it up, hefting it in his fist. Then, with a glance around to see that no one was looking he edged over to the armiger and bent down his hairy face.

“Hark 'ee, Maister Ralph, what's the lay? What's i' the wind? I can do a pretty trick for him as is free-handed. Is it a matter of trepanning, or a wench——”

“'Od's life, Fulke, you have a belly that refuses naught. I'm over fanciful as to such tools. Now get you gone and let me think.”

SCRATCHING his head and with more than one backward glance, the innkeeper obeyed, and presently bethought him that Ralph was the son of the Mad Cosmographer and so might reasonably be expected to share his sire's lunacy. And after the events of that night Fulke was certain of it, though he never showed the purse to prove his point.

Meanwhile, head clasped between his clenched fists, the armiger was considering hew he was going to warn Sir Hugh—whom he had never seen—of a danger that confronted the knight and his ships.

Renard would never have come to Orfordnesse unless high stakes were on the table. Evidently a blow was to be struck at Sir Hugh. But how? The Spaniard's retainers were too few to risk a fight; moreover even the Fox would not dare do that as yet.

Thorne was morally certain that Durforth was an agent of the Spaniard's party. In that brief moment in the mist he had read guilt in the other's startled face. Certainly Durforth had not scrupled to use a pistol on him. Moreover this same ship's captain had by ill chance—he cursed his father's dotage and pride—seen the maps in the Thorne cottage. Renard would be interested in those.

To go to Sir Hugh with the tale? What proof had he to offer? It would be his word against Durforth's, and the matter of D'Alaber's death might be charged against him. That would not serve.

After a while he took up his sword. Here was no matter for words. Two attempts had been made on his life, and he intended to make the third move. He would go among the voyagers, listen to what was said and, if he still suspected Durforth, would pick a quarrel with the man and leave the issue to the swords.

CHAPTER V

CATHAY

THE sun was low when Master Cabot landed with his companions. The bent figure clad in dark velvets was unmistakable; the forked white beard had not its like in England. With Sir Hugh, a tall man, florid of face, Cabot drove off to the manor house, leaving Richard Chancellor, master of the Edward, and Durforth of the smallest vessel, the Confidentia, to sup at the tavern.

This was by reason that three of the mariners on the ships had fallen ill and must be put ashore.

Chancellor, a young gentleman, simply clad in gray broadcloth, without a hat on his tawny curls, made plea to the Orfordnesse loiterers to embark in the stead of the sick shipment; but no one volunteered.

Thorne waited until Chancellor, Durforth and his father had taken their seats at the long table in the public room, then seated himself at the far end where they could not see him for the Orfordnesse merchants that crowded to places between. And, while he did full justice to Fulke's mutton and pastry, he listened to the talk, which was all of the voyage.

“'Tis clear,” observed old Master Thorne, “that a northwest passage to Cathay does not exist—at least where we hoped to find it. The Spaniard, Balboa, has sighted the ocean that lies beyond America. Yet no passage by water hath opened out.”

“So,” demanded a merchant, “Sir Hugh ventures to seek it in the northeast?”

“Master Cabot,” put in Durforth with a slight smile, “doth believe that the open sea extends north of the Easterling^[1] coast to Cathay.”

The men of Orfordnesse stared at him in amazement. At rare intervals they had seen the small, single-masted vessels of the Easterlings driven on the coast by a tempest, or come to trade cod and whale oil. These dwarfs—for the men from the edge of the known world were no taller than an Englishman's armpit—were dressed always in fish skins and pelts of beasts.

It was said of them that they possessed the power of sorcery, of putting a blight on cattle, of carrying off maidens unresisting, by the lure of their slant eyes. They could foretell the future, and in their own country they rode from place to place on the back of wild deer, called reindeer.

Between this land of the Easterlings and the pole lay the stretch of water called the Ice Sea. But to sail up, beyond the edge of the known world, into this Ice Sea to seek Cathay!

A red-bearded merchant, who had once been blown up to the Shetlands, smiled knowingly.

“Nay, my lords, you embark upon a fantasy! For a hundred and fifty leagues the coast of Norway is a desert land. And know that off this coast there lies a mighty indraught or whirlpool of waters.”

“Malestrand,” assented another.

“So men call it. The currents of all the seas do tend to Malestrand, and there are engulfed with a fearful roaring and rack, whirling down to the depths.”

“'Tis said,” put in the tavern keeper who had lent his ear to the talk, “that whales, feeling themselves drawn toward this whirlpool do cry out most piteously. Aye, as ever was!”

“And ships,” nodded the red beard, “be lost that touch on Malestrand, forby they're spewed out again as bare timbers and planks. From this central in-draft o' the seas the tides have their being.”

To these warnings Master Thorne harkened with small patience, but Durforth, ever smiling and crumbling bread into his empty glass, seemed to be weighing the effect of the tales on his companions.

“So,” he observed at last, “I take it the merchants of Orfordnesse have no will to risk goods on this venture?”

One by one they shook their heads, some swearing with a great oath that here was no mere risk but the certainty of loss. He of the red beard, their spokesman, explained matters.

“For that,” he cried triumphantly, “the Easterlings are able to summon tempests out of the heavens and floes of ice taller than ships to close the channels. Aye, and a more marvelous thing, to arrest the sun in its natural course, so that it hung ever above the rim of the world and there was no night.”

Now for the first time Richard Chancellor spoke quietly.

“The sun will bide where it will, my masters. Our governor, Messer Cabot, doth relate that off the Labrador of America the days are of twenty hours and the night is brighter than in this part of the earth. Storms and ice we may meet and will deal with them, God willing.”

At this the aged Master Thorne blazed out eagerly:

“Well spoken! Sir, in my time I have made shift to draw a true card of the world and, to my thinking, open water extends from Norway to the mighty empire of Cathay.”

Laughter and muttered pleasantries greeted the Mad Cosmographer, but Chancellor glanced at him with interest, and made courteous answer, slowly as was his habit.

“By experience, Master Thorne, we may come at the truth. By my reckoning, if a northeast passage exists, 'twill shorten the voyage to Cathay by two thousand leagues. So——”

He laid the dagger, with which he had been cutting slices off the leg of mutton, at the top of his plate and touched the pommel.

“Here, or below here lies Cathay, and the island of Zipangu where all silk comes from.” He ran his finger from the point to the end of the hilt. “Thus may we voyage from England to Cathay by the northeast passage—if one is to be found.”

Then, moving his finger from the point of the dagger, around the plate, he added:

“In this way do the ships of the emperor and the Portingals go to their spicery at the far Indies. As you see, the distance is more than twice as great.”

MASTER THORNE cried approval and lifted his glass, calling upon all present to drink the health of the sea farers, the navigants. The merchants of Orfordnesse responded with an ill grace, and Chancellor, who was a blunt man, eyed them in angry curiosity.

“Your greatest peril,” Thorne remarked, “lies in the cold. Passing the seventh clime, the cold is so great few can suffer it.”

“We will do what men may,” said Chancellor who was the pilot-major.

“By your leave,” put in Durforth, rousing up suddenly, “I hold it folly to go on.”

“And why?”

Chancellor frowned as if an old point of debate had arisen.

“Master Thorne hath the right of it; the lands at the pole are uninhabitable.”

“Nay,” the cosmographer corrected him, “I said you must guard against the cold. Our fathers held that the lands under the Equinoctial^[2] Line were full of an unendurable heat, yet hath experience proven them both fair and pleasant. There is no land uninhabitable, no sea innavigable!”

Durforth emptied the crumbs from his glass with a gesture of irritation.

“Words! As advisor of the council, I say, Chancellor, that we must bide another season. 'Tis now hard upon midsummer, so greatly have we been delayed. 'Twill be the season of autumnal storms when we pass north of Norway. If you and Sir Hugh—who knoweth little of the seas—will not wait another year,at least send to the court and learn the wishes of his majesty.”

Now, hearing this, Ralph Thorne pushed aside his plate and stood up, waiting until he caught Durforth's eye. The ship's captain started slightly and his jaw set, so that his pointed black beard seemed to jut forward.

“It is known to me,” observed the armiger when silence fell, “that his majesty doth pray for the success of this venture. And any man who puts an impediment in the way of this voyage is a traitor, no less. Who saith otherwise, lies.”

“I will venture where any man dare set foot,” cried Cornelius Durforth and beat upon the table with his knotted fist.

No one, seeing the muscles set in his sun tanned face, doubted that he was capable of making good his words.

“Do not spill the wine,” put in Ralph Thorne, his hand on his glass. “And do not bring in question again the wishes of the king, which you should know as well as I.”

Durforth frowned at the youth and went on without heeding him.

“Ill luck dogs us this season. The ships had the wind over the hawse standing down the Thames, and three of our mariners be taken sick. These be portents. Turn back, say I.”

Again he smote the table until the jugs and glasses leaped and clattered.

“I pray you,” said the armiger softly, “do not spill the wine.”

“Still your springald's tongue when elders speak!” cried his father angrily.

“Will you bide for word from the king?” Durforth demanded of the pilot-major.

“Sir Hugh will not, nor will I hang back. If it is not God's will we win to Cathay this season, we may yet find new lands and Christian princes to offer us haven.”

The ship's master, fingering the gold chain at his throat, shrugged, and the silence that fell upon them was broken by Ralph Thorne.

“Do not spill the wine again, sir.”

Anger glowed in Durforth's dark eyes.

“Your loutish words, sir, hint at the manner of your birth. Was it in a ditch, or perhaps a gutter that you first looked upon the world?”

The youth from the court raised his glass in his fingers and tossed its contents into the face of the ship master who sat across the table from him.

“Nay, my lord, this should be evidence that I have not learned manners from the Fox.”

Durforth gained his feet, and, wiping the liquid from his cheeks, found no words to reply. His hand groped for his sword hilt and he whipped the blade clear, kicking back the chair upon which he had sat. The armiger drew his rapier and placed it, point to pommel, against the quivering weapon of the older man.

“Art' content, Master? Our swords be of a length.”

“By the eyes of ——, would you stand against me, Thorne?”

“Aye, so, unless,” the youth made response gravely, “you are pleased to confess to this company the manner in which you learned my name.”

Fleetingly Durforth glanced from the cosmographer to his son, and Master Thorne answered the unspoken question.

“Lad,” his old voice quavered with anxiety, “what is this?”

Then, beholding the settled purpose, stern in the youth's face, he flew into a rage at the unforseen quarrel.

“Better you had died in the gutter, than thus to affront honorable gentlemen. Nay, you are no son of mine.”

“'Tis the cosmographer's whelp!” cried an Orfordnesse man. “Have him to the dogs!”

But Durforth swore a great oath and announced that however the villain had been whelped, he would put him into the earth before an hour had passed, and summoned Chancellor to act as his second.

“'Tis clear, my lord,” cried the armiger, “that you have profited from the teaching of Master Fox. Nay, I have no second, so must perform the office myself—not for the first time. Beside the inn is a fair meadow, and the evening light is good.”

NOW at the second mention of the Fox, Chancellor looked thoughtfully at the youth, as if he would ask a question. But, meeting with no sign of understanding, he turned away, palpably puzzled. The surgeon from the fleet was at the tavern and accompanied them to the clear stretch of grass that Ralph Thorne pointed out.

The red bearded merchant was selected to give the word that would set the two men against each other. Ralph stripped him self to his shirt and stood for a moment to let the breeze cool his forehead.

Chancellor and the surgeon were arguing with Durforth in lowered voices, seeking to have the quarrel patched up before harm was done, pointing out that Thorne was scarce a man grown, but Durforth would have none of them.

And Thorne, listening to the break and wash of the swell on the beach where he had played many a time not so long since, now had eyes only for the stalwart figure that loomed in its white shirt over against the trees.

“Begin, gentlemen,” quoth the red beard.

Durforth stepped toward his antagonist, his point advanced, the dagger in his left hand gripped at his hip. The armiger took time to salute him, smiling, and this seemed to anger the ship master who lunged and sprang in, his dagger flashing.

Engaging and parrying the sword, Thorne stepped aside from the dagger thrust, half turning as he did so. For a moment the two blades slithered together as the swordsmen felt each other out. Durforth was in no mood for this and leaped in, grunting, for his antagonist had turned his sword aside and avoided the dagger thrust again.

This time the armiger stepped clear, lowering his point. “Guard yourself better, Durforth, or I will spoil you.”

He had not used his poniard yet, but as Durforth thrust powerfully, he locked sword hilts, and stabbed at the man's heart. Durforth was quick to see the dagger flash, and his own poniard went at Thorne's throat.

There was no parrying and no avoiding the double cuts. But Durforth swayed to the right as he struck, so that the armiger's dagger missed his heart, ripping through his side instead. And Durforth's poniard, instead of entering the youth's throat, grated against the collarbone and caught in the shoulder muscles.

They drew their daggers clear, and Thorne, feeling his left arm grow numb, let his own fall to the grass.

“A cool head, I vow,” muttered the surgeon, calling Chancellor's attention to this. “He may not strike a good blow with his left, and so presses the tall fellow with his sword. Ha!”

Durforth, feeling the blood drain from his wound had advanced to the attack again, his dark eyes venomous. But Thorne's rapier coiled over his blade and forced him to give ground. Back and back he went, to the side of the field where they had entered. All his skill was bent to the task of guarding his life, for he was given no further chance to use the poniard.

“A moment ago,” quoth the surgeon critically, “the lad would have exchanged his throat for a blow, but now—a rare sword, he. Give you odds, sir, he slays the black beard.”

It fell out otherwise. Figures appeared in the dusk, running from the tavern, voices cried out and the ringing of steel ceased. Two gentlemen who came upon the scene had struck up the weapons of the antagonists, and between them stood a form there was no mistaking.

“In the king's name, have done!”

Master Cabot's thin voice was rife with anxiety. He breathed hard, having come in haste when he heard at the inn of the duel that was to be fought. With him were others in a green livery, and one especially, who, attired in all the splendor of costly sables and seal skin with a massy chain of gold around his throat, kept in the center of the newcomers as by right and stared about him thoughtfully, pinching his lip between thumb and forefinger.

Durforth dashed the sweat from his eyes and flung down his weapons, calling upon the surgeon to bind his hurt, but Thorne confronted Cabot sword in hand, quivering with anger.

“Sir, by what right do you come between us?”

The old navigator leaned on his stick composedly.

“Tush, lad, is the voyage to Cathay not a greater thing than thy wildfire temper? I can not have Master Durforth spoiled for the venture, nay he knoweth, above all others, the proper course to round Norway. Amend thy quarreling and cry quits.”

“Never!” broke in Thorne.

Cabot fingered his long beard, frowning.

“Thy father came to me at the manor house, and did ask that the duel be stopped, for like the loyal Englishman he is, he hath the success of the venture at heart.”

“Nay, your Durforth hath earned his death.”

“How?”

Thorne opened his lips to reply, but beholding the new arrival who stood apart among the men in livery, he kept silence while the company in the meadow scanned him curiously.

“I may not say, at this moment.”

Hearing this, Durforth, who had been bending over the bandage on his side, smiled and sheathed the sword that the surgeon handed him.

“You are discreet—a trifle late, my young hotspur.”

“Here is a riddle,” murmured Sebastian Cabot. “A youth who proclaims a just quarrel and a man grown who admits of none. Stay! Knowest thou this springald, Master Durfortb?”

“Not I. His face is strange to me.”

“Perhaps, gentlemen,” observed a level voice, “I can rede ye this riddle."

“Aye, we may well profit by thy wisdom, Renard,” assented Cabot. “And so shall I be twice thy debtor, since thou hast been at the pains to come from London hither with a coach for my conveyance from the coast.”

CHAPTER VI

MASTER CABOT SPEAKS

THE man addressed as Renard answered the navigator's courtesy with a bow. He had the assurance of one who makes himself at home in all company, yet the manner of one born in a high station. Carrying his head a little aslant, what with his beaked nose and his fur necklet he did somewhat resemble the fox that his name signified.

“This youth, my masters,” he went on, “is known to me and others as a follower of a certain person of the court. It is in my mind that his patron desired the death of your ship captain, and so despatched this Thorne upon his mission of mortality. 'Tis said others have fallen by his blade in the duello.”

His words were tinged with a foreign accent, and he seemed to find in them food for a jest. At any rate he smiled, his thin face saturnine in the dusk.

“Who sent you?” demanded Chancellor the outspoken.

“The king,” responded Thorne as bluntly, “by my lord of Stratford.”

“Ah,” observed Master Renard, “a moment ago you did not deny that Durforth had not the honor of your acquaintance.”

The armiger looked at him silently, bending the slender steel between his fingers, paying no attention to the gash in his shoulder.

“And as you do not deny it now,” the newcomer pointed out, “'tis passing strange that you should name Durforth a traitor. Nay, is a man a traitor because he spills wine in a hedge tavern? Or—and you are a soldado, a bearer of arms—do you hold him doomed because he resents a slight?”

Still Thorne was silent, alert as if he faced a new antagonist whose speech was no less deadly than the tall man's steel.

“Lacking other evidence,” Renard concluded, “it must appear that you picked a quarrel with Master Durforth, who is embarking upon the king's business. Did any one lay such command upon you?”

Thorne perceived at once the shrewdness in this questioning. Renard must have heard from Durforth of the death of D'Alaber. Nothing was more certain than that the Spaniard desired vengeance for the death of his follower. And Renard had several gentlemen in attendance, with a score of men-at-arms within call.

To make known that Edward was dying and the Papists all but in power might give excuse for a general drawing of weapons in which Chancellor and Sir Hugh who had no men at their backs would be slain.

“'Tis a hanging matter you have embarked upon,” resumed Renard lightly, “but——”

“No 'buts' my lord!” The armiger laughed. “Either I am a murderer, dealing death for so much silver in hand, or I am a gentleman affronted in his cups. If the second, my quarrel is my own affair and you are cursedly inquisitive; if the first, why summon up the bailifs to hale me into jail, there to await the king's justice,”

“The lad stands upon his rights,” assented Chancellor gruffly. “Durforth miscalled him in the tavern. Let him go.”

Cabot had been questioning the surgeon, and now turned, palpably relieved.

“Aye no harm has been done to either. The hurts are slight. Come, my masters, a glass of wine. The ships sail before dawn with the tide.”

“I pray you,” put in Renard,“come up with me to the manor house where we shall fare better.”

He spoke briefly to two of his men, and Thorne, who watched them in the deeping dusk saw them move off toward the tavern and the waiting coach. With a stifled exclamation he strode forward, coming between Chancellor and the old navigator. “Master Cabot, do you know with whom you drink?”

“Surely,” smiled the navigator, “with the Lord Renard, preceptor of the Princess Mary Tudor.”

“And a Spaniard who is no mean cosmographer—who hath no love for us of England.”

Sebastian Cabot was old, and loved quiet better than angry words; moreover he was governor of the Mystery and Company of Merchants-Adventurers of London, newly formed. He had labored greatly to outfit and man the three ships, and the last thing he desired was a quarrel with the powerful envoys from Spain at the court.

He rested his hand on the arm that Chancellor held out, and made answer not so much to Thorne as to the others who listened in astonishment to the charge of the young armiger.

“Nay, we would have lacked many things in this venture, had not my Lord Renard given us aid, in weighty advice. He hath been diligent in our council for which we are beholden to him.”

BY NOW they had come to the street where Renard's lackeys with lighted torches awaited them, with the merchants of Orfordnesse and those who had come from the ships. These bowed respectfully to the old navigator, who, leaning upon the arm of the pilot, looked around in benign satisfaction.

“Gentlemen, it is seemly that we should bid farewell to these navigants in such a pleasant hour.”

The vague unrest that had clouded his lined features at Thorne's accusation disappeared; his eyes brightened and his voice rang out with something of the assurance of other days when he had stood on his own poop.

“Let no factions arise in your company, my masters; if you differ in opinion, submit the question to the council of officers of the captain-general, Sir Hugh. Remember, when you reach the new lands, to take precautions against attack.

“The natives you will see, perchance, have no knowledge of Christians or their ships. If you take one of the savages on your ships, entreat him in friendly wise, give him food and apparel and set him safely ashore.

“When you go ashore, leave mariners to guard the pinnace and venture not to any city of the pagans save in numbers sufficient for your protection and with swords and firelocks in hand. If a storm arises, agree upon a meeting place where your ships may join together if you are parted.”

Then, turning to the people of Orfordnesse he lifted his hand.

“And you, sirs, who keep to your own coast, bethink ye that these navigants go of their own will into the perils of the sea, and the uncertainties of pagan lands. We hazard a little money upon Fortune; they risk their lives. For those who, by God's will, are not to return to this coast, whose sepulcher shall be the sea or pagan earth, let us offer our prayers.”

He bent his head and the folk of Orfordnesse, amazed at his gentle words, followed his example in silence, harkening to the spluttering of the torches, the mild rustle of the wind in the foliage and the sighing and muttering of the distant breakers. Perhaps it was the first time they had ever prayed for men who were yet living.

THORNE waited until the last of the gentry had gone off in the coaches of the manor house, attended by linkmen. Then he allowed the inn keeper, who had a liking for gossip, to wash out the cut in his shoulder and wrap wet cloths around it. Which being done, he called for his horse.

“Alack, Master Ralph, thou'lt not ride, wi' thy shoulder hacked and bloodied.”

Master Ralph, pacing the yard betwixt pump and threshold, offering no response, the fellow tried another tack.

“The gentry be mortal angered at ye, angered as ever was! Thou'lt not be for London town, where the worshipful lords would set thy body on a gibbet. Or it may be a wrack, or e'en fire and the stake.”

Abruptly—so quickly that the worthy keeper of the White Hart quivered in the ample region of his stomach—the armiger stopped his walk, close beside him.

“Where is the nag?”

The other muttered something about the horse being foundered and his men all beside themselves, what with the king's gentlemen and the Spanish lord.

Thorne took up the lanthorn which Fulke had fetched with him.

“Nay, I'll wait upon myself.” And, glancing back a moment later, he was amused to see his stout host legging it around the tavern.

Reflecting that he had gained, over night, a reputation for violence, he sought the stables and halted to peer within the carriage house at the line of stalls in the rear. The horses were stamping and restless but he could not see any stable knaves.

Thoughtfully he set the lanthorn down between his feet. The delay in bringing his horse out, the uneasiness of the beasts in the staffs, the alarm of the tavern keeper, all this bred in Thorne an undefinable suspicion.

He was at some pains to make certain by listening and watching the shadows in the stable that no retainers of the Spaniard were awaiting him here.

He was alone in the stable, but not at ease in his mind. Instinct urged him to turn and run through the door, or at least to look around. Instead, the armiger unbuckled the clasp that held his cloak at the throat. Still grasping the loosened ends he stepped forward, over the lanthorn, and let the long riding cloak fall. So it covered the light, and the stable was in darkness that same second.

Thorne stepped to one side, his soft leather boots making no sound on the trodden earth, and laughed aloud. From one of the windows behind the carriages a pistol had blazed and roared, filling the place with smoke and setting the horses frantic.

“A popper is no weapon for the dark, my masters,” he cried. “Come in, with your cutters. The door is open.”

As he spoke he shifted position again, drawing his rapier and considering how to get himself out of this trap with a whole skin. With his injured arm extended to the full in front of him, and his sword drawn back ready for a thrust, he moved toward the entrance, through utter blackness. At once his groping fingers touched something that moved and started at his touch.

His rapier went out, and was turned aside by an iron corselet. In the same second a pistol went off under his chin, the ball thudding into wood behind him. The explosion sent a myriad sparks dancing across his sight, and the powder stung his cheek. Swinging his blade over his shoulder he struck with the pommel, feeling it smash against a man's head.

A heavy morion clattered on the ground and his assailant staggered back. Coughing and gasping from the powder fumes, Thorne leaped through the door and ran across the inn yard. A cart shaft tripped him, and he stifled a groan as his injured shoulder struck a heap of manure.

Before he could get to his knees he heard men run past him. Others, who had found the lanthorn, were searching the stable. He lay where he was until the first of his pursuers had gained the highroad. Then he crawled around the wagon and between evil-smelling ordure to the hedge that he knew formed the fence around the field wherein he had fought Durforth an hour ago.

Following this he reached a thicket and paused to brush himself off and listen. Horses were being taken from the stable and saddled, and riders were pounding away on the road. Men were shouting at the tavern—questions to which muffled answers were flung back.

Some one cried out that thieves were at the horses, and a lieutenant of my lord Renard's harquebusiers swore in two languages that the thieves had got away.

“You are clever, you who serve the Fox,” Thorne mused. “But your master will give no thanks for this night's bungling after he was at pains to draw away the other gentlemen and leave you a clear field.”

Old acquaintance with the White Hart and the village served him well now, for, avoiding the highroad, he walked down a path that led to a spring and from thence to a homestead.

Crossing the fields, he headed up Orfordnesse Hill, and so came presently to the cottage of his father.

LIFTING the latch, he stepped into the utter darkness of a room. As he was swinging shut the door, a rush-bottomed chair creaked and a voice addressed him.

“So, sirrah, your lust for blood is still insatiate? Have you come to add your father to the number of unfortunates that have fallen to your sword? Or do I now behold you in the rôle of a simple thief? Nay, I know your step.”

The armiger closed the door gently and felt his way around the table to an empty chair. Master Thorne, he judged, sat alone within arm's reach. Since the fire on the hearth was cold and the candles all unlighted he knew that the old cosmographer was grieving over the events of the last few hours.

The familiar smell of the room, of leather and musty parchments, stirred in him the memory of other evenings when he had sat at ease by a roaring fire while Master Thorne talked of ships and strange lands and ever of the sea.

“Sir,” he said. “I must be gone within the hour with certain garments of mine. Do you propose to give me away to Renard's retainers?”

“I hand over no man in my house. But how will you win free? The soldiery is upon the road and the village is being searched. I met a company of riders who did maintain that you had set upon and foully slain two of their number in a tavern brawl.”

Warning his father not to make a light Thorne felt his way up the narrow stair to his room under the roof, the room that Master Thorne had promised should be kept for him against the time of his return.

And everything was as he had left it. Opening a clothes chest, he drew out a soiled woolen doublet, and hose and light buskins that had served for hunting in other days. Going down with his possessions, he stumbled and uttered an exclamation of pain when his shoulder struck against the stair post.

“Art hurt, lad?”

“Gashed a trifle. 'Twill not keep me from the business of ridding the earth of him who did it, the rogue Durforth.”

“Wert ever a wildling, Ralph. I—I had told my people in Orfordnesse that they would see you upon the deck of a king's ship. But now——”

The anxiety that had been in his voice fell cold, and he kept silence while the youth changed to the old garments. It caused Ralph no little ado and pain to ease the stiffened doublet over his shoulder and he favored his hurt by keeping on the good linen shirt that he had worn to Orfordnesse—a circumstance that he had reason to regret afterward.

Meanwhile Master Thorne had been cogitating, and, while his son wrapped up the blood-stained riding attire into a bundle, delivered himself of his thoughts:

“You may not return to the village; the folk in the manor house would turn you off, if they did not clap you into jail; the highway is closed by my lord Renard's men. So, are you for the woods, where the outlaws and half-plucked gallows birds lurk? Have you a horse?”

“Where I am going no horse may serve.”

The armiger felt his way out of the cottage and returned presently without his bundle, explaining briefly that he had hidden it in a hay rick.

“So that the men of the Fox will not come upon it when they search this place, as they will. My sword—” he hesitated, reluctantly—“nay, do you keep it, an you will——”

“But——”

“The blade is cleaned. Hang it in scabbard on the wall and put dust upon it. 'Twill bring no shame upon the house,” he added.

“——'s light, fool! Wilt have need of sword; aye and firelocks i' the forest?”

“The Fox would put such a price on my head that your runagate rogues of the woods'd have me out of there in a trice Nay, all roads are closed but one. I'm for the ships.”

Master Thorne leaned forward, striving to catch sight of his son's face in the gloom.

“Not Sir Hugh's ships?”

“Aye, Sir Hugh's ships. When do they sail?”

“With the morning tide, lad. The officers go out to their vessels at midnight. But, Ralph, how will you join their company? They need no more gentlemen adventurers and, faith, Master Cabot would not have such a roisterer as you.”

“Nor would Durforth, that is certain. But I have a plan; nay, it must keep, for time presses. Renard's men may pay us a visit within the hour. So, harken to what hath befallen me, for you must bear these tidings to London.”

Slowly, that the old man might understand everything, and in few words that he might remember, Thorne related all that had taken place at Greenwich.

CHAPTER VII

THE TURN OF THE TIDE

MASTER THORNE was old, and the old live in their memories; these are real, and the events of the passing days are no more than the spume cast up by waters, to vanish with another day. Master Thorne, sitting in the darkness by his son could not grasp the changes that he heard as words.

“Edward dying? Now by the good St. Dunstan, that is an ill thing for the lad was the miracle of our day, being learned and gentle. Aye, I mind him well. Surely, Ralph, you have made much out of little. In the days of good King Harry——”

“These are other days,” the armiger reminded him patiently.

“Alack, you have sent one Spanish noble to his long home, and mayhap others. So great a lord as Renard will harry you from the kingdom, lad. These be hard tidings, hard tidings. But you must abide in the cottage, Ralph, and I will betake me to London. They will have a welcome for Robert Thorne. His grace of Northumberland and Sir John will hear me out and bear a petition to the king.”

“No, father, the twain great lords are dead long since, and the fortunes of the Thornes are low.”

“So you say, Ralph, and so it is.” The cosmographer sighed profoundly. “'Tis cold of nights, and no one to sit by the fire.”

“We have tasks to perform, sir, and may not sit at ease. Can you not understand? Renard is chancellor in all but name, now that Mary is to be chosen queen. Faith, we may have Philip coming out of Spain to woo her with a fleet of galleons.”^[1]

“A Spanish king!” breathed Master Thorne, a little aroused. “Nay then I must fare to court—did you not say it, Ralph?—with my charts and present them to Edward, my completed work, the magnum opus.”

“Do so,” cried his son, “and relate my story as you have heard it. Nay, hold! You said Durforth came here to solve a certain riddle of navigation. What was it?”

Here Master Thorne was on familiar ground, his memory stanch and quick.

“This Durforth, it comes to me now, is a Burgundian, and a man who loves the bawbees. He has an itch for gold in his fingers, and my lord Renard hath paid out to him some round sums. Aye, I mind he bought a pinnace with a dragon figurehead, to sail around like a lord in the northern seas. He did bespeak my aid in charting a course.”

Master Thorne pondered a moment.

“The man is bold and a skilled navigant. He has coasted the shores of Norway to the north point where begins the Ice Sea. From there, the course he had in mind ran thus:

“From the Wardhouse a hundred and twenty leagues to the arm of the inland sea, south by east. A hundred leagues across the sea to the Town of Wooden Walls. From there the road lieth due south.”

The armiger pondered this and shook his head.

“It hath the seeming of a cipher of words.”

“'Tis no cipher but plain speech.”

“How, then?”

“Why the Wardhouse or Guardhouse lieth—so I have heard, for no Christian voyager hath set foot upon it—at the north point. 'Tis there in a tower or castle the Easterlings keep watch and ward upon the Ice Sea. Aye, and the Laps and reindeer folk.”

“And what is the sea?”

“Aye, lad, there's the rub. South and east of the Wardhouse there standeth no sea upon my charts. Nor did Durforth know of any.”

“He spoke of a town and a road. Surely here is a journey over land. Whither?”

“Why, you should steer north of east from the Wardhouse, if there is a passage open to Cathay. But, turning south and east, you would e'en come to the limbo between Christian lands and Cathay.”

“And what is that?”

Master Thorne smiled unseen, and stifled a chuckle.

“Why, lad, do you seek the mysteries of cosmography? Some do say the elf king rules this region; others, a Christian king, Ivan the Terrible rules over Easterlings, Tartarians and Muscovites.”

“What more?”

“'Tis related that this monarch hath a great treasure of gold and silver, but that is hearsay.”

Thorne, sitting by the dark hearth, his head in his hands, could make little of this. He sensed, rather than understood, a scheme afoot to betray Sir Hugh. Durforth, who was to lead the fleet around Norway, had another course in his mind, had counted so much upon it that he risked going to see the cosmographer and his charts.

Yet, even while he pondered, he was conscious that his father was moving about cheerfully; he heard a tankard clink and something gurgle into it.

“Ralph,” quoth his father, “be the times what they may, I drink to your seafaring, with the good Sir Hugh. 'Tis a proud day and a glad day.”

A cup was thrust into the armiger's hand and he tasted spiced wine.

“To your journey, sir,” he said blithely. “Seek out the lady Elizabeth and her gentlemen, for she at least is stanch. But go swiftly hence. Tarry not the dawn, for each hour brings its peril. Fare ye well!”

THEY clasped hands at the door for the first time in many years. Master Thorne took his son's rapier and watched until Ralph had passed into the shadows across the highway. After listening a while, the old man kindled a fire in the hearth and fell to furbishing and polishing the weapon in his hands.

He was tired and bewildered by the swift passage of events and turned to his unfailing consolation, his maps and manuscripts of voyages. Lighting the candles on the table he settled down to pore over them and lost all account of time.

Dawn had marked the tree tops and a fresh wind set the candle flames to flickering when he looked up at last, having been for the past moment conscious of horses trotting along the road. The door had been thrown open and two men stood within it watching him.

One, a slender fellow in a broad plumed hat, Thorne did not know. The other was my lord Renard, attired for traveling, who pinched his chin between thumb and fore finger while his glance strayed from the sword and the two cups beside it on the table to the old man's charts and from them to Master Thorne.

“You keep late hours, sir,” he observed, advancing and taking the weapon in his hand.

“Come to the fire, my lord,” muttered the cosmographer. “'Tis a fair cold night.”

“A cold night to bide awake,” nodded the envoy. “You are alone, too, I perceive. Yet I am informed that your son passed this way, going to London.”

He raised his voice as if he had asked a question, his eyes full on the Englishman. Master Thorne, who was no adept at falsehood, held his peace, wondering what had occasioned this visit from such a notable. He did not think my lord Renard would hunt his son in person; indeed, the behavior of the envoy was far from alarming.

Master Thorne wished now that he had thought to conceal the sword, but his visitor seemed to attach no importance to it.

“I thought, my master,” went on Renard slowly, “that you had no son.”

“Nay, we had a way of quarreling,” spoke up the cosmographer frankly, “but Ralph is a good lad.”

His eyes, too, dwelt on the gleaming sword with more than a little pride.

The sallow face of the nobleman was impassive but he raised his heavy brows, and bent over the table to scan the charts and papers spread thereon. And now he frowned, picking up first one sheet, then another. Evidently he was able to judge of their contents, for a muttered exclamation escaped his lips when he examined the chart of the northern seas.

“Ah, you have skill in cosmography, 'tis clear. I seem to remember that you learned your craft in Spain in Seville.”

“That is true,” assented Master Thorne readily, pleased in spite of his distrust of the strangers, at the compliment.

“Such knowledge is priceless in these days of discovery,” pursued my lord Renard amiably. “Perhaps it had been better for you if it were not. The merchants of Orfordnesse do not value you justly, but I——”

As idly as if he were casting dust from his fingers, he tossed the sheets he held into the fire, first handing the rapier to the gentleman who attended him. As the sword left his grasp he spoke swiftly under his breath and the other nodded understanding.

Master Thorne gave a great cry when he saw the flames catch at his precious maps. He ran around the table and plucked one of the smoldering sheets from the hearth.

As he did so, the gentleman who attended my lord Renard stepped forward and ran the rapier through the old man's body, withdrawing the blade in the same second and wiping it clean on his handkerchief, which he then tossed upon the floor.

Master Thorne made no further outcry. Swaying on his knees, he fell forward, his head dropping among the crackling logs. Stung by this fresh agony, he moaned and drew himself back rolling over on the hearth, the smoking paper still clutched in the hands that were pressed against his breast.

In spite of the odor of scorched flesh and singed hair my lord Renard would not leave the room until he had seen the last of the maps burned upon the hearth. Then he removed the lace handkerchief that he held against his nose.

“Here, D'Ayllon, lieth a prophet who had no honor in his own country. Leave the stripling's sword by the carcass of the sire. Now—” he considered the tableau attentively—“the yokels of this coast may cudgel their brains, and no harm to us."

D'Ayllon nodded indifferently.

“Still, signior, the son is living and may cause us to be harmed. And that Maestro Cabota——”

“Pfaugh! Cabota dodders to his grave, and the stripling we will silence in London.”

Master Thorne's body was found within the hour by Cabot, who came to pay his call, and the Orfordnesse folk wagged their tongues apace. They agreed that the cosmographer, being a man of dark belief and uncertain religion, had come to a fitting end. The Thornes were ever a wild lot.

Some held that Ralph had slain his father, by reason of the rapier seen beside the body, and the complete disappearance of the armiger who had come up from London. Although town and countryside were searched by the bailifs, no trace of young Thorne was to be had.

Certain men who had gone down before midnight to the shore to watch the setting out of Sir Hugh and Richard Chancellor, and had been talking to the shipmen waiting by the boats drawn up on the strand, remembered that a strange youth had approached them, walking unsteadily and to all appearances drunk. Assuredly he must have been drunk, since he offered to join the shipmen to go upon the voyage to Cathay.

He was a well set-up lad they saw in the faint light, and the shipmen called him a lad of spirit. His soiled leather doublet and his features were smeared with blood—this struck them afterward—and he spoke thickly.

A burly man from the ships, with limbs like an ox and brass rings in his ears, haled the volunteer into one of the boats, and there he collapsed on the thwarts, perhaps from loss of blood, perhaps from the drink in him.

The other boat keepers argued that such a man would do them little good; but the boatswain with the earrings swore in a way that made the Orfordnesse folk stare that the Edward was short three wights and he would make a hand of the young yokel.

CHAPTER VIII

PETER DISCOURSES

AFORTNIGHT later Sir Hugh Willoughby's ships had left the coast of England far to the south, and with favorable winds were passing along Norway. Luck was with them for in a region where storms and mists were expected, they were able to keep in company. Every evening a cresset was kindled on the poop of the admiral ship, the Bona Esperanza, to mark its position during darkness, and every morning the two consorts would run up while the admiral ship lay to. Hails were exchanged, the number of sick reported to Sir Hugh, the course set for the day and a rendezvous appointed in case of separation by a storm.

This was the hour when the watch below came on deck, to harken to the daily fanfare of trumpets, and to muster for morning prayers at the image of Our Lady.

“Forby,” observed Peter Palmer, boatswain of the Edward, “Sir Hugh be a man for discipline, aloft and alow. 'E's sailed under the king's colors many a time, and a rare, fine gen'leman 'e be. Brave as ever was. Though 'e's no hand for pilot work or laying a course."

And the boatswain spoke with the voice of authority, having voyaged to the far seas, to Malabar and Zipangu in Portuguese ships. He approved strongly of Richard Chancellor, the master of the Edward.

“Blast my liver, but 'e's a proper man, steady and determined-like. 'E reads to us lads out of the Bible itself, and 'monishes us like a minister of God. 'My bullies,' says 'e, 'forasmuch as all who sail the sea be standing on and off the port of the Almighty, we should stand by in readiness to face our Maker. So,' says 'e, 'let me hear no blaspheming, nor ribaldry, nor ungodly talk upon this ship.'

“And a fine thing it be," he concluded, “to have along of us a reverend gentleman as can grapple the —— himself. Now, —— me if it a'nt!”

Peter Palmer knew his own mind, and was quite ready to speak it upon all occasions. He was built on the lines of the Edward herself, broad and solid of timber. Although he must have weighed close to two hundred and fifty pounds he could move about as quickly as the cabin boy.

His freckled face was a mirror of good nature, belied by the hard gleam of blue eyes that were always restless.

He took Thorne under his wing from the first, after the armiger had lain ill—what with fever from his wound and the tossing of the high-pooped merchant craft—for the first few days.

The ruddy boatswain brought him the half of a fresh-cooked cod as soon as he was able to eat, and plumped himself down in the berth across from his victim, chewing his thumb in silence until Thorne had finished the cod and the nuggin of wine that came with it.

“Captain's orders—fresh fish and wine for the hands that be taken sick. And why? Because the salt pork is cor-rupt, and the beer is vinegarish. Aye, as ever was. Likewise, the wine casks are not stanch, so the half of it hath leaked out.”

“Hm.”

Thorne passed a hand ruefully over the bristle of beard on his chin and throat.

“Some of the marchants are all for turning back,” added Peter, “but Sir Hugh's not the man for that. Hark 'e, my master. What game might ye be a playing-of? Thou'rt no more a lout than I be.”

“What, then?”

“Why, by token of that white shirt, thou'rt gen'teman born. Come now, what's the lay, a gen'leman born passing hisself off for a yeoman? Ah, that were a good song.”

Grinning, even while his shrewd eyes dwelt on Thorne, the boatswain began in a very hearty voice:

“I saw three ships come sailing in,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day.
I saw three ships come sailing in,
On Christmas day in the marning.”

Chuckling he slapped his thigh, and cocked his great head to one side.

“Ralph, lad, that were well sung!" And added in his stentorian whisper:

“In the dark ye fooled me. But now, ye talks like a gen'leman, drinks like a lord and eats dainty as a prince. Why come off to the ships, Ralph, lad?”

“Have you forgotten,” asked Thorne, “that I was fuddled—seas-over?”

Peter scratched his head over the black hood that be wore ever about his massive shoulders and sconce.

“Why, no, Ralph, mo. But ye sniggled me as to being a yokel. Y'are a gen'leman born. I say and so it is. Now mightn't ye be a sniggling of me as to being fuddled. Supposing, now, ye was sober? Eh? We had sore need of mariners, so I took off the first likely lad that showed in the offing. But supposing ye was sober; why ever did ye go for to be took off?”

He glanced around the narrow forecastle, lighted after a fashion by two small ports and reeking of the bilge. Smoke from the galley—the wind being over the stern—clouded it, and the odor of grease and burned meat vied with the stench of soiled garments.

“This fo'csle a'nt suited to a gen'leman's dis-position now. But y' are content to lie abed here. Most 'mazing content ye be, Ralph.

“So I says to myself, 'Peter, this young un's lying alow for a good and sufficient reason.' And what might that reason be? 'Peter,' says I, 'in all likelihood he does not wish to show his mug on deck for a while.' Until when? 'Why, Peter,' says I, 'until the coast of England lies well astern.'”

The blue eyed boatswain was not far wrong in his surmise, though Thorne's lean face told him little.

“I'm not a chap to ax questions," he went on, “and it's all one to me whether ye put a knife to the innards of another gen'leman, or summat else. Let bygones be bygones."

He held out a hairy fist and Ralph took it. Peter Palmer was the only man on the Edward who knew the manner of his taking off, and so long as the boatswain kept his counsel, no talk would arise to come to the ears of Master Chancellor. Ralph himself determined to keep both his identity and his mission secret for a while, until he could look around and get his bearings.

At first he had been disappointed to discover that he was not on Durforth's ship. Now he was glad of it.

On Durforth's vessel, the Confidentia, which was much smaller than the Edward, he did not think he could have escaped notice. And, if Durforth had knowledge of him in his present situation, the easiest fate he could expect would be to be cast into the bilboes.

Peter saw to it that he was provided with a heavy robe from the merchants' stores to fend off the cold, and a small slop chest, with needle and thread, a knife and a wrapping of frieze to sleep in, proceedings that aroused the curiosity of the shipmen who berthed in the forecastle and had experienced no such tender mercies from the boatswain. Until one day Peter haled the landsman into the depths of the ship.

Here he was turned over to a being who answered to the name of Jacks and was the ship's cook. His duties were to tend the galley fire, fetch the victuals to the mariner's mess on the main deck, to wash plates, swab out the galley and in general to do whatever Jacks was minded he should.

“Ho, a landsman!” grunted the cook.

“Ah,” nodded Peter, “a landsman as is a fancy hand with dirk or fist. A man as has put better men than you, Jacks, where only the —— could find them. So speak him civil and keep your hand off him, or we'll have a new cook and fare better by the same token.”

“Fare better!”

Jacks was blind in one eye and the other was askew in his head, giving him a limited range of vision, but a baneful stare when his feelings were aroused, as now.

“You sons o' bilge puncheons 'ud like pickles with your beer, and rum every time you spit, I'm thinking. Half the stores were rotting in the salt barrels when they were stowed.”

“So ye say—” Peter winked at the armiger—“but I say it's enough and more to spoil the beer to have it under hatches along of you, Jacks.”

He took Ralph aside for a word of advice.

“Bide here for a time. Y'are a landsman, mind, and Master Dickon and his bullies will stand for no favorites. Be a swabber for a while, then we'll make shift to have ye out of the orlop. By then thy natural mother, Ralph, 'ud not know ye for her son.”

THIS proved to be true. For days Ralph labored in the dark hold, at duties that turned his stomach even more than the pitching of the Edward. Once, watched by the saturnine eye of Jacks, he tried to wash head and hands in a bucket of salt water and surveyed the result ruefully. Soot and smoke coated the grease that clung to his skin.

Once on the spar deck, during evening prayer when all hands except Jacks were mustered in the waist, Chancellor met him face to face and half frowned as if something about the landsman struck him as familiar. But at that moment a hail came from the masthead.

“Sail ho!”

That day they had entered a belt of fog and though the shore was scarce a league distant they could see it not. They were lying-to, upon command of Sir Hugh, near a village from which Chancellor had been able to procure a boatload of fowls, to eke out his scanty stock of meat. Ralph could smell the hay that the people on shore had been cutting and the fresh, strong odor of pine trees.

But by degrees, as he watched the curtain of mist from the windward rail, he became aware of another odor, less pleasing. Out of the mist a black vessel took shape—a long pinnace with two masts, only the foresail being set. It moved down the wind sluggishly, and he heard Chancellor mutter that it had the seeming of a pirate craft. Ralph wondered why such a small boat should venture to attack the Edward.

Chancellor sprang into the shrouds and bellowed through cupped hands:

“Stand off, or you will foul us. Keep to our lee, or take a shot!”

He repeated the warning in Dutch, but the pinnace kept its course. The master gunner, with some of the hands, climbed briskly to the fore deck of the Edward and whipped the tarpaulin from one of the calivers, while others ran below for shot and powder and Peter came up from the galley with a slow match that he had kindled at Jacks' fire.

The weather-beaten faces of the men about Ralph brightened at prospect of a fight. They were a rugged lot; many of them had sailed with Chancellor before and Peter dubbed them “tarry-Johns.” Yet the master gave no order to issue swords and pikes to the crew.

His hail had not been answered, and before long all on the Edward saw the reason. The pinnace slid nearer, and veered away uncertainly. A man was visible now at the wheel, and another was perched under the bowsprit on the crudely carved dragon that served for figurehead.

Another pair hung from the yard on the foremast, and two others from the main yard.

They hung by the necks and turned slowly as the yards swung with a dry creaking. A puff of wind bore the pinnace almost under the Edward's counter and Ralph saw that the helmsman was as dead as the others, bound to the tiller. So, too, the sailor on the figurehead remained immovable, lashed to his place, his head sunk on his chest.

The rank smell of decay was stronger on the air. And then the black pinnace glided out of sight in the mist, vanishing without guidance from living hand and bearing with it that strange crew of inanimate beings.

With its disappearance the spirits of the men on the Edward revived perceptibly, some saying that it must have been a plague ship, or a craft from Dane-marke that had been taken by pirates.

“Be that as it may,” muttered Peter, “it bodes no good to us. Those chaps had been strung up for many a day by the looks of them, and still it keeps the sea.”

“You are wide of the mark,” put in another, who had made the voyage to Ice land. “Yon's the handiwork o' the Easterlings.”

“What's them?” asked a young sailor, who was listening with all his ears.

“Why, the little people as keeps watch and ward upon the Ice Sea. Easterlings they be. They've set their hands to that pinnace.”

“Save us!”

“Aye,” nodded the old hand, “here we be up beyond the Circulus Articus.”

“By what token?”

“By this token, bullies all. 'Tis now nine o' clock, and yet the light holds. Come on watch at three bells and the light will be upon us anew.”

“Aye,” assented Peter moodily. “The hours o' darkness be dim-inishing. But the powers o' darkness be a-growing and a-girding and a-coming about us.”

AS IF to bear out the truth of his remark, the wind turned contrary and held the ships back. They seldom saw the sun now, except as a ball of silver hung in the mist. As the Iceland farer prophesied, the nights grew shorter instead of longer as the season advanced.

Hard bitten and callous as were the hands of the Edward, they were superstitious to a man, and the visit of the black pinnace had set them on the lookout for more omens. The very day they changed course from north to east, having rounded the North Cape, one of the men on Sir Hugh's ship reported that he had seen a mermaid in the half light of late evening.

He swore that the white body of a woman had appeared under the stem, a woman whose long hair was like seaweed, and who beckoned and smiled at him, before diving into the depths again. When she dipped out of sight he beheld clearly the scales of a fish and a great tail that whipped the water.

Both Peter and the Iceland-farer were agreed that the sight of the mermaid presaged death on board the Bona Esperanza. They recalled other occasions when shipmen who had been beckoned by women swimming upon the waters had fallen overboard in a storm.

The burly boatswain kept a careful rein on his own unruly tongue thereafter. Ralph he relieved from duty in the galley and made boatswain's mate, saying that the lad had done his work well and could help him upon the deck.

So the armiger enjoyed a good wash in fresh water, and persuaded the quarter masters to give him a new, clean leather jacket and hooded frieze shirt as a protection against the growing cold. The sailors believed that they were about to enter the Ice Sea, because they saw several whales, and noticed that Chancellor took his noon observation with more care than usual.

More than once Ralph caught sight of Durforth, when the little Confidentia drew abreast of them—the tall figure, clad in a robe of foxskins trimmed with ermine was unmistakable. He could even see the broad chain of gold the man always wore.

It was the day they saw the whales, the last of many upon which the circle of the sun was visible through the mist, that Durforth hailed the Edward. He had just completed his noon observation and held the backstaff in his hand.

Ralph, busy in the waist of the ship, caught a few words.

“Seventy degrees of latitude—the first of August, and soon the ice—Wardhouse.”

Every hand of the watch on deck cocked an ear to hear Chancellor's reply, which came at once.

“It stands not with honor to turn back.”

“We lack victuals to winter in the Ice Sea—a barren coast.”

Chancellor's ruddy face darkened with anger, whether at Durforth's words or whether the master of the Confidentia had spoken within hearing of the crew Ralph did not know.

“Sir Hugh is general of this fleet. And we are for Cathay, not the Wardhouse.”

Peter nudged the young landsman in the side with force enough to crack a rib.

“There's Master Dickon for ye! Aye, but he did not see the mermaid. Nor does he sour his throat with the beer in our butts.”

Ralph glanced at the mariner curiously.

“Would you run from a woman, Peter?”

“Aye, younker, that would I. Signs and portents are sent for our understanding. Whatever befalls, some chap on the Bona Esperanza is doomed.”

The big boatswain glanced at him sidewise and shook his head soberly.

“Lad, I be fair 'mazed at 'e. Thou'lt say next there is no black magic as well as white; aye, no powers of numbers or planets.”

“It seems to me,” quoth the armiger, “that a man stands or falls by his own deeds. I have come upon no spell that a sword would not sever.”

Peter's great jaw fell open and he stared, round of eye.

“Now, —— take 'e, I mean, Our Lady save us! Lad, lad! I'll not gainsay the potency of Our Lady—” he nodded at the image on the mast—“but here we be on the Ice Sea; so Master Durforth did maintain, and who else should reck as well?

“Now Satan bath do-minions of his own, and if this be one of them, why hold hard, lad, and do not miscall the powers o' darkness. Especially—” he nudged his friend violently in the ribs—“especially if ye have the blood of another gen'leman on your soul.”

“If we are truly entering the Ice Sea,” responded Thorne, “I must speak with Master Dickon, at once. Do you see to it, Peter.”

To his surprize the boatswain rolled off without objection or question, and the armiger braced himself for the task of accusing Durforth on his unsupported word. By now he knew it was no light matter so to bring in question the master of a ship—this knowledge had impelled him to hold his peace, until he could win the confidence of Chancellor. But the pilot-major seemed to avoid Thorne.

However, Thorne walked toward the poop rail, having fully decided to go to Chancellor and tell him his own side of the story.

CHAPTER IX

THE RENDEZVOUS

CHANCELLOR was seated in the narrow stern cabin by the table on which lay astrolabe and backstaff. Powerful hands clasped behind his curly head, he nodded as the landsman entered.

“You asked for a word with me, my lad?”

“Yes, Master Dickon. And I pray that you will hear me to the end, for this is a matter that I may no longer keep to myself.”

Gripping the deck beam overhead, to steady himself against the roll of the ship, Thorne began his tale.

“I am Ralph Thorne, son of him called the Cosmographer, and I fought Master Durforth at Orfordnesse in your presence.”

The master of the Edward showed no surprize at this, but as the youth went on to unfold all that had taken place in London, he fell serious and his eyes never left the speaker's face.

“It is ill doing,” he made response in his slow fashion, “to lay a charge against a man without proof, on hearsay and suspicion.”

“That is true, Master Dickon. But so is my tale.”

“According to your story, you came secretly to the ship. Since then you have lain hidden. How am I to take your word against that of a gentleman?”

Thorne felt his cheeks grow hot as he leaned forward, checking a harsh retort with an effort.

“Sir, my presence here should be a surety of my mission, which is to serve the king.”

“Was the murder of the honest gentleman your father included in this mission?”

“My father? Nay, he is alive and hearty.”

Something in the face of the older man choked the words in his throat.

“My father—what of him?”

“Within an hour of our embarking Master Robert Thorne was slain with your sword in his cottage, and all his maps were burned on the hearth.”

As the youth made no response, Chancellor added slowly:

“The truth of this is established by Master Cabot, who, after bidding us farewell on the shore, went to your father's cottage to have speech with him. Finding him as I have said, Master Cabot returned to the shore and came out to us in a skiff, to ask if any upon the ships had knowledge of the deed or of my lord Renard."

“What of Renard?" asked Ralph through set teeth.

“He was to have escorted the venerable pilot back to London, but, missing him in the village, apparently went on alone.”

Ralph bent his bead a moment, touching with his hand the rude drawing on the table, so unlike the delicate tracery of his father's charts.

It came into his mind that the Cosmographer would never, now, behold him returning with the king's navigants, and the certainty that Master Thorne was no longer living filled him with a longing to have lived otherwise. With his own sword!

“Sir,” he cried, “I do hold it ill of you that you should have thought me guilty of my father's murder. One thing I must ask of you—nay, two. A sword and to be put aboard the Confidentia where Durforth is.”

“Not so.”

Chancellor rose, stooping to avoid the deck beams overhead, and held out his hand.

“I did no more than test you with words. A man may lie with his tongue, yet his eyes must e'en bear witness of his honesty. Your eyes are honest. 'Tis so I judge a man."

“Your friends,” assented the armiger, “do say that you are just, Master Chancellor. I have found you so.”

The big pilot shook his tawny head as if impatient of a burden that was not to his liking.

“In these treacherous days when poison is in the very air of England, I may not easily know who is friend and who is unfriend. More this I had other evidence that approved your innocence.”

“How?”

“A ship's master is more careful than you reck. When Peter rowed me out that night, I questioned him of the new hand that he had trepanned.”

Chancellor smiled and when he did so his weatherbeaten face glowed with a kindly light.

“Peter's a rare rogue—cheats the gallows with every breath; yet is he loyal to those he serves. None so long before you appeared upon the shore he wandered off to the ale house to wet his throat. There he heard the tumult raised by my lord Renard's fellows when they sought to put an end to you.

“Peter hath the Spanish gab and heard something of their secret talk. I examined you straitly while you lay unconscious, and knew you for Robert Thorne's son.”

“Yet told me naught of his fate!”

“It is not easy to relate such news, my lad. You lay ill. Moreover,” the pilot added quietly, “I will not join in fellowship with other men if they be not open with me. I bade Peter put you to test, the which he did after a fashion of his own.”

He motioned Thorne to a seat beside him in the stern casement and put his hand on the youth's shoulder.

“It was not in my mind to deal hardly by you. 'Twas best you should lie hidden, lest Durforth come to know of you and demand your punishment of Sir Hugh who holds him in much esteem.”

“And what, Master Dickon,” cried the armiger, “is your thought of Durforth? I will face him and accuse him of abetting my father's murder—which was by Renard's hand I will swear.”

“Master Durforth was on his ship when it took place.”

“It is true that the pair of them slew my father,” insisted Thorne from set lips, “and I shall take vengeance for that black deed.”

“But Durforth we may not accuse. Others might have caused the moldering victuals to be put in the holds. Durforth is a skilled navigator, and hath on the Confidentia a rare globe showing the passage we must follow.”

“What of the course he laid down, to the inland sea?”

“Faith,” smiled the pilot, “I would give half my share in this venture to know the troth of that. He hath made no mention of it in council. 'Tis a riddle that will some day resolve itself.

“My lad, I will enroll you among the gentlemen adventurers. You will be the fourth upon this ship. We will observe closely Durforth's actions, and know whether he be honest man or rogue. On the morrow the council meets in the cabin of Sir Hugh and I will ask Durforth of this inland sea and Town of Wooden Walls.”

Chancellor was a man slow of decision but one who would not draw back once he had made up his mind. Seeing this, Thorne shook his head, yet would not gainsay the plan of an older and wiser man. He thought that the master of the Confidentia was too shrewd for Chancellor's questioning, and in this he was right.

BUT it fell out not as they had planned. The mist thinned away steadily though the near-by shore was still hidden. They could hear the surf breaking on the rocks, and the cries of rooks and gulls. Once the lookout of the Edward sighted a skiff with one man in it—a dwarf whose fishskin garments glittered with spray.

He pulled out to stare at the Edward which was making little way in the heavy cross seas. And then, with a glance to windward he bared pointed teeth in a soundless laugh and pulled away for the shore.

The three ships bore in, and presently sighted the cliffs of a headland. But the wind which had been rising steadily, grew to a full gale, twisting and buffeting the little vessels until Sir Hugh made signal to put about and gain sea room entrance into the bay being impossible.

A lowering sky seemed to press the very masts of the Edward, and through the sweeping cloud wrack Ralph caught a glimpse of the silver circle of the sun, low over the land. He noticed that the cries of the birds had ceased, and that the mariners were taking in all but the main- and foresails.

Obeying a second signal from the admiral-ship, Chancellor, whose vessel was the handiest of the three, ran within hail of Willoughby on the lee side. The shout of the captain general came to them faintly over the thud and hiss of the waters and the whining of rigging.

“The rendezvous is Wardhouse. A'——'s name, Dick, stand by me.”

The next moment the dim light was eclipsed as if a lamp in the sky had been put out; a blast heeled the Edward, splitting the main course. As far as Thorne could see the horizon was a void, laced with the white of flying foam.

Out of the blackness the white crests of waves roared at him, crashed on the bow, filling the air with spume, and raced aft to merge into the boiling wake. He propped himself against the bulwarks and hooked one arm around a backstay, bending his head to snatch a breath of air.

He did not dare to stir from this post of vantage, but the able shipmen he could see laboring at the jeers, where the mainyard with its shreds of sail was being lowered away and secured. Ever and anon he heard Chancellor's shout—no louder than a whisper—and the answering pipe of Peter's whistle.

For a while he watched the stern lantern of the Bona Esperanza pitching in the murk ahead of them. Sir Hugh was carrying more sail than Chancellor, and drifted farther to leeward, so that presently the point of light winked out. Ralph, awed by the racing seas, kept the deck, full of wonder and interest, and half believing that the ship would break into pieces the next moment.

So it happened that some hours later—he judged it to be the mid hours of the short night—he heard a startled cry from the fore deck.

“Ice on the weather bow!”

From the topgallant poop behind him came the hoarse bellow of Burroughs, the master.

“Helm hard a-weather! Veer out the foresheet to wear ship!”

For a moment the Edward seemed to hang back and Thorne loosened his hold to peer over the side. He could see no ice, nothing save a vague blur of white where the seas were breaking. Then the ship brought-to on the other tack with a lurch and he lost his balance, rolling into the lee scuppers.

A rush of water drenched him, and he struggled to his knees, coughing and shivering, when a powerful hand caught him under the shoulder and drew him erect. He made out the great bulk and the reeking leather garments of the boatswain.

“Gunner,” Chancellor's clear voice rang out, “fire me a caliver to leeward.”

The wind all at once seemed to Thorne to grow bitter and chill as in mid-winter. He waited until one of the small guns of the forecastle flashed and roared.

“Are we doomed, Peter?” he cried. “Is our time run out?”

The boatswain, who had been peering over the bulwark, roared with laughter.

“'Tis the younker! Nay Master Ralph, thou'lt live yet to be hung. This is no more than a fairish blow, a goodish blow, ye might say. The caliver was fired to warn the others of the ice, if so be they are within sight or hearing, which I doubt.”

THE Edward rode out the storm and headed back to the coast without sighting either of the consorts. Chancellor thereupon set about finding the Wardhouse. He picked up the two headlands from which they had been driven by the gale and ran east for a day along a coast that was brown and bare of trees, with snow lying on the heights.

This snow, the Iceland mariner maintained, never melted, a thing that seemed beyond belief to the other shipmen. But they saw nothing of any habitation, much less a town.

They did sight a clump of islands lying several miles offshore, and Chancellor decided to put out and land upon one of them. The Edward was in sore need of both wood and water.

The island they selected was overgrown with stunted firs and birches on the higher ground, and a rocky pinnacle offered a good lookout. Burroughs had noted a likely cove for anchorage where he thought they would find fresh water.

The work was not at an end when those on the ship saw the boat put out without the casks, and half the men. Peter, coming over the side, reported to Chancellor that a man sent to the height had seen a dwelling near the center of the island, where the forests hid it from view from the sea.

“What manner of dwelling?”

“A great house it be, with wall and tower.”

“Then it is the Wardhouse. For this is the northernmost point of land, and must lie along the seventieth degree of latitude. Aye,” Chancellor added thoughtfully, “no other ships from our part of the world have ventured as far as this.”

He ordered Robert Stanton, master gunner, a dour man, except in liquor, with two gentleman, Thorne and a half dozen hands to make ready to accompany him to the shore. The gentlemen donned corselets and girded on their swords, taking also hand guns, while, the mariners were content with pikes and cutlasses. Leaving the ship in charge of Burroughs, they went off in the pinnace.

On the gravel of the beach they noticed marks where other boats had been drawn up—fishing craft or ketches, the Icelander said. And Stanton hit upon a beaten path that led in the direction of the house. It bore the signs of frequent use, but no heel marks were visible. And it took them up through the pines, past gullies where snow lay in deep patches, to a clearing where only ferns and a kind of flowering moss grew

A stout log palisade stood in the center of the open space and a thatched roof and the bole of a rude stone tower were to be seen above it. Chancellor, bidding his men look to their arms, went up to the gate and thrust it open.

“Christians have been here before us by token of yonder grave and the cross above it,” one of the gentlemen observed, and they went on with more assurance to the door.

It opened as readily as the gate.

“Ho, within! Have you no welcome for way farers?”

The cry went unanswered, and the house was found to be deserted, though signs of occupancy were not wanting. In the hall were stacked bales and fardels of traders' goods, broad cloth, kerseys and raisins, and round pewter. A book of reckoning bearing the name of one John Andrews, of Cairness, lay upon the bundle.

This book disclosed no more than lists of barter, by which Chancellor made out that the cloth and pewter had been exchanged in the past for such things as furs, tallow and fish. It did mention that these shipments had been made to and from the Wardhouse.

“So a Scotsman, Andrews, hath been before us hither at the Wardhouse,” he observed, more surprized than chagrined at the discovery. “A bold trafficker, by all that's marvelous!”

“Why this Andrews had his lady with him,” remarked the gunner, who had been exploring the tower. “At least divers skirts and cloaks and other gear lie up aloft.”

By the size and number of the cooking pots that were hung, neatly polished, by the hearth, a fair sized company had dwelt in the house not long since. Chancellor ordered a search of the island, and posted another man in the lookout on the peak.

By evening they were sure that the island was inhabited by no more than foxes and squirrels and a host of sea birds that circled, screaming, about the invaders. So the ship was left with Master Burroughs and a half dozen, and the main company repaired to the palisades, glad enough to set foot ashore again and gathered around the great fires.

The trader's stores Chancellor would not touch, saying that they belonged to another.

FOR six days they rested at the Wardhouse, keeping watch for Sir Hugh's two vessels, but sighting nothing except several icebergs that drifted near the island, and on the sixth day large pack to the north. Chancellor went to the lookout to study this and called a council that evening.

“'Tis now seven days that we abode at the tryst,” he said slowly, “and before now Sir Hugh should have put in appearance. Wherefore, I deem that something has befallen him, to make him change his plans, and it is my wish to go on alone. What say you, my masters?”

Burroughs and the two merchants agreed with him, and one of the gentlemen adventurers added a word.

“Please you, Master Dickon, we grieve sorely that misfortune hath been the lot of the two goodly ships and our companions. But, for the reason of the love we bear you, we will fare on with right good cheer.”

“Sir Hugh and his men are worthy of better fortune, I must needs say. I have reason to think—” he hesitated—“a traitor hath led them elsewhere. I know not whither. But each day the cold increaseth and if we do not venture forth, the passage will be closed to us by ice.”

At this the Icelander moved forward from the outer circle to where Chancellor sat on a stool close to the fire. Knuckling his forehead, he asked leave to speak.

“Save ye, my master, and if so be ye will let me have my say——”

“Say what you will,” put in the pilot, to encourage him, for the man was ill at ease.

“Thankee, Master Dickon, thankee! If we weigh with a southeast sun^[1] we will come before long upon the great ice pack, which we may not pass around. Then we must make a landfall and endure the winter as best we may. Saving your respect, the winter in this sea is perilous. Now, God be praised, we have a fair harbor here at this place, and the good Sir Hugh may join us if we abide here.”

“Honestly spoken,” nodded the pilot. “And to my mind we go into danger, the greater since Sir Hugh hath left us. But, my masters, I hold it dishonorable to avoid a great attempt for fear of danger.”

“Aye,” cried the others. “'Tis so we think, Master Dickon.”

Thorne, who had been frowning into the fire, looked up quickly.

“By your leave, sir, it is in my mind that we should leave a man in the Wardhouse.”

Chancellor looked a silent question.

“Sir Hugh,” explained the armiger, “knoweth not that a traitor is in his company. If so be the captain general should come to this island after we have sailed, who is to tell him? And how is he to know the course we follow?”

“Ha! We could leave a written message.”

“A writing, so please you, might fall into other hands. 'Tis clear that folk do come to this Wardhouse. And, by the same token, we hit on this rendezvous only by chance. A man left here could signal to Sir Hugh from the peak, if the sails were sighted.”

This aspect of the situation had not struck the pilot who was readier for action than planning.

“That is true,” he nodded, “but even so, I will not order one of my shipmen to bide alone on this island in peril of his life.”

“Nay, Master Dickon,” Thorne smiled, “I will stay here. For, look you, I am of no use upon a ship. None knoweth so well as I the warning that should come to Sir Hugh's ears. As for peril, I would face a thousand Laps and all their sorcery rather than another storm like the last. Nay, indeed here is scant peril, for if you come not to death, you will return hither to search for me.”

“Aye, that we will.” It was Chancellor's turn to smile. “Lad, I fear me you are disposed to have the blood out of Durforth, will-he, nill-he!”

“Aye, that I will,” responded Thorne so promptly that the others stared and laughed, knowing for their part little of his suspicions or his desire to avenge his father.

“Then let it be so. But I will not leave you alone.” Chancellor turned to the ring of faces that glowed ruddy in the firelight. “My masters, you have heard the talk between us. It is expedient that we man the Wardhouse. This youth maintains that the lesser peril is his, but I think otherwise. I'll order no man of mine to abide with him, yet such is my desire.”

When no one spoke up, he glanced at the young adventurer who had first assented to going on.

“Nicholas Newborrow, what say you?”

“I say this, in all due respect.” Newborrow flushed, and fingered the clasp of his cloak. “I dare what any man dare, but in this unknown part of the world we face no human foes. Whither passed Sir Hugh? What of the good men and true he had with him? Whence came this grave?”

He pointed through the gray vista of the enclosure to the rough wooden cross.

“Whither fared the humans who were in this Wardhouse none so long before our coming? We saw no boat put off from the island.”

“It is idle,” quoth Chancellor, thrusting out his long chin—for he liked not Newborrow's words or their effect on the listeners—“to wonder upon that which we have not seen.”

“We have seen, my master, this place where night cometh not at all, but a continual light shining upon a huge and mighty sea. Fare on with you I will, but here I will abide not. This is an evil place.”

“So that is your mind. What of the others?”

A brief silence fell, and after a moment Peter Palmer thrust aside the shipmen in front of him and greeted his leader. His round face was knotted with uneasiness.

“A plague on them that hangs in stays when there's work to be done. I'll bide with the younker. If so be my time's run out, here is Christian soil and sepulcher.”

He pointed to the grave and its cross.

“I can ill spare you, boatswain.” Chancellor thought it over with palpable concern. “Still, you and Thorne are mates, and that is good. Stay then, and God keep you.”

To the armiger he added:

“My course I can not give you, save that we sail east from here, and—I fear me—must winter on the Ice Sea. So, if you follow, watch the shore for the ship and huts. Master Burroughs, see to it that Thorne has weapons and victuals enough for two men for a twelvemonth. We hoise our sails at the third running out of the glass.”

CHAPTER X

PETER INTERPRETS AN OMEN

“AND now,” quoth Peter closing one eye and laying a finger along his massive nose, “we be our own masters, ye being captain and I mate, as it were. In a year from now we'll be living at our ease, a-riding in coaches and a-swearing hearty at our own serving knaves, like gen'lemen to the manor born.”

They were then sitting at their ease in the Wardhouse hall which seemed bare and gloomy despite a roaring fire, since the departure of Chancellor and his company.

“You sang another tune, Peter,” responded Thorne with amusement “two days agone.”

For two days the boatswain had worked like a Trojan, carrying up from the shore the gear and arms left them by Burroughs—a serviceable harquebus with three barrels, a hand gun for Thorne, who now wore a sword. Peter had his own cutlas, and had gleaned from the Edward a small keg of powder, and a cutty ax.

They had a cask of brandy in addition to a butt of the familiar and detested beer, which, nevertheless Peter preferred to water, salt fish in plenty and a little beef, with a liberal allowance of biscuit and cheese and olive oil.

All this they had stowed in the hall. They had taken turns climbing the peak to keep watch on the sea and cutting firewood, which Thorne stacked inside the palisade.

“Well,” ruminated the boatswain, drawing himself a mug of brandy, “that was afore Master Dickon cut us adrift. When we sailed along of him I obeyed orders and kept my tongue between my teeth. But all the while I had tidings of that which will make us rich as lords.”

“On this island?”

“The —— take this island! Nay, here's the lay, Master Ralph. Gold and silver to be had for the picking up. Or else to be traded for—a knife or piece of pewter, look ye, for a fair pound of red gold.”

Thorne hitched nearer the blaze, for the chill of the place touched his back with invisible, icy fingers.

“We are a long way from Cathay,” he yawned.

“'Tis not Cathay.”

Peter took a sip of the brandy and licked his thick lips.

“I've sailed the seas I have, with the Portingals. And evil shipmen they be, but full o' knowledge and tidings of the unknown world. At Fermagosta I first heard tell of this gold. Then at the Texel, when the Dutch merchants had looked too long on the cup. By reason of what I heard, I shipped along of Master Dickon.”

He drained the mug and tossed it over his shoulder.

“Here's the tale. Both the Spaniards and Hollanders talk of a certain prince whose dom-inions he between Christiandom and Cathay. A long way it is to this prince, and now the Polanders and other pagans and the Easterlings be at war, one with another. So the way by land is closed. The name this prince bears is Ivan.”

Expectantly, he paused, seeing that his companion was giving close heed to his words.

“Ivan,” he repeated. “And in the Texel ale shop 'twas said that Ivan's land o' gold and silver lieth south by southeast from this Wardhouse.”

“Southeast!” The armiger sat up abruptly. “Why, so lieth the course given Durforth by my lord Renard. How distant is this land of—of gold?”

“A mooh's journey.”

“Not so far. Durforth's reckoning——”

After considering the matter, Thorne related to his companion all that he knew of Renard and his agent. And the boatswain's prompt reply surprized him.

“Sweet doxies and dells! It fits like a merlyn-spike in a man's fist. Look ye! The Spaniards may not adventure to Prince Ivan by land, so one is sent by sea. For the Spaniards are not wont to endure peril without reason. Wherefore, you and I will set forth this day week, to seek the land of gold.”

“Set forth? How?”

“Why in a week we may build us a fair raft of dried wood, secured with rope and pegs of wood. We'll take the gear and victuals and the firelocks. 'Tis no more than two leagues to the main. Sweet lad, we'll trade with the pagans of this outlandish prince and make our fortunes.”

His red-veined eyes gleaming cheerfully, he rolled to his feet and filled two mugs at the brandy cask. One of these he held out to Thorne who was sunk in a brown study by the fire.

“What, bully lad! Here's luck. May good Saint Dunstan guard us from the Horned One!”

Under his breath he added, remembering that he stood, perhaps, on unhallowed ground—

“May the —— deal with us inkindly wise.”

“With what would you trade, Peter?”

The big shipman jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the bales of goods that had been found with the book of one John Andrews. Placing his finger against his nose again, he tossed off his brandy and heaved a pleasant sigh.

“With yon.”

“Softly, my shipmate! That is not ours for the taking. And how would you add goods to gear, and carry the same overland?”

Peter's face fell and he scratched his head. His imagination ran no farther than reaching the coast with all the spoil.

“Welladay, one thing at a time, Master Ralph. Belike, fortune will aid us one way or another.”

“It will not, for the reason that I will abide on this island, having pledged my word.”

“Now, the plague take ye for a dolt,” muttered the boatswain earnestly. ”If Sir Hugh come not he lieth at the bottom of yonder sea. Or else treachery hath been brewed against us and Master Dickon.”

BUT argue as he would, and he did right soulfully, Peter could not budge Thorne from his decision a whit. He ended by swearing up and down that he would go in search of the promised land alone. But the next day he showed no signs of readiness to set out; in fact felt sulky and sat in the house hunched over the fire.

Thorne did not appear to notice his ill behavior, but labored at the wood until he judged it midday; then he bade Peter briefly to take a turn on the lookout.

With an ill grace and much grumbling the boatswain obeyed, and set out for the “masthead,” as he termed it. But within an hour he hove into sight again, much more rapidly than he bad departed. He was panting from the depths of his lungs and stumbling over the rocky ground.

“Stand by, Master Ralph!” he bellowed hoarsely. “Look aloft. The sweet Mary aid us—look aloft!”

Thorne put down his ax and glanced at the hill, then at the fringe of firs and the misty gloom of the rock gullies.

“The sky,” croaked Peter, staggering through the gate of the stockade, “yonder to windward.”

Thinking that his companion had glimpsed a sail or had been beset by enemies of some kind, the armiger surveyed the horizon eagerly. And presently, having beheld what Peter had seen, he frowned. Arching high over their heads, a rainbow stood against a cloudbank in the sky. But this rainbow was inverted, glowing with a myriad colors where it circled almost to the tree tips, and fading into nothingness where its ends merged with the clouds. He had never seen its like before.

Being unable to account for this phenomenon, he held his peace while the shipman struggled to regain his breath.

“Master Ralph, I have seen the Southern Cross over a ship's mast; I have seen the eye of the Big Bear; but never a rainbow capsized. 'Tis an omen—daddle me else.”

“'Tis a rainbow, no more.”

Peter eyed the youngster with dark triumph.

“Master Ralph, the mariners o' the Esperanza saw a mermaid come up out of the waters. Aye, an omen, that, as ever was. And where be they now?”

Seeing that his companion was no whit cast down by this comparison, Peter went on stubbornly.

“And now our time is come. What d'ye think on it?”

“Think? That you have guzzled the brandy overmuch.”

“Now, shiver my soul else, that is ill said. Look you here, Master Know-All: When I came down from the masthead yonder, the very beasties of the wood were up and about. Aye, they know when an ill wind is to ward. Wolves and bears, they were a-capering and a-rushing all about me, through the trees.”

“There are no wolves, nor bears on this island,”

“I laid my deadlights on them. They were hiding, crafty-like, a-slipping and a——”

“Nonsense—”

“On two legs, Master Ralph. A-peering at me they were.”

THORNE was puzzled by Peter's statement, stoutly reiterated when he questioned the boatswain anew that he had seen bears on the path to the lookout. He reflected that Sir Hugh's men had made only a casual examination of the island, and such animals might have remained unseen in the patches of woods.

Bear's meat would add splendidly to their larder, and he decided to try his hand at hunting.

Taking up the crossbow with its winder and a few shafts—this weapon being both handier and more accurate than the harquebus—he left the palisade.

A heavy mist was blowing in, and the chill of it struck through his light cloak. It swept like smoke athwart the line of the forest, rendering him for the moment subject to the illusion that the pines and the rock gullies were moving past him while he was standing still.

Under the mesh of the wood the fog did not penetrate, and he walked hard and fast to stir up his circulation. The gale whined overhead, and the piping of curlews and croaking of gulls filled the space with tumult.

The wood opened out in time, and he passed through a labyrinth of scrub oak, all bent in one direction by the winds of countless years. Until now he had not known that he had come a full two leagues to the other end of the island. But for the moment he paid no attention to his surroundings.

High and clear and yet faintly a voice was to be heard, a human voice, dwarfed by the note of the wind. It reached him in snatches, and he could not be certain of its direction until he reflected that it must come down the wind.

As he rounded a mass of rocks, coated with moss, he heard it clearly and stopped in his tracks. The voice was a woman's, and she was singing an old ballad:

“As I was walking all alane
I heard twa corbies making a mane;
The tane unto the t'other did say,
'Where sail we gang and dine to-day?'

“'—In behint yon auld fail dyke
I wot there lies a new-slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair.'”

A woman's voice was the last thing he had expected to hear, and Thorne paused to wind his crossbow and fit a shaft in the slot. Where a woman was, in this island of the Ice Sea, men must be, and it behooved him to draw near with care.

He pushed between two boulders and looked out into a mist-shrouded glen. On the far side, in some high bracken and fern he made out the form of a deer, with its antlered head pointed fairly in his direction.

Surprize and excitement brought his crossbow to his shoulder. He pressed the trigger when the stag moved—the eagerness of the hunter strong upon him. The shaft sped and the deer vanished, not bounding away, but sinking, as it seemed to him, into the ground.

"“Many a one for him make mane,
But none sail ken where he is gane;
O'er his white bones, when they are bare,
The wind sail blaw for evermair.”

The voice stopped on an unfinished note and there fell the familiar silence with its monotone of the gale overhead. Thorne ran forward, and sought eagerly in the ferns for the prey that he thought he had slain.

He found nothing, neither deer nor shaft. Nor, indeed, any sign of the singer, though he hunted through the broken ground until he came out on the shore and saw the line of surf an angry white under the leaden gray of the mists.

“Are you friend or foe?” he called and, after waiting a moment, “I'll harm you not.”

But the only response was the impatient and mocking calling cf the birds.

Taking his way home, his eye fell on a shaft half buried in the ground, and he took it up believing it was the bolt he had shot. It proved, however, to be an arrow, such as he had never seen before. It was a small shaft, feathered with black crows' feathers and bearing two small iron heads. After inspecting it, he thrust it into his belt and charged his crossbow anew.

For a while he quested along the ridges, until, the mist thickening, he knew his search vain and turned to the Wardhouse.

When he told Peter all that had taken place on the shore, the boatswain nodded indifferently.

“Aye, it were a pixie or a wood troll, or mayhap a Robin Goodfellow. Faint and clear it sung, say ye? Why, it were anhungered. Ye should have left it a bit of a sup.”

“But I saw naught, Peter.”

“And why should ye, Master Ralph? 'Tis sartain and sure that pixies dwell in cromlechs, which is to say hollow mounds, beneath the sod. Where rocks stand, like a circle, with linden trees, keep your weather eye out for trolls and such-like.”

Thorne was far from satisfied with this. Had a ship come to the island? If so, where was it anchored? Were there natives, pagan folk, about the Wardhouse, and were they invisible? He could have sworn there were no deer on the island, which was too small for a herd; yet he had seen one.

CHAPTER XI

THE SEA MAIDEN

ATOUCH on his arm awakened him from the deep sleep of early morning. The hall was visible in the half light that never quite left the island. Somewhere he heard Peter snoring comfortably.

The woman who stood by his couch, whose hand had touched his arm, held her finger on her lips. She was no taller than one of the great bales of goods beside her, and she was swathed from head to foot in a heavy sea cloak. Only two braids of hair of the brightest red gold were visible.

“You may not abide in this place,” she said softly. “You must get you gone from here.”

Her eyes, he noticed, were dark and they glowed with excitement. Her age he could not guess, but manner and voice were youthful, and the voice was that of the singer of the day before.

“Why?” he asked briefly, watching her face.

It was characteristic of the armiger that he showed no surprize at her presence. She was here, and in due time he would know all about that.

“The Easterlings are angered, lad. They will not endure you mere.”

“Why are they angry?”

“You shot a shaft at one; besides, you hold the Wardhouse and they would have it for my comfort. What seek you here?”

Thorne rose to his feet, and she stepped back as if to ward him off.

“Nay, sir, touch me not, for that would be your death.”

“Here are threats and warnings,” quoth the armiger impatiently. “But no sense. Mistress, I have loosed me no shaft at any pagan, nor have I a mind to harm you. Come, we will build the fire anew and you shall rede me this riddle.”

He turned to call Peter to go for more wood, but again the girl in the sea cloak checked him in his purpose.

“Nay, let the lout sleep. The Easterlings have no love for him and they would slay him out of hand if he came near me.”

“Now by my faith,” growled the youth, “this is ill hearing. If any man lifts hand against Peter I will put my sword through him.”

The girl smiled at this, yet there was anxiety in her eyes, which traveled beyond Thorne to the far corners of the hall. And he, following her gaze, became aware of shapes that stood without the narrow windows—of heads, covered with the fur of animals, and, once, of a form that resembled a deer with spreading antlers.

These, he knew, were men wearing bear and deer skins, but men so stunted that they stood no higher than his shoulder. And each one, with bow and arrows ready in hand, stirred restlessly as if ill at ease. Fear or uneasiness in savages and animals he knew to be a portent of danger. And his sword and pistols would avail little against their arrows.

It had been Peter's watch, and, judging by his snores, these folk of the island had taken possession of the palisade with small trouble. So reflecting, he brought wood himself, laid twigs on the embers of the hearth. When flames crackled and gripped the logs his gray eyes turned to the girl questioningly.

“And now, the tale, child,” he said calmly, stretching his hands to the blaze.

She had seen that he was aware of her followers, and she glanced at him with fleeting curiosity, one hand smoothing back the hair from her forehead. The fire tinted her thin cheeks with color and made her fair indeed. Yet she was unconscious of this charm of hair and eyes and voice.

“If I tell what you would know,” she whispered not to awaken Peter, “will you pledge me your word that you and the churl will leave the island so soon as may be?”

Thorne considered this and shook his head.

“I may not do that, for I have sworn an oath to abide here.”

“Ah, that would avail you naught, for you would lie under the sod with a cross upon your grave.”

“Like the other?”

Thorne nodded at the palisade.

In a flash he saw that he had hurt the girl; her eyes glistened with tears and she bent her head, looking into the fire, her hands clasped on her breast.

“Peace, I pray you, sir. That is my father's grave. He was not slain by Easterlings, but by pirates who have e'er now made atonement for their ill deed.”

When he still kept silent, she saw fit to tell him her name.

She was Joan Andrews, daughter of Andrews the trader. He was Scotland born, and had come in recent years to the Warehouse by way of the Orkneys and the Norway coast, impelled to this course by sight of gold among the natives. This season he had taken Joan on the trip for the first time, and had met with misfortune, being followed to the Wardhouse by a pinnace with a dragon figurehead, manned by lawless Burgundians.

These had attacked the trader, killed him, and loaded his goods on their vessel which was anchored in the harbor. Andrews' cutter they had sunk a short distance from the island. But Joan had escaped from the Wardhouse after the death of her father, choosing to fly to some few Laps who had come to the island to trade rather than to trust to the mercies of the pirates.

The Easterlings, she explained, had a mound dwelling at the other end of the island, a hollowed-out knoll which was entered by a tunnel hidden from sight in the rocks.

The pirates might easily have escaped in their boat, but, unaware of the presence of the Easterlings, scattered over the island to search for the missing girl, and so fell victim to the arrows of the savages. The goods of the trader Andrews were brought back to the Wardhouse for safe keeping, until a large sailing skiff could be fetched to convey them to the mainland.

Before this vessel arrived, the English ship came into the harbor, and the Easterlings hid themselves with the maiden in their underground dwelling. They watched the Edward sail off and were astonished to find two men left on the island. These they had decided to kill, believing them kin to the pirates.

JOAN ANDREWS had seen Thorne the day before, and by his bearing and voice thought him English and of gentle blood. She had begged the Laps as best she could with signs and her few words of their speech to hold their hands until she could speak with the men in the Wardhouse.

Thorne considered her story and went to the heart of the matter with a word.

“Do these Easterlings cherish you, Mistress Joan?”

“My father ever dealt with them fairly, for such was his way. They have been kind to me. Aye, they be not evil-minded, though foul of feature. But command them I may not, for they be changeful and timid as the wild creatures in whose skins they clothe themselves.”

“Faith—” Thorne smiled ruefully—“they appear to be Christians in one respect. They hang their foes to the yard arm as readily as any ship master.”

Joan Shook her head.

“'Tis their way of burial. They leave their dead fastened to the branches of trees, fully clad, with weapons bound to them. So they made shift to do with the thieves of the pinnace, before they towed the vessel out and set her adrift.”

Through Thorne's brain passed the thought that this was not the method of burial Peter would prefer. It was clear to him that Peter and himself stood near to the edge of a grave, of whatever nature it might prove to be. Yet his curiosity was all for the maiden and the fate in store for her.

“What plan have you, child?” he asked. “How will you contrive to leave the Ice Sea and return to your home?”

She seemed surprized that he took thought of her.

“Why—the skiff may put in at the Wardhouse before the ice floes gird us in.”

But she added, less cheerfully—

“I have no kindred awaiting me.”

The armiger was not minded to dally over the situation.

“Who is the chief of these folk? Have him in, and let him speak his mind. If it is his intention to compass my death, I will e'en take him with me to the nether world.” Placing his back against the fireplace he waited until the girl, after a moment's hesitation called softly.

“Tuon, hulde na.”

And after a moment there appeared in the doorway the same Lap who had rowed out to the Edward. Tuon's stocky shoulders were covered by a wolf skin, and the empty muzzle of the beast leered at them over the broad, greased-coated muzzle of the savage whose yellow, pointed teeth resembled greatly the fangs of the wolf.

Even his hands were covered with fur mittens, and Thorne reflected that these Laps must have been the beasts that Peter glimpsed on the lookout height. He suspected that beside the warmth of the furs, they availed themselves of these strange garments to hunt down other animals, remembering the Lap that, dressed in a deer's skin and antlers, he had taken for a stag the day before.

Tuon walked forward warily, peering about him as if entering a cage.

“Put down your weapons, sir.”

Joan pointed at Thorne's pistol and sword.

“Nay, I'll yield me to no savage. Let him take the weapons, an he will.”

Tuon sidled closer, several of his companions following him into the hall. Thorne was aware of a strong animal scent, of foul flesh and sweating hair. His gorge rose and he clapped hand to the hilt of his sword, having no mind to be made prisoner by such as they. Joan's dark eyes widened in alarm, and Tuon, sensing the rising excitement of the Christians, became uneasy.

At this instant Peter awoke. He sat up, stared at the strange beings who were moving toward Thorne in the vague light of the hall, saw the slender girl in the sea cloak, the fire ruddy on her tawny hair, peered at Thorne who stood as if turned to stone.

Springing up, he drew a blanket over his head and rushed toward Joan Andrews before Thorne could speak. Arriving, as he judged, before her, his eyes being swathed in the cloth, he fell on his knees.

“A'——'s mercy, if thou be'st troll or Ellequeen, spare an honest shipman. Thou'st put my mate under a spell, so that he speaks not nor moves an eye. Have mercy on a sorry wight that never harmed hair of thy head.”

The spectacle of the giant seaman muffled in a blanket aroused the interest of the Laps. It was clear to them that he intended no violence to the maiden they had taken into their protection; in fact, they must have suspected that he was performing some ritual.

No arrow was loosed at him, and when he withdrew the blanket cautiously he found Thorne smiling at him broadly, and Joan Andrews broke into a rippling laugh at sight of his red and foolish countenance.

Laughter is a key that unlocks many a black mood. The Laps had mirth in them, and Tuon grinned fearsomely. And this served to change Peter's mood in a twinkling. He cast down his blanket with an oath and spread his stocky legs, clasping his great fists.

“So ye would bait Peter Palmer? Put up your fibbers and I'll best the lot of ye scurvy dogs.”

“Let be!” cried Thorne. “Here is no troll maiden, but a child out of the Scot's land.”

IN SPITE of this assurance Peter regarded Joan Andrews with misgivings while the others strove to talk with Tuon; and to the end of his time on the island gave her a wide berth. He never forgot that she had influence over the Laps, and by a process of reasoning all his own, was convinced that she must be a troll maiden out of the sea in human form.

Meanwhile Joan made a bargain with Tuon. The Laps were to have possession of the trade goods, all Thorne's stores and weapons except his sword. She was to be allowed to live in the tower, and the two Englishmen in the hall, and they were not to be harmed.

Thorne was not pleased, for it amounted to a surrender, but the girl pointed out that he was giving no more than the Laps would take in any case, and, besides, his only follower had assuredly yielded himself without any terms at all to her mercy.

“This island is theirs,” she added practically. “'Tis true the Wardhouse was built by other hands long dead—perhaps by the Norsemen. But Tuon's men hold that it is theirs. They ask why you have come hither, if not to plunder or avenge the death of the pirates.”

So Thorne explained the voyage and its purpose, and she shook her head gravely.

“I fear me for your comrades. There lies no passage to the eastward. My father often said that it is closed with ice, that never opens. So the Easterlings told him.”

For a space Thorne thought that this might bring about Chancellor's return, until he recalled the stubborn courage of the pilot-major and his settled determination to find new lands. There might be no northeast passage to Cathay, but Chancellor would press on as long as strength remained to him and his men.

CHAPTER XII

SNOW

THE days passed, and Thorne went more often to the lookout because it irked him to sit in the Wardhouse where he felt that the very food he shared was taken from her bounty.

Moreover she had warned him earnestly not to venture abroad without her, and this went sorely against his pride. And there came a day when the hoar frost was white on the ground. Snow fell that night, driving the Easterlings into the Wardhouse. Their hunger sharpened by the bitter wind, the savages fell upon Thorne's store of victuals. Only half warming the meat and fish at the fire, they gorged until their bodies swelled.

Thorne went out to the hill as soon as the snow ceased, after cautioning Peter against quarreling with Tuon and his men.

The aspect of the island was changed; the sun was invisible behind clouds and the gray light seemed to arise from the white ground under his feet. In spite of the brisk walk he was shivering when he reached the rocky height and searched the sea with his eyes.

No sail was to be seen and, peering to the eastward, he saw ice floes in the course taken by the Edward. This made it certain that Chancellor would not return to the islands until next season.

No animals were astir, and Thorne, who was not given to imagination, could not rid himself of the belief that invisible and malignant forces were closing in upon the island; elementals, his father had termed them.

Thrusting his numbed hands into his belt, he was setting himself to consider means by which they could live through the winter, when a clear voice hailed him cheerily.

“Ho, Master Thorne, you have disobeyed orders again. I' faith, you have led me a merry chase!”

The girl was climbing swiftly to the lookout, clad in a new manner, her small feet snug in deerskin boots, her slim body wrapped in a fox-fur tunic and a felt hood drawn over her head. It was the first time he had seen a woman without a skirt that came clear to the ground, but Joan Andrews was careless of her unwonted dress.

“Why, the lad is in a pet.” She glanced searchingly at his drawn face. “The frost will harden in you, if you go not abroad in warmer garments than those. La, sir, such things may do well enough in London town, but not upon the Ice Sea. I will beg furs of good Tuon and sew ye a proper mantle.”

“You need not, and—I am not angry, child.”

“Child, quoth'a! You are a large lout for your age, Master Thorne, but you are not old enough to call me child. Nay, I think you very young.”

So saying she beckoned him to a spot where the wind was warded by a great rock and, when he came reluctantly, sat close to afford him the warmth of her furs.

“Peter says that you were a gentleman at court. Is it true?”

Thorne found the girl difficult to understand; her gaze, as searching and guileless as a child was more disconcerting than the eyes, the bright and calculating eyes, of the ladies in waiting, for whom he had had a boyish awe.

“I can break me a lance in the tournaments, and keep the saddle of a horse,” he admitted. “I can train a goshawk for hare or wild fowl.”

“What else?”

“I have killed several in fair fight with sword and dagger.”

“Any lout can do as much, if luck be with him. What else?”

“Why, I can put a shaft from a crossbow through the ribs of a running hart at a hundred paces.”

Mistress Joan smiled behind the fur collar of her jacket. She had seen Thorne fail to do just that not so long ago, but she did not remind him of it. Instead her mood changed swiftly.

“Now, sirrah, tell me this: Was it courteous in you to run off and leave me beleaguered by the drunken Easterlings? They are near mad, with the spirits they have taken.”

“Are they so?”

Thorne frowned, thinking too late of the brandy and beer. Tuon and his men had seemed little inclined to try these strange drinks, but now apparently they had done so, and the result was not pleasant to contemplate.

The fault being his, he was loath to admit it.

“I knew it not, Mistress Joan. 'Swounds, I grew weary of your following. A man may not think aright with a vixen's tongue going like a bell clapper at his ear.”

The corners of her lips drew down, and she moved a little farther away.

“So my father used to say, when things went ill. Nay, Master Thorne, I followed you because I feared for—” she hesitated with an upward glance that judged his mood shrewdly—“I feared to be left by myself in the company of the Easterlings, and—and I am lonely, by times.”

“In that case,” assented young Master Thorne gravely, “you may walk with me as often as you are minded, aye and talk also.”

Around the corner of the rock Peter, the boatswain, hove in sight, his bead bent against the wind.

“Stand by, Master Ralph,” be muttered hoarsely, “stand by to go about. Luck sets our way.”

THORNE motioned to the shipman to join them, saying that they owed their lives to Mistress Joan and it would be ill repayment of her courtesy to talk apart.

At this Peter pursed his lips and was heard to growl that there was no knowing whether the maid was friend or unfriend, and for his part he would liefer keep his distance from one who ran about with Easterlings and dressed like a lad—a mortal sin to his thinking.

“The beer is gone,” he vouchsafed darkly, “ah, and the brandy. 'Twill be a dry winter for us.”

“Gone?” cried Joan Andrews. “Then the Laps have guzzled it.”

“As ever was. They drained the casks and now lie about the house like fish out o' water. Fuddled!”

He winked at Thorne and contorted his face in the effort to convey some hidden meaning unperceived by the girl.

“Scuppers awash! They screamed and danced and fit among themselves. You could stow them in the fire and they would not stir—all twenty of them.”

And he touched his dirk on the side away from Joan, beckoning with his head to his companion.

“Stir a leg, Master Ralph. Blast my eyes but here's luck a-playing our game, and——”

He lifted a huge hand to his lips and mouthed in Thorne's ears.

“Has the wench put a spell on ye? We can be masters in this island before the sand runs from the glass again.”

Thorne looked at him silently. He and Joan had not been gone from the house an hour and in that time twenty savages had downed two half barrels of brandy and beer. They were not accustomed to such liquor, and he wondered whether they would ever stand upon their feet again. Here, as Peter said, was a chance to make sure they would not. And yet he had made a truce with these same savages.

“Mistress Joan,” he observed, “the boatswain here has a mind to rid us of the Easterlings while they lie befuddled. What say you? Are you for us, or for them!”

The girl lifted her head impatiently.

“You are both fools—faith, I know not which is the greater. Peter, have not the Laps eaten up the main part of your victuals?”

“Aye, mistress—” Peter was civil enough to Joan's face—“that they have. And they have e'en drunk up my beer.”

“Now if you kill them, how are we three to get us food to live through the winter?”

Peter started to reply, and scratched his head.

“How will we live in any case?”

“With bows and snares and nets that they make these savages will get us small game and fish. If you had slain them you would starve before another seventh day.”

To this Peter had no answer, but waxed surly for being reproved in his folly.

He had hastened to Thorne after watching from the tower stairs until the Laps were past heeding his doings, and he had expected that the armiger would fall in at once with his plan. Now he stared at his young companion distrustfully.

Thorne's mind seemed to be elsewhere. His eyes narrowed and his lips close drawn, he was staring at a wrack of clouds out to windward. Peter shook his head moodily, marking the high color in the lad's cheeks, the splendid poise of the curly head.

Aye, the boy was rarely favored, being more than handsome, and this was why the maiden, who must be a sea troll in human form, had laid her spell on him. She wanted to have him for her own.

Belike, thought Peter, she would suck the life from Master Ralph or else beguile him into the waters and swim down to the sea's bottom, she who had taken a dead man's name, who sat each day in the evening hour by a grave, who had a man's wisdom and a witch's craft.

“Peter,” said Thorne, and his words came in an altered voice, so that the girl glanced at him fleetingly, “this is what we will do. Fetch me my arbalest from the Wardhouse, with pistols for yourself. Look yonder!”

The boatswain knitted shaggy brows and presently made out what the armiger had been looking at. A boat was heading into the harbor. He sprang to his feet to shout joyfully, when he paused uneasily. This was no full rigged ship, but a longboat that tossed on the swell, moving sluggishly under a lug sail.

“'Tis the sailing skiff that Tuon sent for,” cried Joan.

“It will be ours before Tuon is on his feet again,” said Thorne.

THE lugger—if the long, ramshackle skiff could be called that—staggered slowly through the cross currents at the mouth of the cove and was coaxed to the shore, where three men sprang out, to tug it up on the sand. A fourth Easterling, who seemed to stand no higher than Joan's chin, loosened the sheets and left the leather sail to flap as it would.

Then, without more ado, they started up the path to the Wardhouse and were confronted by Thorne and Peter with the cross bow ready wound and a brace of loaded pistols.

“Avast, my bullies!” roared the shipman. “Bring to and show your colors, or swallow lead the wrong way.”

And he brandished a long pistol, motioning with the other hand for them to remain where they were. His aspect and voice had a startling effect on the savages; three of them dropped the light spears they carried and raced away; the fourth, the smallest of the lot fell to his knees behind a hummock of grass.

Before Peter could sight his pistol, the little Easterling had strung his bow and loosed an arrow that flicked past Thorne's throat. The amiger pulled the trigger of his arbalest, but the bolt flew high, so closely did the miniature warrior hug the earth.

“Hull him, shipmate!” bellowed Peter. “Down between wind and wat—ugh!”

A second arrow from the native's bow struck Peter fairly under the ribs with a resounding thud, driving the breath from his lungs. Instead of penetrating, the missile hung loosely from his stout leather jerkin. Peter, being suspicious of the Easterlings, had prudently donned a steel corselet under his jerkin and mantle.

Pulling out the arrow, he tossed it away, and was sighting anew with the pistol when Thorne cried to him to hold hard. The Easterling champion had stood up, in round-eyed amazement, and was drawing near them, fascinated by the sight of men who were invulnerable to his shafts. As a sign of submission he unstrung his bow, and laid it at Thorne's feet, with a curious glance at the cumbersome crossbow.

Unlike the other Easterlings he wore tunic and trousers of gray squirrel skins, neatly sewed together with gut and ornamented at knees and neck with squirrel tails.

Joan Andrews, coming up, called him Kyrger, and said that he was a Samoyed tribesman, a young hunter who brought very good pelts to her father at times. The sight of the girl seemed to reassure Kyrger, who made no effort to escape; instead he took to following Thorne around.

Peter rolled off to inspect the lugger, and returned with mingled hope and disgust written upon his broad countenance, to report that she smelled like a Portugal's bilge, and was open from tiller to prow, some buff being stretched across the gunwales at either end. She seemed stout enough, he added.

But Joan, who had been questioning the hunter, cried out that Kyrger had sighted two ships several days before the lugger put off from the coast. The Samoyed had followed the vessels for a while, never having seen ships of such size in his life.

“That would be the Esperanza and the Confidentia, Sir Hugh's vessels,” observed Thorne. “Ask him where they were sighted.”

Kyrger pointed to the eastward.

“How were they headed?”

The Samoyed indicated the same direction, and Thorne was puzzled. Sir Hugh had not put in to the Wardhouse but had gone on, apparently three or four days after Chancellor. The three vessels might be expected to join company again. At all events, Sir Hugh would not come to the Wardhouse now. But why had he not appeared at the rendezvous?

“Ask him if he has ever been far along the coast to the east,” he said at length.

Kyrger held up all the fingers of both hands, and nodded his head emphatically.

“He means either ten days travel or ten kills of game,” Joan explained. “It might be a hundred leagues.”

“In ten days?” broke in Peter, who scented deceit. “'Tis not to be believed.”

“They ride behind reindeer when the snow is on the ground,” Joan assured him. “They go very swiftly. And Kyrger says what I have told you, my masters. The ice hath closed the sea a hundred leagues from here.”

Thorne considered this, and saw that there was no reason why they should remain on the island. He could be of more assistance to Chancellor by seeking him out; besides, he now had the maid on his hands, and had found in Kyrger a guide who might be invaluable to the voyagers.

“Then will we follow the ships,” he said slowly, “and, in God's mercy, may come up with them. And you, Mistress Joan, will come with me to the fellowship of Christians again.”

HE WATCHED the Samoyed and believed that the Easterling had no ill feeling toward them. What went on in the mind of the little hunter was a mystery; but it was certain that the man had attached himself to them.

Kyrger assented to their plan without comment. He seemed more interested in Thorne's crossbow which he was allowed to examine while Peter returned to the Wardhouse for a sack of biscuits and cheese and their few personal belongings, the girl accompanying him, to bid the grave inside the palisade a last farewell.

Seeing that Kyrger had not been slain, the other Samoyeds put in appearance and squatted down a bowshot away, and were induced to go to the lugger when the others returned, Peter lamenting the fact that Andrews' trade goods must be left behind. There was no room in the boat for the bales, and the seven of them.

The wind was favorable, and in a few hours the island group was lost to sight, Peter guiding the lugger toward the shore that soon loomed over their heads. They coasted for a while until Kyrger called out that his camp lay inland from where they were.

By nightfall they were sitting around a fire, in a clump of firs, thawing out their chilled limbs while the hunter roasted wild fowl on a spit over the flames, and the two Samoyeds crouched at the edge of the circle of light, watching the actions of the white skinned strangers, afraid to come nearer.

Afterward, Joan slept soundly in Kyrger's diminutive tent of heavy felt stretched over a frame of small birch poles, while Thorne and Peter took turn at mounting guard by the fire, both in good spirits at being again upon the mainland. The hours passed, and the light did not grow stronger.

Instead, the surface of the snow, broken by the dark patches of bare earth under the trees, seemed to glow with a radiance of its own. Not a breath of air stirred; the tips of the firs hung lifeless. It was as if a curtain had been drawn over the sun.

Joan awakened, and they prepared food in silence, and before they had done Thorne uttered an exclamation, pointing out to sea. During the night, the Samoyeds, aroused by something unperceived by the Englishmen, had gone down to the shore and launched the lugger. Now it could be seen half way out to the blur of the islands, tossing on a restless swell

Clearly there was wind out there and overhead a shrill whining was to be heard from a vast height. Peter cocked his head and listened attentively, becoming more and more uneasy without being able to put his foreboding in words; but Kyrger who had come up with a pair of reindeer, cast one glance at die white-capped swell, and fell to work taking down the tent.

He threw away the birch frame and cut heavy stakes from the pile of firewood. These he drove into the ground in a circle about the edge of the felt, which he clewed down, using twisted strands of hemp.

“Aye, aye shipmate,” cried Peter, bearing a hand at the task as soon as he saw what the hunter wanted done. “Here's all taut and snug. But what's the lay?”

Working swiftly and moving about silently in his fur footsacks, Kyrger pounded in all the stakes but two until, save at that one point, his circular felt was tamped down to the ground.

Then, with broad leather thongs, he bound up his supply of dried meat, with the belongings of his companions, and lashed the bundle fast in the crotch of a big fir. The bag of biscuit and cheese he thrust under the felt.

“'Tis little he will suffer us to take with us when we set out,” grumbled the boatswain.

“Nay, I think he intends to bide here,” said Thorne. “Look at the harts.”

The reindeer were behaving strangely. They were short-legged gray beasts with heavy hair and longer antlers than the men bad ever seen before. As soon as Kyrger had turned them loose they had gone to a hollow between the trees and stretched out on the ground, their muzzles pointing toward the sea.

The hunter trotted past Thorne, his arms filled with moss that he had grubbed up from bare patches of earth. This moss he piled under the nostrils of the beasts. He ran off and reappeared with three fur robes, one having a buff lining. This he gave to Peter, sharing one of the others with Thorne.

His own he wrapped around him quickly, covering his head completely, and, walking to the hollow where the reindeer lay, stretched himself at full length close to one of the beasts. Springing up and throwing off his robe, he motioned to Peter to follow his example.

“Kyrger says,” Joan explained, “that we must wrap our heads in the coverings and he down with our heads toward the sea. A khylden is coming out of the Ice Sea.”

“What is that?” Thorne asked.

“A snow driver. I do not know what it is. Kyrger says we must do as his reindeer.” The hunter spoke to her again, and she added. “You and I are to creep under the felt—'twill not hold Peter's bulk.”

“A snow driver? Faith, man or beast or elemental, let it come,” growled Peter. “Who fears a starm on the mainland? I'll not lie battened under hatches.”

He went back to the fire and sat down, while Thorne went to see if the skiff was still visible. By now it must have reached the harbor at the Wardhouse, and before long Tuon and his men would be returning, he reflected.

BUT Tuon and his men did not come that day. The sky overhead darkened to a black pall; only along the edges of the horizon a half light played, like fen fires or phosphorescence at sea. The shrill and invisible voice in the heights deepened to a howl that was almost human, punctuated by the roaring of the surf.

Thorne noticed that the trees of the grove were moving unsteadily; he heard a human voice calling him plaintively, and at once the sound was snatched away by a mighty droning in the air. The ranks of firs bent back and quivered, as a ship heels over before a sudden blast and labors in righting herself.

And then he felt for the first time the breath of the Ice Sea, the touch of the snow driver.

In that instant cold struck through him as if he had been utterly naked. He was driven from the knoll on which he stood, and pushed toward the camp. Without volition of his own he began to run, and heard his name called. He turned toward the sound, and saw Kyrger kneeling at the edge of the felt, beckoning him.

Thorne crawled under the covering, and found that his fur robe had been pushed in ahead of him. Joan was there beside him, invisible in the darkness, her man's sea-cloak drawn over her.

“Roll up in your coverall,” she cautioned him. “Kyrger says that we must keep warm, else we never shall be warm again.”

He both heard and felt the Samoyed driving home the two stakes that had been left loose. He was lying on a dry bed of pine needles, and even as he wriggled into is furs he was conscious that these were being driven against his face with something that stung his skin like tiny specks of hot iron.

Covering his head, he lay still a while until the chill had left him, listening to the whining of the wind that came in great gusts, wondering how Peter and Kyrger were faring.

At length, being minded to find out, he crept from his furs and pushed up the flap of the tent enough to thrust his head and shoulders out. And he almost cried aloud in astonishment. Snow, a fine, dry snow, was whirling about him, driving into eyes and ears, and making it difficult to breathe. This was not like the snow storms that he had known, where flakes fell heavily into a moist mass underfoot.

This was the breath of the snow driver, tinged with the cold of outer space, more malignant and pitiless than human enemies. Thorne knew now the meaning of khylden, knew too that it would be utterly useless for him to try to stir outside their covering.

He crept back, shivering, and felt the girl draw nearer him for warmth.

CHAPTER XIII

THE GATE IN THE SKY

FOR nearly three days the snow driver raged, and then there fell a calm. The whole of the earth was blanketed in white and only the dense clump of firs showed the spot where four human beings slept, two feet beneath the surface of the snow.

The reindeer were the first to sense the passing of the storm, and staggered up, tossing their heads and going off at once to paw at the drifts with their cleft hoofs in search of the moss that was their winter food. The movement aroused Kyrger, who bobbed up and shook himself like a dog. Picking up a fallen branch, he went to where Joan and Thorne were buried, feeling around with his feet until he found the spot.

Here he hesitated a moment, his eyes traveling to the bundle of gear secured in the tree. This was to him incalculable treasure, and, above the other things he coveted the crossbow which sent a shaft twice as far as his bow.

It came into his mind that if he let the outlanders sleep on they would die and the weapon would be his as well as the other things. In fact he wondered whether the other three were not dead already.

Then the Samoyed began to thrust the snow away with his branch. The same instinct that had led him to safeguard the lives of the helpless three, now called to him to rouse them. Kyrger had accepted Thorne as his master. He looked upon the armiger as a young lord, in much the same way that Thorne cherished the memory of Edward, his king.

He hauled up the felt and satisfied himself that Thorne still breathed; about the maiden he was more doubtful. He examined the biscuits, and saw that they had eaten something. Then he set to work rubbing snow on the man's face and hands until the blue tinge faded from the skin and Thorne opened his eyes, grimacing with pain, and incapable of movement until the hunter had rubbed his limbs.

“Mistress Joan?” he croaked, and rose to his knees, swaying dizzily as the blood began to circulate through his veins again.

He drew back the hood from the girl's face and felt for the pulse in her throat. He could feel nothing through the numbness of his fingers.

“Fire,” he muttered. “We must have a fire.”

Helped by Kyrger, he plowed his way to the bundle in the tree and took from it a powder horn and steel and flint. Then, cutting off a length of the Samoyed's loosely woven rope, he untwisted the hemp strands. Gathering a double handful of dead twigs from the firs, he went back to the spot kept dear of snow by the felt and his own body.

Building a small mound of twigs and pine needles, he poured a little powder from the horn and fell to striking the steel against the flint stone. Presently a spark flew into the powder grains and flared up, eating into the dead twigs and the hemp strands.

Kyrger, who had watched with interest, now brought larger twigs and coaxed the tiny flame into a crackling blaze. To this branches were added until the fire glowed warmly. The heat only served to quicken the girl's heavy breathing, until Thorne chafed her wrists and throat with snow.

After a while her eyes flickered, and she sighed. A kind of smile touched her lips, bringing the semblance of life back into her again. He himself ached in every joint and his vision played queer tricks. He fancied that the whole sky over the sea was on fire.

Kyrger had anticipated his need, and brought frozen meat, which he placed on flat rocks in the fire. A savory odor spread into the air, and, as if roused by this summons, Peter Palmer dragged himself out of his white mausoleum and crouched down by the fire.

Thorne noticed with weary surprize that the stout boatswain was weeping. Tears trickled down his hollow cheeks, but he said no word. He kept his eyes fixed on the meat until Thorne had forced a piece between the girl's teeth and induced her to chew and swallow it.

When Joan would eat no more the three men fell on the meat and divided what remained between them. Then Peter tightened his belt and looked around him slowly.

“I said truth,” he grunted at length. ”This maiden was a sea troll; the land is not her place. By black arts she hath fetched us to the very portal of —— which is plainly to be seen over yonder.”

Thorne looked over his shoulder and rubbed his eyes. What he had taken for a fantasy was still visible.

A light cloud arched over the northern horizon and from this cloud fiery streamers stretched to the zenith. Up and down these streamers passed a radiance, now purple, now yellow, but always flickering up to an immense height where it vanished in a kind of mist.

As Thorne watched, the radiance vanished, to reappear almost instantly in a different form. Gigantic, glowing pillars seemed now to rise from the dark horizon to the regions of outer space. This glow palpitated and grew stronger until his eyes ached. The pillars were columns of fire, towering over their heads, but giving out no heat.

Then the fiery portals, that had so wrought upon Peter's fancy, vanished and the elusive streamers sprang into being again.

“I have sailed the seas of the earth,” said the shipman solemnly, “and I have seen the water rise up into pillars that reached to the sky. I've clapped my deadlights on the serpent that the Good Book names Leviathan, daddle me else. I've seen fishes fly through the air, off Madagascar, it were. But yonder gate in the sky is the gate of Satan's do-minions.”

Having relieved his mind of this augury, he fell into a troubled sleep. Somewhere in the lurid darkness a tree trunk cracked sharply, and Thorne heard far inland the howling of a wolf pack, coursing the hard snow on the heels of the storm. Hunched close to the fire that warmed them into life, he wondered what the morrow might bring.

THE armiger admitted to Joan that they must have heavier garments, if they were to enter the unknown world to the east. The girl labored with Kyrger in sewing rude coats out of the furs for the two men to wear. For thread she had the supple gut preserved by the Samoyed, and for needle a bit of whale-bone rubbed into the desired shape.

Meanwhile Kyrger got out what appeared to be a pair of great wooden skates, nearly two ells long and as wide as the palm of his hand, with strips of reindeer skin fixed to the under side.

Thus shod and carrying a long staff, he could glide over the surface of the snow beside the sled on which the girl rode. Thorne and Peter ran or walked in the hard track made by the cloven hoofs of the beasts and the run of the sled.

It was necessary to carry on the sled powder, tinder and pine branches enough to kindle a fire at a moment's notice. Only in this way could they ward off the at tacks of the lean, gray wolves, larger than any the voyagers had seen before.

It was after they had beaten off a pack of these wolves and were pushing forward warily, that Thorne halted and pointed down at some large tracks that ran across the slot of the sled.

“I pray you, Mistress Joan,” he said, “tell the Samoyed we must have good fresh meat, ere ever we can reach the ships. Here are bear's tracks, and we will hunt down the beast.”

But when the maiden translated his speech to Kyrger, the Easterling shook his head and uttered one word decisively.

“Kyrger says,” she explained, “that this is ermecin—the strongest. 'Tis thus they name the white bear of the Ice Sea.”

“Nevertheless we will seek it out.”

The small Samoyed appeared to be troubled. Ermecin, he declared, could not be brought down by his arrows. Nor would the pistols of the outlanders serve to stop the rush of this beast. Moreover the white bear was sacred to a neighboring tribe, the Ostiaks.

Thorne was determined to get good meat for the girl, and took his crossbow from the sled, winding it with care and setting a bolt in the slot. Joan insisted on going with him, saying that she had a dread of being left alone. Peter was put in charge of the reindeer and the three set out toward the shore.

The tracks were fresh, and Kyrger followed them easily, though reluctantly enough. They descended a gully and came out on the shore, sighting the bear before long, among a nest of rocks.

It scented or saw them at the same time and raised its head on a swaying, sinuous neck. Thorne saw that its head was small and its body greater than that of any bear he had set eyes upon. Moreover, being white tinged with yellow, it blended with the snow behind it.

It did not seem to fear them because it made no effort to move away when they approached within bowshot.

“Bid Kyrger loose his shafts,” said Thorne briefly. “For he can shoot several, and I but one.”

The Samoyed shook his head, reluctantly, yet obediently fitted an arrow to the string and bent his short bow. The missile whipped through the air and struck the white bear in the flank, but did not penetrate half its length. The brute swung toward them instantly, its head weaving from side to side.

A second arrow pierced its shoulder, and it swept through the snow, moving with unexpected speed, so that Kyrger's third shot merely glanced along its ribs.

The hunter cast down his bow and drew his knife, the breath hissing between his teeth, while Thorne planted his feet and sighted the crossbow, sending a bolt into the bear's throat.

The beast plunged forward, and gained its feet slowly, blood streaming from its open jaws. Then it fell on its side, not a dozen paces from them.

Kyrger shouted, wild with excitement. He pointed admiringly at Thorne's weapon and ran to the bear, chanting something loudly. To Thorne's surprize Joan smiled, although her lips were bloodless. She had not stirred or spoken during the charge of the great beast.

“He is saying,” she laughed, “that the spirit of the bear must not be angered at us. He is telling the spirit that we did not slay it, nay, a wicked Ostiak sped the bolt. And when the bear's spirit seeks blood revenge in another body it must follow the tribe of Ostiaks.”

“What are they?”

“My father said they dwell more to the east. They are cruel people, who slay strangers. They are the dog-sled people, more warlike than the reindeer-sled Samoyeds.”

Leaving Kyrger to skin the animal, they returned to the camp, where Peter had kindled a fire and Thorne took the shipman aside.

“Many days have passed since we bade Master Chancellor farewell. By my reckoning this should be close to Christmas, if, indeed it is not that very day.”

“Noël!”

Peter glanced up at the flickering arc of the northern lights, and at the gray sweep of the shore with its fringe of ice floes.

“That is ill said, younker, for it puts me in mind of the honest Yule log, aye, and the boar's head, and a pudding with brandy afire. And here us be on Christmas eve, where the very angels would fear to raise a chant, and the good Christ——”

“He would not fear to venture here.”

Thorne wrinkled his brows in thought.

Peter regarded his companion in some surprize, for he had not noticed that Thorne was given to prayer or meditation.

“'Tis of Mistress Joan I am thinking,” went on the armiger. “Her spirit lags, and if we do not show her some care she will not endure in this life. Now, she is ever mindful of prayer and such-like. How if we hold the Yuletide as best we may?”

“Aye, but how?”

“Why, we can cut us a proper tree and make shift to trim it. Then may we sing a round of carols.”

Peter rubbed his chin, and eyed his friend sidewise.

“Fairly said, if we had e'en a nuggin of brandy or a sprig of hollywood. But carols—harumpf! Do you sing the words, Master Ralph, and I'll carry the melody, blast me else! A fine voice have I for melody, but as for words—now that's a craft of another rig.”

NEVERTHELESS, he got his hatchet from the sled and disappeared into the twilight, while Thorne aided Kyrger in preparing the steaks the Samoyed had brought up with the bear skin.

By the time the meal was ready, and Joan seated on the sled, he returned, carrying a small fir which he set erect in the snow a little distance from the fire and proceeded, with an air of mysterious importance, to set icicles in the branches.

Then he placed the last of the biscuits in Kyrger's solitary pewter dish and drew from his girdle a small leather flask.

“I filled it at the Wardhouse,” he said defensively when he caught Thorne's eye on him. “Aye, 'twas cherished 'gainst sore need. 'Tis the last bilge of the brandy.”

With that he took a splinter of wood from the fire and touched the pewter plate with flame. Blue fire sprang up about the biscuits, and Kyrger who had been watching with growing interest, hid his face in his arm.

It was obvious to the Samoyed that these outlanders were making shaman magic, a magic that involved the cutting of a pine tree and burning what appeared to be water on a common pewter plate.

Peter raised the dish on high and his dumpy face split into a grin.

“Fair greeting to ye Mistress Joan. My service to ye, lady, on this eve of evenings, this merry Yuletide.”

“Is it truly so?” The dark eyes of the maiden grew somber. “Nay, you have taken all our biscuits, and burnt up your brandy.”

“No matter.” Peter waved a huge hand grandly. “I know where more is to be had. Aye, we will have no more troubles to ward. Now—” he laid the burning dish at her feet and cleared his throat—“a bit of chantry, to ease this down the ways:

“The boar's head in hand bring I,
With garlands gay and rosemary;
I pray you all sing merrily——

“To be sure,” he broke off apologetically, “we do lack summat of a boar's head, and garlands. We must e'en make shift without the rosemary, but Master Ralph and I will pipe up a song, having, as it were, a pretty face—a fair, sweet face, I say—whereby to lay our course.”

He puffed out his cheeks and made his bow, and Thorne, who had been no little surprized at his high spirits and hearty manner, saw that the girl had smiled. So he went to stand by the fire and lifted his fine voice against the leaden silence of the night.

“Forth they went and glad they were;
Going, they did sing,
With mirth and solace they made good cheer,
For joy of that new tiding.”

His voice, which had been hoarse, now rang out clearly:

“Neither in halls, nor yet in bowers,
born would He not be,
Neither in castles, nor yet in towers
That seemly were to see;
But at His Father's will,
Betwixt an ox and an ass,
Jesu this king born He was;
Heaven he bring us till!”

Peter nodded approval beating time with a finger as if he was a criterion of good music. His rasping roar joined in the chorus, while he kept an eye on the maiden:

“Forth they went and glad they were;
Going, they did sing—
Noël”

“And now,” quoth the shipman, “God lack, the maid is weeping. She is a-leak at the eyes.”

So, in truth, Joan was crying, her hands pressed to her cheeks. The two men surveyed her doubtfully, rather taken aback, at the result of their holiday spirit. Peter made bold to lay his hand on her shoulder.

“What cheer, mistress? Sets the wind foul or fair?”

She glanced up, her face flushed and a smile twitching her lips.

“Nay, I am a simpleton, good Peter. The ballad minded me of Christmas Eve long since when we had candles in the casements of the cottages of Cairness, and the children sang sweet carols. Nay, my tears were not—not of grief. I do give you thanks for your entertainment, good Peter.”

The boatswain drew back as if satisfied and motioned Thorne to one side.

“Does 'ee love the lass, Master Ralph?”

“Why not? Certainly, she is a fair companion and a brave soul.”

“Ah.” Peter nodded sagely. “Y'are a dullard with words, but still, with an observant eye. In a manner o' speaking, ye keep a sharp lookout, Master Ralph. But not so sharp as Peter Palmer,” and he made mysterious motions with brows and lips. “I have good tidings for ye, younker. The maid is an honest maid, and no sea troll.”

Thorne laughed.

“And why, Peter?”

“By reason of the holy words of the Christian song. When it was sung, she did not vanish, she did not slip cable and leave us. If she had been a witch, now, or a troll, she would not be here. So I say, if ye love the lass, why cherish her and ye will have no harm by it.”

“I am indebted to your wisdom, Peter, and to your—ob-servant eye.”

“Y'are so,” assented the shipman. “For I was about to tell the lass my tidings. While I was on yonder headland seeking the Yule fir I saw the ships. Aye, Sir Hugh's ship and the Confidentia, lying in the ice of a bay. Come morrow, we'll be with our mates.”

Kyrger squatting by the fire, waited solemnly for the end of this ritual of the outlanders. He wondered if they had been paying reverence to the quoren vairgin, the Reindeer Spirit.

Perhaps, he thought, like himself they had been paying their respects to the elder souls, the spirits of their dead companions, which were quite visible in the sky.

Purple and fiery red, these elder souls flamed on the broad gate of the sky. Kyrger knew well that the northern lights were the souls of the dead, rushing from earth to the zenith in their wild, merry dance.

Never had he seen the gate in the sky so broad, the flames so bright.

CHAPTER XIV

THORNE MEETS SIR HUGH

THE little Confidentia lay stranded in a chaos of jutting ice fragments and rocks. A few cables' lengths farther out the admiral-ship rode at anchor, although so girdled with ice that it was wedged fast.

They were in a shallow bay, where the wind, sweeping in from the open sea, had driven ice floes into a solid pack. The shores were treeless.

Under the wind gusts the waist curtains, that had been put up to shelter the crews, shivered, and the long pennant of Sir Hugh's ship whipped around the mast. From the solid ice near the Confidentia a trail ran through the snow to disappear over the distant hillocks.

Thorne and Peter shouted joyfully and Kyrger clucked on his reindeer until they entered this trail and reached the shore. Without waiting for a hail or a sight of their shipmates, the two men crossed the frozen surface of the bay, climbing between the rocks, and reached the ship's ladder.

Peter was first under the waistcloth and Thorne found him standing by the bole of the mainmast, staring ait. The helmsman of the Confidentia faced them, on his knees, one arm crooked around the tiller. He had a ragged red cap cocked over one ear.

“God's mercy,” whispered the boatswain, “look at his skin!”

The seaman's whole face was purple, his lips, drawn back from the teeth, were no longer visible. Peter climbed the poop ladder and bent over the man; then he touched the fellow's arm.

“Stiff as a merlyn-spike,” he muttered.

Thorne had gone to the door on the quarter deck and thrust it open, his pulse quickening. For this was Durforth's ship.

In the dim light from the narrow ports the great cabin seemed deserted and he wondered if the officers were on shore.

Presently he stooped down and touched a misshapen form on the deck planking, a human body so bundled up in cloaks and blankets that it was hardly to be recognized. It was bent up in a knot as if gripped by intolerable agony.

With his hand on the man's shoulder he tried to turn him over, and was forced to pull with all his strength. The body did turn over, but the bent legs came up into the air without altering their position.

“That would be Dick Ingram, master's mate,” said Peter behind him in a strained voice, “his carcass, poor ——.”

Thorne released his hold and the coiled-up body fell over on its side again with a muffled thump.

“Save us!” cried the boatswain, his eyes starting from his head. “I've seen the workings of dropsy and scurvy and such, but here is a black plague. The black death itself hath fallen upon this ship.”

“Nay,” said Thorne slowly, “these twain are frozen.”

“Aye, they are now. But how did they die? Let us go for'ard.”

They searched the forecastle in vain, and descended from the hold to the galley which was nearly in darkness. But Peter stumbled over another body, and fumbled around on his hands and knees, breathing heavily.

“Here be a mort o' dead men,” he grunted. “What cheer, mates, who has a word for Peter Palmer that's come a weary way to have speech with ye? Who is living?”

Their ears strained, they listened for a space, then Peter gave a yell of fear, and, thrusting Thorne aside, sprang up the ladder. On the spar deck he wrenched down the waist curtain, staring out at the Bona Esperanza. His broad red face was streaming perspiration, as he cupped his hands and sent a quavering hail over the ice.

“Ahoy, the Esperanza! Nick Anthony, where be ye? Ho, Allen! Master Davison—Garge Blage——”

When no response came from the admiral-ship, Peter choked and the blood drained from his face. Wagging his massive head from side to side he began to walk unsteadily toward the ladder.

“Feared I be, Master Ralph. Feared and boding—let be; by all the saints, let me go.”

“Then go,” assented Thorne, “and bid Kyrger make camp beyond sight of the ships. I will seek out Sir Hugh and his company.”

AN HOUR later Thorne stood alone in the roundhouse of the Bona Esperanza, his brows knit in thought, his eyes heavy with grief. Alone he was, assuredly, except for the wide-winged gulls that circled over the masts, swerving away when the tip of the pennant flapped. Yet was the Esperanza fully manned, the stern cabins occupied. The cook was in his galley, curled up on the cold stove, Sir Hugh seated at his table by the stern casements.

Crew and officers were dead. Cadavers leered at the armiger from deck planks or berths, the eyes standing open as if gazing upon some devastating horror. All the faces were tinged with the same bluish cast. All the bodies were wrapped in odds and ends of garments, tabards and cloaks over all.

Some, apparently, had died while crawling to the lower portions of the ship; others, chiefly the merchant-adventurers, in their berths.

Thorne fought down a rising fear that impelled him to run after Peter and escape from this assemblage of the unspeaking dead. He had seen on the captain-general's table two folded pamphlets and judged that Sir Hugh had written therein. This message must be read.

With an effort, he made his way into the passage and so to the main cabin which was nearly dark, the ports being boarded over. And at once the skin of his head grew cold, a cry trembled in his throat. Before him and below him in the gloom two red eyes were fastened upon him.

He knew that they were eyes because they moved, and he was aware of a faint hissing. Before he could take a grip on himself, or reach for a weapon, the tiny fires glowed brighter. There was a scampering of little feet and something darted past him.

Turning swiftly he saw an ermine, a white creature kin to the weasel, void of fear and relentless as a ferret on the scent of prey.

“What a chucklehead I am,” he cried aloud, “to be frighted by a ferret.”

But his own voice, ringing hollow in the chill of the pent-in ship did not serve to reassure him. Passing into the presence of the dead leader, he forced himself to take up the papers under the open eyes of tall Sir Hugh.

He saw that both pamphlets were inscribed on the outside. One, marked The will and testament of Sir Hugh Willoughhie, Knight, he laid down again.

The other he made out to be a short journal of the voyage. This he pored through slowly, for he was fairly skilled at reading, weighing everything in his mind, as was his habit.

Sir Hugh had been driven far out of his course by the storm that had separated the ships, and had picked up the Confidentia when the weather cleared. They put back, but failed to fall in with the Wardhouse.

We sounded and had 160 fadomes whereby we thought to be farre from land and perceived that the land lay not as the Globe made mention.

For a month they cruised in the Ice Sea, finding the coast barren, and, putting into this haven assailed by

very evil weather, as frost, snow and hail, as though it had been the dead of winter. We thought it best to winter there. Wherefore we sent out three men Southsouthwest, to search if they could find people, who went three days journey but could find none: after that we sent other three Westward four days journey, which also returned without find ing any people. Then sent we three men Southeast three days journey, who in like sort returned without finding of people or any similitude of habitation.

At this point, on the eighteenth day of September, the journal of Sir Hugh Willoughby ended.^[1]

Thorne read over the line “the land lay not as the Globe made mention” to be sure that he was not mistaken. No, the words were clear and honest in their meaning.

Why had Durforth, who was in company with Sir Hugh, failed to pick up the Wardhouse? He knew its bearing. Why did the journal end, as it were, in the middle of a day, and that day long before the death of the captain general?

Now Thorne wished that his father, the Cosmographer, could have been at his side to answer these riddles. He was no navigator. But the thought came to him that his father would have gone to Durforth's cabin to look at the globe which had failed Sir Hugh. Durforth must have led the ships away from the Wardhouse to separate them from Chancellor.

Then the agent of Spain had put the ships upon the coast in a desolate region, swept by the winds that came off the pack ice. And, perhaps Sir Hugh had come to suspect Durforth, perhaps the journal had recorded his suspicions after this day in September and Durforth had removed the pages after the death of his commander.

That Durforth was still alive Thorne believed firmly, after he returned to the Confidentia and searched the master's cabin. Durforth's body was not to be seen. And, upon the table he found a candle burning, a mass of wax with a wick stuck in it, the whole floating in water in a tin basin. This was the only kind of candle Sir Hugh would permit to be lighted in the cabins, owing to the danger of fire. It might have been burning for two or three days.

And the fresh tracks from the ship to the shore had been made after the last storm. One man, possibly more, had left the ship within the last days. Thorne picked up the candle and looked at the globe. He had some skill at chart reading—having watched many a time the Cosmographer drawing the outlines of the earth—and he knew that this was a complete mappamundi. Both hemispheres and the northern and southern seas were traced on the great copper ball very clearly.

And he saw, running due east, from the island of the Wardhouse, a long body of water, a strait that extended to the mark of “Cathay.” But the natives said no such passage existed, and the journal of Sir Hugh bore them out.

Durforth's globe was false. It had been drawn to mislead Sir Hugh, even as Renard's agent had been sent to put an end to the voyage. This had been done, and the lives of two hundred men snuffed out like so many candle flames.

THORNE lifted his head, hearing, in the utter silence of the ship, a footfall in the main cabin. It was as light and ellusive as an animal's, yet he was certain that it drew closer to the door by which he was standing.

Drawing his sword and taking the mitten off his right hand, he put out the candle with a sweep of the blade. Waiting until his eyes were accustomed to the gloom, he lifted the latch with his left hand and opened the door with a thrust of his foot.

The half light of the outer cabin disclosed Kyrger.

“Ostiaks,” murmured the hunter, and glanced expectantly at the white man.

KYRGER was as restless as one of his own reindeer in a pen. When he moved it was as if his feet slipped over thin ice. He kept one eye on the deck beams within inches of his skull. In all his life he had not stood within four walls, certainly never in the maw of a giant's ship such as this. One that went forward against the wind.

“Faith, here's a coil,” thought the armiger. “I'd best go with him to see what's in the wind.”

But Kyrger did not wish this. Motioning for Thorne to watch, he began the pantomime which all primitive races understand. First he impersonated the voyagers, sitting around the fire. Then he jumped up and grasped at his bow, sending an imaginary arrow at an enemy.

By degrees Thorne understood, that Ostiak tribesmen had attacked the camp; they had bound Joan and Peter and the reindeer. They had chased Kyrger nearly to the bay.

A very few of the Samoyed's words Thorne had picked up in the last months.

“Sinym ka-i-unam?” he asked quickly. “Has the little sister gone to the regions below?”

By shaking his head Kyrger signified that Joan was still alive. So was Peter, thanks to the mail jerkin the shipman wore.

Looking through a crack in one of the boarded-up ports, Thorne saw that the hunter had been telling the truth. On the shore a group of natives were descending toward the ice with two sledges drawn by dogs. Thorne counted eleven of them, armed with long spears and clubs.

He cast a glance aloft. The battle nettings that might have been slung from the quarterdeck rail to the forecastle, to keep out boarders, were not to be seen. Turning into the roundhouse, he looked at the racks where harquebuses and crossbows should have been stacked about the butt of the mizzen. None were there, and he found time to reflect that Durforth must have taken them from the ship.

But his eye fell upon a weapon more potent than any firelock, a murderer. Bolted to a pivot on the quarterdeck rail was one of the light cannon that could be trained at will upon any part of the waist or foredeck. Signing to Kyrger to watch the approaching Ostiaks, he dived below, searching until he found an open keg of powder in the hold.

Dipping up a good quantity in his cap, he climbed the after companion to the roundhouse, which served as the armory. Here he filled a small sack with bullets, nails and scraps of iron. Here, too, he found flint and steel and a slow match.

Back at the gun again he rammed home the loose powder, stuffed in wadding and his shot. Then he primed the touch hole and drew Kyrger back with him to the far angle of the roundhouse where they could not be seen by the natives climbing up the starboard ladder.

It did not take long to strike a spark that ignited the long fuse in his hand. Nursing the slow match he waited, listening to the chattering talk of the Ostiaks and smiling at the sudden silence that fell when the first of them saw the dead helmsman.

Then he walked out to the quarterdeck rail. Nine pairs of small, bleared eyes fastened on him instantly and a spear whirred through the air, striking the chest of his fur jacket. The heavy skin and the leather jerkin under it broke the bone point of the spear, which did no more than shake him.

For a second he looked down into flat, swollen faces, fringed by ragged and greasy hair. About each neck was coiled a string of something whitish, the entrails of deer, he discovered a moment later, which served the Ostiaks for food as well as ornament. Then he trained the gun and touched it off as two more spears flashed by his head.

Kyrger bounded his own height from the deck when the murderer roared. Coughing, as the dense powder fumes swirled back, the Samoyed saw that three of the nine Ostiaks who had come over the rail were stretched on the deck and that two others were limping around in the smoke, yelling with pain.

Never before had Kyrger heard a gun go off, and he was struck with the awfulness of his leader's magic. Perceiving that he himself was without hurt, he plucked up heart and glided to the side bulwark, from which point of vantage he shot one of the natives who had remained on the ice, before they recovered from their astonishment.

Meanwhile Thorne had descended to the waist, sword in hand. Four of the Ostiaks snarled at him, and rushed through the eddying smoke. They had thrown their spears and wielded knives or clubs, and Thorne ran the first one through the body before they realised the length of his sword.

Then a thin man came forward, armed with the shank-bone of some animal. He wore a woman's leather skirt and his long black hair hung to his shoulders, over a kind of crude armor—so Thorne judged it to be. A multitude of iron images were suspended on cords slung from neck and waist. These images were of dogs and sheep and birds, crudely wrought, but covering his emaciated body completely.

Thorne remembered that this leader of the Ostiaks had been in the very path of the cannon's discharge, but had come through unharmed.

“So you are for your long home, my iron rogue,” he gibed, for it was his way to talk when steel was out.

He stepped forward and thrust at the Ostiak's side. But his blade seemed to pass through air, or the loose tunic of the strange man, who screamed at him and struck with the bone club.

Thorne would have been brained if he had not ducked instinctively, the club smashing down on his shoulder blade.

He recovered for a second thrust, but the old native glided away from him, and disappeared under the waist cloth. The armiger sought for him along the rail, but saw him presently running over the ice.

Turning quickly, he was just in time to ward the knife of an Ostiak who had crept up from behind. Slashing at the throat of this newest antagonist, he sprang after the man of the iron apron, seeing that the few surviving tribesmen were fleeing in as many different directions.

“Shoot him!” he cried to Kyrger, who had been watching the annihilation of the remaining foemen with interest.

Believing that Thorne was aided by supernatural powers, it had not occurred to the Samoyed to join in the mêlée. Now he shook his head.

“Shaman menkva,” he grunted. “A wizard and a devil.”

It would have been quite useless to send an arrow after a wizard, Kyrger knew. Had not his friend and the wizard tried to slay each other and failed? How then could Kyrger be expected to slay the shaman?

Thorne swore under his breath and started in pursuit of the Ostiak. The lanky shaman seemed to float over ice ridges and rocks, his long hair flying out behind, his iron tunic rattling. Gaining the shore, he shrieked at his dogs and set to work to tie the second team by a leather thong to the first sled.

When this was done he hopped into the rear sled, cracked his whip and glided off as the beasts dug their claws into the trail and strained at the traces. The sleds picked up speed and presently whirled out of sight in a smother of snow, the shaman peering back at his pursuer, his pointed teeth gleaming between writhing lips.

Thinking of Joan and Peter bound in the camp, Thorne settled down grimly to the trail. His heavy boots made clumsy going on the hard surface and the cries of the wizard and the snapping of the whip drew farther away from him.

Kyrger had lingered on the Confidentia to visit each of the wounded Ostiaks and when he dropped from the ladder Durforth's ill fated ship had added to her crew of dead men.

CHAPTER XV

DARKNESS

BY THE fire that Kyrger had built, Thorne found Peter stretched like a stout log in the snow, his arms bound to his side, and a blue bruise swelling in his tangle of red hair. He was still breathing, and Thorne dragged him into the Samoyed's sledge, covering him up with the skin of the white bear to keep him from freezing to death. Joan was gone; so were the dogs and their master, and the reindeer. After a little Kyrger appeared and took in the scene with a comprehensive glance.

As best he could Thorne explained to the attentive hunter that they must follow the dog sleds. All other matters must wait until he had set Joan free from the creature in the leather apron.

“Sinym—sinym thusind,” muttered Kyrger nodding assent, for he saw that the outlander was very angry. “Young sister—the pursuit of blood atonement.”

He lifted his head and called shrilly, and Thorne saw the two reindeer appear from the nearest thicket, munching at the branches as they came. They had been driven off by the shaman or had run away from the dogs. Thorne learned thereafter that dogs and reindeer were hostile as the two tribes that were served by each animal.

Kyrger lost no time in putting the reindeer into the leather traces, tying the guiding thong attached to their off horns to the hand bar of the sledge. Then he beckoned Thorne who discovered that the savage had picked up a pair of the wooden skates dropped by one of the Ostiaks. They were shorter than the Samoyed's and heavier, and Kyrger bound them firmly to Thorne's boots.

Then he led the outlander to the rear of the sledge and made him put his hands on the waist-high bar at the back.

“Thus,” he murmured to himself, “we will go as swiftly as the white pigeon flying before the wind. Be quiet my master! Let your spirit be strong when we meet new enemies who dwell where winged things can not enter and things with bones can not pass. Kai—it will be a long journey, O Thunderer, O Leaner-Against-the-Wind.”

He glided off and picked up the two staffs, which, pointed and bearing sizeable crosspieces a foot from the point, enabled him to push himself along rapidly where the snow surface was level, as if he were poling a light canoe through shallows.

Alone, he would never have started after the wizard, who could make the long journey to the hall of Erlik in the spirit world of the cold, underground region, or invoke ermecin the white bear.

But after the fight on the bark, Kyrger had immense confidence in Thorne. He believed that the armiger as well as the shaman was possessed by a spirit, whether the reindeer, the gull, the bear or the eagle, he did not know. How else had he scattered eleven Ostiaks?

He went ahead of the deer, running at times, but oftener thrusting himself onward a dozen paces with the staffs. Faster he went and faster, squatting on his haunches when the head of a slope was reached and flashing down with the speed of a flying thing.

The reindeer struck into their loose-limbed trot that covered distance amazingly. Thorne for a while had all he could do to hang on and keep his feet. Once the toe of his skis caught in a fallen branch and he was thrown heavily. But he soon learned how to lift himself over obstacles and to keep his feet together.

The gray obscurity of the day merged into the flickering radiance of night with its attendant fires in the northern sky. Kyrger looked like a winged gnome, speeding over the slot in the snow; Peter was no more than a motionless bulk under the fur pelt. Thorne could not stop and make camp for the shipman's sake. Joan, somewhere ahead of them was flying through this wilderness of unmarked snow.

The reindeer no longer seemed to him to be running. They flew through the air, their whitish bodies invisible in the smother of powdered snow, their black-muzzled heads laid back so that the horns rested along their shoulders.

HOW long they raced through the night he did not know. They were sliding down a winding gully where a few stunted larches thrust up through the drifts, when Kyrger whirled to a halt and strung his bow. His arrow sped and struck something invisible to Thorne. But the hunter pushed himself to where it lay and brought back a long white hare.

With his knife he stripped the skin off its back and offered it to the outlander. There was no time to stop to make a fire, even if wood had been at hand. The ache of hunger was strong enough for him to suck some of the blood from the hare; but then he handed it back to Kyrger, who ate the raw flesh, still steaming hot, without a qualm.

Meanwhile Thorne satisfied himself that Peter was breathing. From the gully they descended to the level surface of a frozen lake, down which the trail of the dog sleds ran. Here the reindeer, refreshed by the brief halt, made fast time and Thorne peered ahead for a sight of the Ostiak.

For hours they followed the windings of the lake, which grew steadily narrower. Trees appeared on either hand and soon they were moving between the solid walls of a forest of spruce and fir. When the strip of water was no more than a stream, Kyrger slowed down and halted his reindeer which had been running the last few miles with tongues lolling out.

Coming to Thorne's side, the Samoyed pointed above the trees ahead of them and to the right, and after a moment the armiger made out what his companion had seen, a wavering line of smoke rising against the gray sky.

For the first time Kyrger turned aside from the trail, leading his deer into a grove of spruce where they were sheltered from the wind. Then he took up the crossbow that he had placed in the sledge, and the two advanced through the timber in the direction of the smoke, the hunter circling to keep away from the stream.

They heard voices, distinct in the thin air, and crawled warily to the summit of a ridge. Here they crouched, motionless. Below them within stone's throw were three large dog sledges and a half dozen Ostiaks. Seated on a log beside the embers of a fire, Master Cornelius Durforth and Joan Andrews were talking. Squatting on a white horse skin near his two dog teams was the wizard they had pursued from the Ice Sea.

JOAN had been freed of her bonds by Durforth, who sent the shaman away from the maiden, and prepared food for her, with hot, spiced wine. Refreshed, she gazed curiously at the man who sat by her in his coat of black foxskin with an ermine collar. Joan knew the value of such things.

She saw, too, that the powerful fingers of his left hand played with the links of a gold chain at his throat; that his strong teeth glimmered through the tangle of his jutting beard. His brown eyes, utterly without expression, moved restlessly as if instinct made him uneasy. A sudden foreboding gripped Joan, who was as sensitive as a child, and fear burned in her veins more fiercely than when the shaman had thrown her into his sled.

She had seen that gold chain before, and the face that reminded her of a wolf. Too few events had come into the life of the daughter of John Andrews that she should forget one of them. Two years before at Yuletide, when the candles were lighted in the windows of Cairness—a ship driving into the haven for refuge—a stranger sitting in the tavern, listening to the tales of John Andrews of gold to be found by one who could pass south of the Ice Sea.

“Oh,” she cried, “you are the master of the black pinnace!”

Cornelius Durforth did not take his eyes from the fire.

“I have had many ships to my command.”

“The black pinnace with the dragon's head, that was manned by Burgundians.”

“Ah. Then you—” he looked at her—“would be John Andrews' daughter.”

“Aye, so. And so was my father slain by your churls.”

“How?”

“Your pinnace entered the haven of Wardhouse—” Joan faltered, but passionate anger, long pent up, was rife in her—“and your knaves looted it over the body of John Andrews, who once gave you shelter.”

“Did they so? By the Three Dead Men of Cologne, they were not my knaves. The boat once carried my flag and was made a prize by pirates out of Danemarke.”

His lips drew back in a soundless laugh.

“They paid in good coin for their frolic; I saw the boat with their bodies hanging like ripe fruit, drifting down the coast.”

His words carried conviction but the girl drew back from his face.

“Who are you?” she barely whispered.

“Cornelius Durforth, the Burgundian. What, wench, have you never heard of the merchant of Ghent?”

Her mind flitted among questions. What was Durforth doing on the Ice Sea? How had he escaped alone from the stricken ships of the English? Why had the Ostiak brought her to him?

He thrust out his hand to take her chin and study her face.

“Nay, wench, you wear your heart upon your sleeve. You are fair as a golden eaglet, but, on my faith, only a hooded falcon may sit on perch at its master's table. Weigh well your answer to this question: Do you trust me? Are you friend or unfriend?”

Whereat she sighed and dropped her gaze to the chain of gold about his neck.

“Good my master, who am I to stand against your will? Take me with you out of this forest to Christian folk, and I will thank you on my knees. But let us set out at once!”

In silence Durforth considered her, until a flush mantled her cheeks and his beard bristled in a wide smile.

“So! I am no wizard like Shatong the shaman—” he nodded at the Ostiak who was tapping on a drum between his knees, upon a white horsehide—“yet can I read your mind. You fear me, you have no faith in me. A witless boy follows the track of your sled through the wilderness, and it is your thought that if he rushes in upon us here he will be slain, which, indeed is most true.

“Under a cloak of meekness you would have us set out so that he will see our following and learn caution, which is a thing he never will learn. In another hour or so your armiger will be wolf meat.”

She drew away from the man, hands pressed against her cheeks.

“Would you slay him shamefully in this pagan land?”

“That will I, and he would do no less for me. By the eyes of —— you should know no land is wide enough to hold us twain. He serves his king, who is shent—aye, who lieth under sod ere now. Hath a man allegiance to the dead?”

“Aye, so,” the girl responded promptly.

“Then is he a traitor. For—and here is a merry matter—the lord prince who laid command upon me to voyage hither is now your squire's lord.”

“That may not be,” she cried passionately, “I think you are liegeman to Satan, prince of darkness.”

“Some do call him that. And, by the Three Dead Men, if Mephistophele were annointed monarch on this earth, he would not lack for followers, being both sagacious, courteous and untainted by remorse. Yet I serve Philip, son of the Emperor Charles, the mightiest lord in Christiandom. And this same Philip will sit presently upon the throne of England.”

While he spoke he had been studying the maiden, marking the tawny hair held back by the hood, the slight, firm lips and the pulse that beat in a white throat. Such beauty would command its price, and Durforth knew the very barons who would lighten their purses of a hundred gold crowns to possess her.

Yet he was embarked upon a delicate mission, and it was necessary that her tongue should be silent as to what she had seen on the Ice Sea, and what she would presently behold. He considered permitting Shatong to cut out her tongue; but she might be able to write.

Women he knew were like hawks. Tamed and hooded, fed and wing-clipped, they would be content under the hand of a master for a while—until he could be paid his price for the maiden. To tame her, she must first learn to fear him.

Unclasping his cloak, he took from the breast of his doublet two papers, folded and sealed. These he held near the fire, for the light was dim under the trees, so that she could see the imperial signet on the seals. When he saw that she had recognised it, he put the letters back very carefully in a silk pouch attached to the end of his gold chain.

“These letters missive,” he said, “are from Charles of Spain to Ivan the Terrible, emperor of Muscovy, and they are my charge.”

“Sir Hugh's letters——”

Durforth's head went back and he laughed from an open throat, a roaring laugh that reached to the ears of Thorne and the hunter who crouched behind the ridge, waiting until darkness could cover their approach to the fire. Yet they heard not the words of the agent of Philip.

“Death of my life, wench, Sir Hugh's letters are ashes long since. Sir Hugh gallant fool! Sir Hugh, lack-wit leader! Why, he ventured blindly into the Ice Sea. He sailed in circles when he lost company with Chancellor, and he proposed to winter in an open bay without fuel or food.”

Shivering, she looked up at him, and he took a savage pleasure in heightening the horror in her eyes.

“I had ventured to the northern coast before this, and had talked with the Easterlings. I knew the peril of the khylden and the cold that stiffens a man's sinews and soul. So I haled me from the fleet, to the southeast where the tribe of Ostiaks had their dwelling. Before we could return to the ships the storms had snuffed out the Englishmen.

“My pinnace had fallen foul of the Laps, and the lads that manned it were drying in the wind. I had sent it to the Warehouse so that I might sail in it to the inland sea, and thither into Muscovy. But it fell out otherwise.

“So was I set afoot. And by mischance that murdering wight Thorne, who hath crossed my path twice before now, was journeying along. the coast. My Ostiaks sighted your fire on Christmas night, and I sent Shatong with ten others to the ships to greet your comrades while I conveyed the goods I had taken from the Confidentia hither and awaited the coming of the savages.”

Again he laughed, for Durforth could enjoy a jest.

“Body of —— Thorne played in luck there. The Ostiaks had never heard a gun roar. But Shatong is a match for your wildling squire. Aye, that long haired imp is a familiar of the powers of darkness.”

“God grant,” cried Joan, “that Master Chancellor meets with you.”

“If you wish the pilot well, pray otherwise,” responded Durforth grimly, “I know where he must lie, if he lives, and it should go hard but I bring the Easterling pack upon his back.”

Into Joan's whirling thoughts came memories of childhood tales, of werewolves that took the form and semblance of men by day and turned to beasts at nightfall, of beasts that ran to join the unhallowed company of the witches' sabbath.

“How did you gain this power over the savages?” she whispered, fearful of hearing what was in her mind.

Durforth's face seemed to change, and the fire in his brown eyes died down.

“Power?” He waxed thoughtful. “Why, I can speak with them. Power springs always from wealth, because it feeds the desire of men. I promised Shatong riches incalculable if he would guard me with his men to the Town of Wooden Walls which is the door to Russia, or Muscovy. I promised to show him the mystery of gunpowder.”

He was gazing at her now, narrowly.

“My hold on them is slight. Remember that. And now say if you will cast your lot with me?”

“I will not. For-by you have said that you sent the pinnace that wrought evil to my father.”

Durforth shook his head slowly.

“Here is irony. 'Tis true the men and the ship were mine, but I did order them to conduct themselves straitly and do no harm, for fear of a broil with the English rovers. They fell a-plundering.”

It amused him that he, who had been forced to lie without cessation, should not gain credit for the one truth.

“I see,” he added, “you will have none of me. May the foul fiend take you, slut, did'st think an empire is built out of billing and cooing and tying of breast-knots? Shatong, then, shall have you.”

Glancing into her stricken face, he moved impatiently.

“My pretty vixen, I put no value on your beauty, nor does Shatong. He will e'en have a use for you.”

Durforth laughed again in amusement at her obvious signs of fear.

NOW as he beckoned to the shaman who had been peering at them and at the ridges about the camp, through the tangle of his long hair, Durforth's eyes began to glow. His tongue touched his lips and a certain eagerness was apparent as he signed for the Ostiak to lead away the maiden.

“Khada ulan obokhod,” the wizard muttered. “The dead souls that dwell in the mountains and high places have spoken to me. They say the man who is your enemy is near this place. I can bring him to the fire.”

Durforth looked at the old savage curiously. He was more than a little superstitious, and he had seen the shaman do unaccountable things.

“Before the last of the light is gone, I will bring him.'” Shatong's thin hand closed on Joan's arm. “But I must take the maiden for this work.”

The man nodded, and Shatong led Joan to a stone on the other side of the fire, and went to his horsehide. Striking on the drum slowly he began a song, the copper bells and the iron trinkets on his leather apron keeping a rude sort of time.

CHAPTER XVI

THE WHITE BEAR

KRYRGER, flat on his belly in the snow, wriggled uneasily. They had been too far away for Thorne to hear what was said between the two outlanders, but Shatong's shrill voice was distinct enough in the thin air. Kyrger knew that the shaman was trying to draw Thorne to the Ostiaks, although the white man was clearly waiting for darkness before he made any move.

More logs were thrown on the fire, and as dusk fell the figure of the shaman was covered with a ruddy tinge. On one knee he bent over the drum, chanting his discordant song. Then he rose to his toes and spread out his arms, moving toward Durforth.

Kyrger knew by this that the kam, the spirit of the wizard, had become separated from his body and was flying through the air. Shatong, therefore, meant to journey to the cold underground region where Erlik ruled the spirit world.

“The dead souls say,” chanted the wizard, “I must cut myself. I will cut myself with your knife.”

Durforth handed the savage his dirk and Shatong crept nearer the girl. Thorne rose to his knees, taking the crossbow from Kyrger, but uttered a stifled exclamation of astonishment. Shatong had thrust the weapon under his own gaunt ribs. Or so it seemed. His two hands gripped the hilt and blood ran down upon his apron. The blade of the dirk had disappeared.

Presently the shaman drew it forth, stained with blood, and screamed. Joan hid her face in her hands.

Durforth, chin on hand, seemed unmoved; but his eyes were intent. Meanwhile Shatong took up his journey to the presence of Erlik. He went through the motions of leaping over mountains and staggering through the sands of a desert; then he walked forward gingerly swaying from side to side.

Kyrger knew that the spirit of the wizard was moving over the single hair that bridges the abyss between the land of the living and the abode of the dead souls.

He watched Shatong cringe back as if at the gate of Erlik's domain—heard the snarling chorus of welcome from the dogs of the underworld—saw Shatong driven back by a gust of wind, then approach fearfully the seat of Erlik, represented by the fire.

The chorus of animal cries grew louder, though Shatong's lips did not move. Invisible wings beat overhead, and Kyrger's skin grew cold. He knew what would follow.

Shatong lifted his hands to his lips as if drinking the welcoming cup, and fell down in a huddle on the trampled snow. His dark skin glistened with sweat. At this moment his kam was listening to the words of Erlik.

He bounded to his feet and pointed toward the trees where Thorne and Kyrger were hidden.

“Winged creatures can not fly hither; things with bones can not come; how have you made your way to my abode?”

Staggering, he laid his hand on his chest.

“I have ridden far, my strength fails; I have faced great terrors, and I am hungry.”

So saying, he advanced on Joan who drew back, half faint with fear. Grasping the fur surcoat at her throat, he jerked it away and bared a white shoulder with his claw. His teeth snapped and his lips writhed as he drew nearer the girl's arm.

Kyrger sat up on his haunches with a grunt of dismay. Shatong, he saw, had prevailed, because now, without any effort to draw back his companion, the white man, was running toward his enemies.

THORNE at first had taken up the crossbow; but the wavering fire light and the numbness in his fingers made the risk too great for a shot. Moreover, to kill Shatong would not free Joan. As he plodded forward through the snow she saw him and cried out clearly:

“Get you hence, Master Ralph. They lie in wait for you.”

At this the shaman released her and turned to his men, saying something in a low voice. To Durforth he added triumphantly:

“Lili khel mkholas—my soul looked into the hiding place of this enemy. My soul summoned him forth from the hiding place.”

Durforth, who did not know that the sharp eyes of the wizard had picked out the armiger on the ridge, was more than a little startled. Whether or no Shatong had planned his ritual of the drum and the spirit visit to hearten himself or to bring the outlander forth would be difficult to say.

Because his limbs were stiff with cold Thorne moved slowly, and Durforth at first did not recognize the gaunt figure in the wolfskin hood and jacket. And the newcomer, instead of putting hand to sword or approaching Joan, went to the fire and stretched out his hands, first taking the mittens off, to warm them at the blaze.

“I give you greetings, Master Durforth,” he said quietly.

The voice and the smile that accompanied it banished the last doubt in the mind of Philip's agent.

“Slay me this man,” he said to Shatong, after a long breath of hesitation. “I will give the price of five deerskins to the one who takes his life with the first arrow,” he added when the shaman made no response.

But Shatong was squatting again on his white horsehide mumbling to himself. And the six natives had eyes only for the wizard. If Thorne had rushed at them, or shouted or drawn his weapon they would have stretched him in the snow at once. Meanwhile Shatong had arrived at a decision; his slits of eyes glimmered at the white men and he gabbled at Durforth.

“I am very weary with the long journey to the Erlik-hall. My ears are filled with the beating of spreading wings. Lo, one of the wings veils the moon; the other hides the sun. I have flown with the mother of eagles over Yaik. I can not hear your words, outlander.”

Placing his hand before his eyes he turned his back on Durforth, who repeated his order to the others, increasing the bounty he offered for the visitor's life. But the Ostiaks continued to gaze at him with wooden features, and he understood that they would do nothing for the moment. Shatong, after throwing wood on the fire to make it brighter, would do nothing at all.

He had been watching the strange white man. He saw that Thorne's motions were assured and purposeful. Shatong had felt the other's sword rasp his ribs, and the skin of his face still stung from the powder that had belched from the cannon.

This young outlander might cause a second explosion at any moment, he reasoned. Evidently the other's kam, his tutelary diety was powerful, and unfriendly to Shatong's kam. Durforth's power, too, was doubtful. So Shatong waited to see what would happen.

“These be men of power. No hoofed beast can protect itself against them, creatures with claws flee away. There is a thusind, a pursuit of blood between them. Let us see what they will accomplish.”

Durforth rose and advanced to the fire with hand outstretched.

“'Od's life, Master Thorne, I greet you well! In this pagan land we can not afford to nourish our late quarrel. We must abet one another. So, let us cry a truce.”

He had no means of knowing that the armiger had caught the gist of his command to Shatong, and he thought to silence Joan with a warning glance. This had quite another effect on the girl.

“Do not put faith in him,” she said instantly, “for he will not keep faith with you.”

Thorne motioned her to be silent.

“Yield ye,” he said to Durforth. “Throw down your weapons if you are bent on life.”

The man in the fox skins still held out his hand, but he was thinking. And Philip had not chosen an agent for a dull wit.

Durforth said slowly:

“Bethink you, Master Thorne, Edward hath breathed his last by now. The odds are, Mary is queen, and so is England joined to Spain. What will it profit you to meddle with me?”

“Because we are here in the hands of savages I offer you a fair surrender. We have this maid to bear to safety, and you know the way. Yield and I will do what in me lies to bring you to England. For the rest, I care not. Yield your sword or draw it.”

“You are bold, young sir, and foolhardy.” He paused. “Why do you press this quarrel when it mars both our fortunes?”

“Because,” quoth the armiger, “I have looked upon the bodies of a hundred honest men, marred by your treachery. Come——”

Durforth started and looked beyond him at the shadows of the forest, open mouthed. Thorne, noticing the quick dread in the other's face, turned to see what had caused it. In the thicket he perceived that something moved, something white and massive. Then he sprang to one side.

In the second when he had taken his gaze from the merchant, Durforth had stooped to pick up from the snow the dagger left there by the shaman. No sooner had his fingers closed upon it than he lunged at Thorne's back. The sudden movement in so big a man had aroused the armiger, who stepped wide of the thrust, drawing his sword as he did so.

“Ha, stand to your guard, rogue. No one will come between us this time.”

Durforth recovered his balance and his composure at once. He had acted before he thought; the blood stained knife had caught his eyes as Thorne turned away. Taking off his surcoat, he stood in doublet and boots, smiling a little. In drawing his sword he whipped it through a salute.

“A pity, my hotspur, that you gave your allegiance to the wrong prince. Had you cast your lot with Mary and Spain we twain might have gone far.”

WHILE Joan sat upon her log, her eyes glued to the flicker of the two rapiers that gleamed ruddy in the fire light, the Ostiaks followed with absorbing interest the struggle between the two outlanders.

In the treacherous footing of the trodden snow they moved warily. Durforth, who had the dirk in his left hand, sought to come to close quarters; failing that, he circled to get the fire at his back and drive Thorne out into the deeper snow. Red light played up and down the bright blades, and the slithering click of steel punctuated the quick breathing of the men.

Shatong saw that Durforth's face had changed, it had darkened, the beard jutting out, the forehead creased. The lips were drawn back, and Shatong saw in this face the likeness of a wolf. So, he reasoned, the taller outlander served the wolf spirit.

The other, whose yellow mane gleamed in the firelight, who fought with closed lips, he fancied served the quoren vairgin, the reindeer spirit. And it was well known that the wolf-clan was powerful enough to tear to pieces a member of the reindeer clan. And, certainly, the clan of ermecin, the great white bear, would prevail over either. So Shatong reasoned, while he crawled around the fire to watch the struggle of the white men.

Durforth pressed the attack now, following thrust with thrust. Both men, the shaman thought, were tiring, and Thorne was staggering. It was clear to the Ostiak that Durforth's kam was the stronger, and he began to breath quickly in anticipation of the end.

He saw Thorne stumble in a drift over a fallen tree and go down on one knee. Durforth sprang in, cutting down his adversary's blade, and struck with the knife. Thorne had not tried to rise, but gathered his strength and lunged as Durforth came down on him.

Shatong saw a point of steel through Durforth's back; saw the big man rise to his toes and fall forward, soundlessly, into the drift.

Freeing his blade, Thorne turned about in time to face the rush of the Ostiaks led by Shatong. The shaman had not expected to see Durforth go down, but now he knew that the other outlander must be exhausted. The three sled loads of goods from the ships would be his in another moment.

Something whirred past the shaman and thudded into the back of the foremost Ostiak. It was a crossbow bolt and it knocked the man from his feet. The others turned to stare at the forest and yelled in shrill and astonished fear.

Two figures were advancing on them from the trees, Kyrger running in advance, fitting an arrow to his small bow. Behind him, grasping the crossbow that he had picked up when the Samoyed let it fall, was Peter. Peter with the skin of the polar bear wrapped around him, the muzzle over his head, his face almost invisible between the gaping jaws.

Some hours since the shipman had awakened from the stupor into which he had fallen after the blow on the head dealt him by Shatong. His heavy leather cap and stout skull had brought him off none the worse except for a mighty braise over one ear. Kyrger had roused him by thrusting the end of the crossbow into his ribs.

By frantic signs the Samoyed had made it clear to Peter that trouble was brewing near at hand, and the shipman had lumbered off without delaying to rid himself of the bearskin. Heaving into sight of the fire, he was in time to see Durforth go down and the Ostiaks rise from their haunches and rush at Thorne.

“Stand to quarters, lad!” he bellowed. “Lay them by the board!”

Shrewd Shatong saw what effect this apparition of the burly man in the white fell had upon his followers. They had not known that another outlander was present, so intent had they been upon the duel. And the skin of the white bear filled them with superstitious dread.

“Ermecin!” they cried.

No Ostiak had ever slain a white bear. And while they hung back, gripped alike by fear and the blood lust, Shatong ran at Peter from the side, swinging his club.

Out of the corner of his eyes the shipman saw him, and swung the crossbow down and outward in a powerful hand. The steel bow, and the iron-tipped head struck the shaman on the temple.

Without a cry Shatong's body dropped upon the earth, seeming to shrink into its grotesque garb of leather and jangling iron, its long hair covering the shattered skull and the gap where his eyes had been.

A shout from Kyrger, who had beheld what was in his estimation a miracle, brought home to the Ostiaks the fact that they were dealing with men, not spirits. One of the eight sent an arrow through the little hunter.

Others swarmed upon Peter, screaming and stabbing. It was Thorne's sword that checked their rush. The armiger, thrusting and warding, strengthened by the brief rest, put down two of his assailants, and drove another back on the huddle around Peter.

In this hand to hand struggle the Easterlings could not use their bows; but Peter, dropping the crossbow, used his fists. He knocked one man headlong, and Thorne, bruised by a thrown club, ran another through the heart. The deadly play of the rapier was more than the rest could stomach and they fled beyond the circle of firelight, vanishing into the gloom under the trees.

“Faith,” muttered Peter, glancing around, “we were sore beset, but we cleared the deck. Where lie the ships?”

He was astonished past belief when he understood that they were twenty leagues from the coast and Sir Hugh's vessels.

WHILE Peter and Joan washed Kyrger's hurt and made him comfortable on some cloths from the goods on the sleds, Thorne put more wood on the fire and—when Joan told him all that had passed between her and Durforth—look the letters from the pouch of the Burgundian. Carefully he read them through after breaking the seals, and when he had done, placed them in his belt.

“In these missives,” he said to the expectant girl, “lieth the true way to Cathay.”

“Is it far?” she wondered. “Could we adventure there?”

He smiled at her wish.

“Nay, Joan. There is no passage by sea; but the way by land hath been discovered already by the Muscovites. The silks and spices, aye, the ivory and carpets of Cathay and the Indies are borne each year through Tatary to the emperor of the Muscovites, Ivan, called the 'Terrible,' and entitled in these missives emperor of Astrakhan and lord of the forests and the Sibir Desert.”

“Now marry and amen!” cried Peter who had come up, and had been fingering Durforth's chain longingly. “Here is that same lord Ivan or John of the land of gold and silver. The dons were wiser than we. What more, lad?”

“Why, simply this: The Spaniards desired Ivan to make a compact with them, so that the trade of the Indies could be borne overland, which is shorter by much than the sea route to the Indies, to them. They would have the great Emperor Ivan know that they are masters of all Christiandom, save England which will soon be under their hand.”

“Then,” cried Joan angrily, “we must bear these missives to the lords of England, and rouse them to their peril.”

“Faith, Joan—” the armiger laughed outright—“are you Puss-in-Boots, to girdle the earth, east or west? We will do what we can, but if we are to live we must gain the borders of Muscovy.”

“What says the other missive?” pressed the boatswain, who had great faith in letters.

“Cornelius Durforth, the Burgundian, was a trusted councilor of Spain.” He glanced down thoughtfully at the body of his enemy: “Peter, 'tis my thought that the Fox is dead.”

“How?” quoth the shipman, scratching his head. “Messems we left my lord Renard on his feet.”

“It is evident,” said Thorne, “that Renard was Durforth's man. And Durforth was Philip's spy called by us the Fox. While we watched Renard, the Fox came and went. D'Alaber served him and came against me while Durforth waited. When there is a killing to be managed, 'tis the servant who handles the knife while the lord waits the result.”

“Your father!” cried Joan and fell silent.

“Aye, Durforth desired his end, and Renard saw that it was done. The spy's work in Burgundy was finished long since; his task in England done, and but for one thing he would have gained to the court of Ivan.”

“Your sword, it was,” said Joan proudly.

“Nay, greed. Durforth was petty in craving gold. He stopped to snatch it where he could. He went back to plunder the ships when Sir Hugh and his brave company died.”

Peter put his hands behind him and looked away from the Burgundian's sword hilt and gold chain.

“The black rogue!”

“Nay—” Thorne shook his head—“rogue he may have been, but brave he was. Now that he is sped it is not honorable in us to miscall him.”

CHAPTER XVII

THE INLAND SEA

IT IS written in the chronicles of that reign how the armiger and the shipman, knowing not whither they should take their course, turned southeast as Durforth's route had been planned.

So it was said of them that the hand of Durforth which had been ever against them, living, now guided them out of the tayga, the dense forest of the Easterlings. They drove the dog sleds, loaded with trade goods, and Joan made shift to drive Kyrger's rein deer and the sledge on which the wounded Samoyed lay. They took their course from the stars.

And so they left the fires in the sky behind them and came out on a snow plain without track or tree or village. Still Thorne pressed south and east. He would not change his course for any direction that seemed likelier, and because of this they passed through a girdle of hills and found themselves on the shore of a sea that stretched to the horizon.

Its waters were a clear green, unlike the dull gray of the Ice Sea, and for this reason Thorne said they could not be the same.

And following this coast they came to men spearing seals among the ice cakes. Some of these men were Muscovites, but in their number was Master Stanton, gunner of the Edward, who greeted them with a glad outcry.

And from this same Master Stanton they learned what was afterward set down in the chronicle, that when Richard Chancellor parted from the Wardhouse, he held on his course toward the unknown region of the world, aided by the continual light.

Coming to the mouth of what seemed a great bay, he entered and sailed many a league to the south without seeing land again. But they came upon a fishing boat manned by barbarians who were filled with amazement at the great size of his ship.

He entreating them courteously, they made report in the villages of the Muscovites of the arrival of a strange nation of a singular gentleness. Master Chancellor was conducted to a town built on a fair harbor, within wooden walls,^[1] and was told that this was the bay of St. Nicholas and the sea was the White Sea, which ran far into the dominions of the great prince Ivan.

Master Chancellor departed to seek this prince at his court in Moscow, leaving the Edward at anchor in charge of Burroughs. And so began the trade of Muscovy with the outer world, for it was a land rich in gold and silver and furs. As for Thorne the armiger and Joan Andrews, they fared to the court of Ivan the Terrible and what there befell them is set down in the chronicles for all to see.

But when Kyrger's wound healed he harnessed up his reindeer and journeyed back to the Ice Sea. It was more than he could endure to live within walls, and in the beginning of spring he reached the Wardhouse where Tuon and his Laps had taken up their quarters to watch the possessions of Joan Andrews and to wait whatever would take place.

Kyrger the hunter spread under their eyes the skin of ermecin, the white bear, and squatted down on it, taking full heed of the astonishment of the Laps.

“O nym tungit,” he murmured, “O my tent companions, since I turned my face from the north star many new fires have taken their place in the gate in the sky. Many men have gone to greet Yulden to whom the three stairways lead.”

He pointed to the skin.

“With an arrow my master slew this one. And with the bow that sent the arrow Shatong the shaman was struck down. The spirit that dwells in my master is very powerful. It is not the Reindeer-Being; it is not kin to the bear or the wolf or the eagle.”

The listeners held up their hands in bewilderment.

“O, my brothers harken, for this is a very great magic and a thing beyond belief. My master hurries through the forest, looking neither to right nor to left; when he is in trouble he makes a magic with water that burned, and ice put upon a tree; he went against his enemies and the blood feud is atoned.

“In the Town of Wooden Walls he claimed the sinym—the young maiden—for his bride, although there were many warriors of her race who cast their eyes upon her.

“The spirit that dwells in him is that of the khylden. He has run with the snow-driver. So in all things it is better, O my friends, to follow him than to stand against him.”

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