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Their conduct so exasperated Harold that he determined to destroy the freebooters of the Orkneys root and branch. Gathering a large fleet, he relentlessly pursued the raiders up every bay and inlet. Leaving the ships, he chased them among the rocky islands and the sinuous fiords. When they were overtaken the pursuers showed them no mercy.
He went to the Gallapagos, a horrid dry place on the Equator, where he was nearly baked to death; he went to the Georgia Islands, the Orkneys, Emerald Island, Little Nightingale Island, Gough's Island, Bouvet's Island, the Crossets, and even to a little speck of an island south of the Cape of Good Hope. But everywhere the People of the Sea told him the same things.
This conceit is ancient as Japan, and one not only in usage to this day among the Shintoists of that land, but likewise common throughout Northern Asia and, nearer home, in the Orkneys, in Scotland, in Ireland.
"It was an ill deed in sooth," said Gudruda, "for Eric to slay an old man whom he had wronged. Still, it may chance that he was driven to it for his own life's sake." Then Hall said that he had seen Swanhild after Atli's slaying, and that she had told him that she and Eric should wed shortly, and that Eric would rule in Orkneys by her side. Gudruda asked if that was all his tale.
The British recognized them as a formidable part of the grand Allied fleet. As to the navy itself, its personnel was increased to 150,000 men. Where the main American fleet was whether with the British fleet at the Orkneys, or stationed in some other zone no event transpired to give any clue.
This Rognwald was father of Turf-Einar, who first invented peat in the Orkneys, finding the wood all gone there; and is remembered to this day. Einar, being come to these islands by King Harald's permission, to see what he could do in them, islands inhabited by what miscellany of Picts, Scots, Norse squatters we do not know, found the indispensable fuel all wasted.
Then presently our fears passed enough to let us speak with one another; and then there were voices enough, for every man wished to hear his own again, that courage might return. Then a man from the Orkneys who had been with Jarl Sigurd came aft to us, and stood at the break of the deck to speak with Einar.
The rations were scanty; there were bitter complaints both of the bread and of the meat; and, when the little fleet, after passing round the Orkneys and Ireland, touched at Madeira, those gentlemen who had fine clothes among their baggage were glad to exchange embroidered coats and laced waistcoats for provisions and wine.
After some short service in home waters, during which he visited the Orkneys, Captain Yorke was ordered to take the Alligator to the Mediterranean station, where it doubtless occurred to the authorities that the energy and ability he had shown when in command of the Alacrity in Greek waters a few years earlier would be of service in the new circumstances which had arisen in that part of the world.
In the latter case the schooner would have been thrown out of her course, or at least she would have had a struggle to keep in it, and it was better for us, in short, not to stray from the meridian which we had followed since our departure from the New South Orkneys.
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