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Updated: June 21, 2025
And they went through, winning half the length of the lake by nightfall and pulling on through all the night hours as the wind went down, falling asleep at the oars and being rapped awake by Liverpool, toiling on through an age-long nightmare while the stars came out and the surface of the lake turned to the unruffledness of a sheet of paper and froze skin-ice that tinkled like broken glass as their oar-blades shattered it.
Fiercely we dragged at the fall of the fourfold tackle that formed the working end of the halliard, and at each pull the great, heavy, swaying yard slid a few inches up the short, thick mast, as though reluctantly, while away on our weather quarter we heard the fierce shouts of the men in the approaching boat as they encouraged each other, punctuated by the quick jerk of the oars in the rowlocks, and the swish of the water as the oar-blades clipped into it.
The captain proposed that we should instantly put about, and pull away from them to the northward and east; but then it was argued that the moment the sun got up the flashing of our oar-blades in the water would inevitably betray us, and that our best mode of proceeding was to be perfectly quiet, so that they might pass without perceiving us.
Dropping the buoy he had just gaffed, Percy took the oars and began rowing hard toward the sound, which gradually grew louder. The fog came on with a rush, sliding over them like an avalanche. It was hardly possible to see beyond the tips of the oar-blades. "Lucky we can hear that surf!" said Percy, comfortably. "But strange it sounds so loud and so near." Now it was close ahead.
As the sound reached the boats I saw the officers rise in the stern- sheets and wave their caps to us in response; the oar-blades flashed quicker in the sun; the foam gathered in increasing volume under the bows of the boats as their crews put on an extra spurt; and presently a flash and a puff of fleecy smoke started out simultaneously from each boat, and the boom of the three reports came dull and heavy to us against the opposing breeze.
A favorite feat of the Norsemen was to toss three swords in the air and catch each by the handle as it came down. This was called the handsax game. The young men used also to try the feat of running along the oar-blades of the rowers as they were in motion, passing around the bow of the vessel with a spring and coming round to the stern over the oars on the other side.
Straight as an arrow for us came the galley, her two masts keeping steadily in one as her helmsman relentlessly followed the schooner's movement through the water, while the long oar-blades now rose and fell quickly in perfect time, urging the long, snake-like hull toward us at a speed of fully seven knots.
Then he pulled off his sweater, settled himself firmly on the thwart, and braced his heels against the timber nailed across the bottom of the dory. His oar-blades caught the water with a long, steady stroke. "We'll head north of the island," he said to Percy, after a few minutes of vigorous rowing.
So Hallblithe went down from the poop, and in to the waist, where now the rowers were bending to their oars, and crying out fiercely as they tugged at the quivering ash; and he clomb on to the forecastle and went forward right to the dragon-head, and gazed long upon the land, while the dashing of the oar-blades made the semblance of a gale about the ship's black sides.
And now the sea reddened with shafts of light, and high in heaven the yellow dawn shone rose-charioted; when the winds fell, and every breath sank suddenly, and the oar-blades toil through the heavy ocean-floor. And on this Aeneas descries from sea a mighty forest. Midway in it the pleasant Tiber stream breaks to sea in swirling eddies, laden with yellow sand.
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