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Updated: June 18, 2025
Only from the shore after a little space came a great cry, 'Skoal to King Thorwald, and farewell! and with that the war horns blew fiercely, and the battle cry rang again. Then came the terrible stifling smoke, and I knew that Arnkel had thus rid himself of me. "Presently I freed myself from the gag and the bonds, and tried to beat down the end of the house, but I could not.
And that was Rorik's last stroke, for even as I had parried Thormod's stroke in sport, the man's wrist lit on the keen edge of my axe, so that hand and weapon flew far beyond me with the force of his stroke. Then flashed my axe, and Rorik fell with his helm cleft in twain. Then roared our crew, cheering me: "Skoal to the axeman! Ahoy!"
"Skoal to the heroes!" she answered; and then I knew the voice, though, under the helm and in the grey light, the face of the ealdorman's daughter Etheldreda had been strange to me. And Odda knew also. "What would you in this guise, my daughter?" he cried.
They were awaiting us with bumpers, and ma chère mère addressed the people something in this strain: "We must not indeed laugh until we get over the brook; but when we set out on the voyage of matrimony with piety and good sense, then may be applied the adage that 'Well begun is half won'; and on that, my friends, we will drink a skoal to this wedded pair you see before you, and wish that both they and their posterity may ever 'sit in the vineyard of our Lord. Skoal!"
So I took her through them all to the high place, and set her there in Thorwald's chair, and Gorm the Steward passed round some word, and came himself with a silver cup full of mead, and set it in her hand, and whispered to her. Whereon she smiled and rose up, and held the cup high, and cried to her folk: "Skoal, friends, and thanks!"
And all down the hall, from her own folk and from Hakon's, and even from those strangers, Eric's men, came the answer: "Skoal to Gerda the Queen, and welcome!" And then one lifted his voice and cried: "Skoal to Jarl Malcolm!" Men took that up, and it was good to hear them. Gerda gave me the cup her lips had just touched, and I drank "skoal" to them in turn, and so Gerda the Queen had come home.
I gather, then, from evidence internal and otherwise that the dinner was excellent, and that we were helped in Benjamite proportions; but as before the soup was finished I was already hard at work hob-nobbing with my two neighbours, it is not to be expected I should remember the bill of fare. With the peculiar manners used in Scandinavian skoal- drinking I was already well acquainted.
Then as horns emptied faster toast after toast was called across the fires, and honoured with shouts of "Skoal!" that reached far into the night outside.
She never lifted her eyes when Georgie Gray and a friend, who was no other than the identical Miss Joy of the "Eolus," stood at the staircase foot for some moments and held a whispered conversation; nor was she conscious of the side glances which the visitor now and then cast up toward the brown gingham skirt visible above. It was not till "Skoal! to the Northland! skoal!"
Skoal, therefore, to the first Northman I have met between here and London town, for it is good to hear a friendly voice." "Skoal to the jarl!" I answered, and I gave the salute of Sigurd's courtmen, which came into my mind on the moment with the familiar greeting of long years ago. And "Skoal," said Havelok. "Jarl! How know you that I am that?" "By the jarl's bracelet that you wear, surely."
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