It was half full of plunder of all sorts, and
there was barely room, if soft stowage, for us.
"Well," I said to Dalfin, "if we can sleep, let us do so. I know
that every word we speak can be heard on deck."
Whereon he answered me in Erse, and I could understand him well,
for the old tongues of Scot of Ireland and Scot of Caithness are
the same, if ages have wrought some changes in the way of speaking
them here and there.
"Let these Danes make what they can of that," he said. "It will
take a man born to the Gaelic to catch aught of it through yon
hole, if he thinks he understands it in the open."
So in the Erse we spoke for a little while, and it was a hopeless
talk at best. Only we agreed that we would stand by one another
through whatever might come, and that the first chance of escape
was to be taken, be it what it might.
All the while that we talked thus the noise of the men who drank
grew wilder and more foolish. It was a cask of our old heather ale
which they had broached, and that is potent, if to the unwary it
seems harmless enough. Once or twice Asbiorn called to the noisiest
to be still, but they heeded him little.
Soon, however, the noise ceased, and we thought that most of the
men slept. After that was no sound but the wash of the waves, and
the hum of the sail, and the creak of the great steering oar as
Asbiorn met the luff of the ship across the long, smooth sweep of
the waves.
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