The fight was mine, so
to speak.
"It seems well for me," she said, smiling somewhat sadly. "I had no
thought but to be burnt. Now I have escaped that. Tell me how it
may have been."
I did so, wondering all the time how she came to be in that
terrible place, for she spoke of escape. That she would tell us in
her own time, no doubt.
"What can be done now?" she asked, speaking to us as to known
friends, very bravely.
If she had doubts of us, she hid them. Perhaps that we owned to
being escaped captives explained much to her--else she had surely
wondered that the tattered Dalfin claimed to be a prince. Yet he
was princely, both in look and bearing, as he rose up and made
himself known, with a bow which none but a courtier could have
compassed.
"Bertric is shipmaster," I said; "he will answer."
"The ship is yours, lady, and we can but serve you," he answered.
"Now, it depends on the wind when it comes with dawn, as no doubt
it will, what course we can take, for we are too few to work the
ship rightly. We had thought of trying to make the Norway shore at
the nearest point we could reach, and so setting the ship, and the
hero who lies in her, in the hands of those who will do him the
honour that he needs at the last."
At that, to our great surprise, she shook her head.
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